V O I C E O F T H E I . T . C O M M U N I T Y I w w w . i t w o r l d c a n a d a . c o m

RIP WEB OSHP looks set to bury the mobile OS. Anyone remember Beta? PagE 14

5 SuRPRISIng SkIllSWhat hiring managers are looking for right now PagE 18

WRItE a BOOkBoost your career profile by becoming an author PagE 19

Hybris-icongo merger targets e-commerce playersWhy the cto of Harry rosen likes the prospect of stability and deeper pockets of his supplier PAGE 6

canadian businesses sloW to act on social media, study saysonly 17 per cent of mid-sized and large organizations in canada monitor and post to social media sites, according to a recent survey. PAGE 8

ontario cio Wants to partner WitH feds on data centresour exclusive interview with david nicholl on the floor of showcase ontario PAGE 12

mark vale PAGE 3

TeleTabTop? PAGE 15

porTfolIo PAGE 20

TwITTer Terror PAGE 22

september 2011Volume 27, number 9$2.50/COPY

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ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca ComputerWorld Canada I September 2011 I 3

ewsN

By Kathleen Lau

n A MOBIlE MEdICAl UNIT IN British Columbia, designed to provide onsite emergency health care following a disaster such as earthquake, fire or disease, has undergone its first deployment in mid-August.

A joint initiative between British Columbia’s Ministry of Health Services and the Provin-cial Health Services Authority (PHSA), the mobile medical unit, once fully installed, will be equipped with the same systems used to register and assess patients upon entry to a hospital, where the information will be readily available should the patient choose to continue health care at an actual hospital.

It will also be equipped with a tracking satellite dish for data uplink and downlink as well as uninterrupted videoconferencing capabilities with hospitals.

One such mobile unit made its debut this month when it was on standby at the Abbotsford International Airshow in city of Abbotsford, B.C., where the mobile team worked alongside local teams from St. John ambulance and the province’s ambulance services.

That’s just one of many possible scenarios where the mobile health care can be deployed, said Theresa Kennedy, interim director of public affairs with the PHSA.

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Mobile medical unit makes debut at local B.C. event

FORMER COllEaguE REMEMBERS MaRk ValEBy JD Speedy

n MArk VAlE WAS NOT ONlY a fount of information for industry standards in information manage-ment, he was also a key asset in ontario’s ministry of government services. In 2006, deputy minister of government services, ron mckerlie, hired vale as the ontario government’s first ever CIo.

mckerlie remembers a lot about him, most of all the fact that, for such a bright guy, he was incred-ibly down to earth.

vale, the ontario government’s first CIo, died on august 12.

“He did a great job in terms of educating people to think about information differently, think about it as you’re creating it and think about what that informa-tion would need to do in terms of taking on a life or a death of its own as it flowed forward,” mckerlie said.

mckerlie also said that vale’s knowledge of social media and instant messaging tools led to initiatives even more important to the government’s growth. vale helped the government in “thinking about that transfer of knowledge and how knowledge gets created in a way that can be transferred to others easily. That got us into using some of the social media tools that we use (now). opSpedia was one of those tools that, (while it) wasn’t mark’s idea, the ideas he created and left us with were developed here, and were the genesis for using opSpedia, a wikipedia-type service but unique and

“It really could be a number of things that happen,” said Kennedy.

Besides more obvious events such as earthquake and mass fire, one scenario could be a docked cruise ship with a mass disease outbreak among passengers. “(It’s) something you won’t want to bring into a hospital or clinical setting,” said Kennedy.

Stephen May, senior public affairs officer with British Columbia Ministry of Health Services, described the mobile medical unit as “an important provincial asset” built to augment local area medical services in the event of disaster.

“We could also foresee using the MMU to manage the surge pressure on local hospitals in the event a boat arrives with refugees,” said May.

Apart from meeting those core needs, more peripheral uses for the units are mass gatherings in remote locations, such as large music festivals that are a popular occurrence in the area.

The units are designed to deal with anywhere from “low acuity” needs like cuts and bruises to “higher acuity” like the setting of broken bones and emergency sur-gical intervention, said Kennedy.

Although the medical units have had an initial deployment, there is still much work to be done to raise awareness and further establish partnerships with local health authorities, with which the mobile teams will be working.

Currently, discussions are tak-ing place in each of the six health authorities across B.C. to identify physicians and nurses interested in working with the mobile units, as well as to establish standards across the province.

Kennedy said best practices are also being reaped through discussions with health care stakeholders nationally.

We could also foresee using

the mmu to manage the surge pressure on hospitals in the event a boat arrives with refugees

— STepHeN may

This mobile medical unit, or MMU, is equipped with the same systems to register and assess patients as used by hospitals, and features satellite connectivity and uninter-rupted videconferencing capabilities.

inside of our firewalls, where we can create and share knowledge.”

mckerlie said that vale wanted government employ-ees to stop saving every piece of data that crossed their desks and become more aware of the lifecycle of information. Some information, pertaining to critical business decisions, is worth keeping forever. other information, which mc-kerlie said vale helped them recognize and categorize at its inception, needn’t be saved.

“He did a very similar thing around privacy. He got us to think about a level of privacy - low, medium and high, he kept it simple for us - that should be attached to information as it’s developed and that was incredibly useful. (It shows) his practicalness in everything he did,” mckerlie said.

“I think that will be his big-gest legacy; it’s just the culture shift that he started in the or-ganization. before that, I don’t think people really thought, to be honest, about what they were creating, so everything got saved because you never knew what it was going to be used for, not whether it was important or not. He really helped us sift and sort through the useful from the mundane and think about that when we were creating it. I think that will be a big part of his legacy,” mckerlie said.

mckerlie said “some people had the theory and some people had the practi-ces, but he was the one that put it all together.”

on a personal note, mckerlie said “mark was an easy guy to get to like. He was jovial, he smiled, he used to laugh a lot. He enjoyed life and he brought that joy into the workplace.”

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6 I September 2011 I ComputerWorld Canada ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca

N

By Rafael Ruffolo

n HYBrIS SOFTWArE HAS merged with Montreal’s iCongo in a deal which will give the e-commerce software maker more experience in deploying its products through the cloud.

In wake of the deal, the combined company will operate as Hybris Software and will be headquartered in Munich, Germany. The iCongo and Hybris product lines will be merged into a joint retail offering that will be available as an on-premise, hosted or hybrid offering

Carsten Thoma, co-founder and chief operating officer of Hybris, said that iCongo’s product portfolio and employee base will improve Hybris’ order and ware-house management capability and give the company an established hosted deployment model.

“Customers now on a global scale can pick between any application and support their

cross-channel initiative,” he said, adding that while the product offering is already integrated together for customers, a fully branded Hybris solution will be available soon.

Brian Walker, a principal analyst serving e-business and channel strategy at Forrester Research Inc., said iCongo’s strongest asset as a commerce platform was its integrated order management feature, which will fit nicely with Hybris’ core commerce and product-content management capabilities.

He said that Hybris is elimin-ating one of the “key gaps its solu-tion had to serve multichannel companies with growing supply chain and service complexity” across various touchpoints.

For Steven Kramer, president and co-founder of iCongo, one of its biggest strengths is its cross-channel retailing capability, which is its ability to link the Web

with a physical store location.“If you walked into the store

and the product was not in stock, our system enables the store associates to find it somewhere

else in the chain,” he said.For Walker, the new Hybris

will offer customers a comprehen-sive commerce solution that will compete with big players such as IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp.

In addition to gaining a stronger integrated order management capability and key experience working with hosted

ENTERPRISE

Hybris targets big e-commerce players with iCongo merger

nEWtOPIa FIndS SuCCESS WItH HtMl5By JD Speedy

n IN SOME WAYS, NewTopia’s needs as an online portal for well-ness and nutrition were unique. Newtopia’s chief technology officer, Gary Durbach, said its service is highly personalized, so having ac-cess to user location data about a time zone is integral. In other ways, however, its needs are the same as other companies: maximizing its coding dollar by spending it on scalable technology.

Durbach said “we had an old version of the portal developed in .Net and when it was finally time to develop a new version, I wanted a platform that was a) scalable and b) totally device-agnostic.”

Jeffrey Hammond, principal analyst at boston mass.-based forrester research Inc., said this is becoming common for service-based companies. He said the success of the android mobile platform has pushed compan-ies to develop across too many standards. between blackberry, ioS, windows, windows mobile, android tablet and android, among others, “there’s no way they’re going to get away without writing multiple clients in the mo-bile space and in the tablet space,” he said.

Hammond describes it as a question of “how can I maximize the amount of effort I put into all the clients I have to develop now?”

Durbach came to the same conclusion, and after he “did some looking around, the only thing out there was HTml5. So we used it where we could and it’s an absolute pleasure.”

while Durbach said Newtopia will not become solely HTml5-based, so users can still access older flash and HTml versions of the portal, coding the new HTml5 version was both easy and “also, it’s a lot quicker to code. what used to take you six weeks, now will take you three weeks.”

Hammond said this is becoming a more and more common experi-ence. Instead of coding multiple versions of a site or application, “some of the more advanced companies that I’m working with may do a specific native application for something like the ipad and then they’ll do an HTml5 app for everything else.”

software delivery, Hybris will also improve its North American presence.

The iCongo offices in Montreal will act as the company’s North American headquarters.

“The deal gives us both global scale,” said Kramer. “They wanted to move into North America. We wanted to move into Europe.”

Kramer said that its custom-ers will benefit from Hybris’ “partner-centric” approach to implementations.

On the business-to-business side, he added, iCongo’s strong niche in the “soft goods” space will provide a nice counter-balance to Hybris’ customer base, which been focused on the electronic component and manufacturing sectors.

Steve Jackson, CTO of men’s clothier Harry Rosen, said his com-pany has been an iCongo customer since 2008 and is very excited about seeing the company become bigger and stronger financially.

“We’re looking for a product and a vendor that can continue to support us from a content perspective,” he said, referring to Harry Rosen’s desire to take advantage of more rich media on its online store.

“We know that their vision for their existing customers is to bring them on to a single platform,” Jackson said. “We’re excited about it.”

We’re looking for a product and a

vendor that can continue to support us from a content perspective ... We’re excited about it

— STeve JaCkSoN

Moving to public cloud increases project complexity, study saysBy Kathleen Lau

n THE NExT TWO YEArS WIll show a 13 per cent increase among enterprises for project and portfolio management (PPM) as they plan and deploy cloud initia-tives, according to new research by Ovum.

The study,The PPM Cloud Accelerator Report 2011, com-missioned by Islandia, N.Y.-based software vendor CA Technologies Inc., polled 530 companies in Canada, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, U.K. and U.S.

Barry Cousins, senior research analyst with London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group Inc., who is currently working on two PPM research projects, says the estimate is heading in the right direction. However, he predicts it will be even higher at about 25 per cent across the next two years.

“It’s under where I would have put it,” said Cousins.

The survey finds that the esti-mated 13 per cent rise in demand for PPM is the highest increase across all types of software used to manage public cloud projects.

That ranking doesn’t surprise Cousins. The runner-ups behind PPM, he said, would likely be monitoring software for measuring performance and utilization of resources because the cost for cloud offerings can vary so much that enterprises need a plan to know when those costs will change.

The other runner-up behind PPM, said Cousins, is data integration tools, because moving to the cloud results in a “real degradation” of data due to a lack of strategies to harmonize information housed in the cloud. He added it’s much like the harmonization that’s done on

on-premise data dispersed across an enterprise.

Overall, the study suggests cloud initiatives require an extra level of management. Specifically, 41.5 per cent of respondents expect public cloud deployments to increase IT project complexity.

Cousins said IT departments may be a bit surprised that cloud projects are harder to manage. Every part of the project lifecycle is impacted when in the cloud. “Think of it as more project control … All of a sudden, you’re doing things you don’t do before,” said Cousins.

What used to be departmental roles among IT staff for infrastruc-ture provisioning is now a contract established with an external service provider, said Cousins.

And, he added, what used to be capacity planning by the IT department within the confines of the enterprise is now “about a

legal agreement and pricing you must determine up front” with the provider.

Helge Scheil, senior vice-president with CA Technologies, said the study illustrates the role of PPM software in helping IT departments manage cloud deployments, in particular with app migration and governance.

IT leaders must keep an eye on cloud costs, said Scheil, and “need to retain visibility and control to ensure the transformative value of cloud computing does not come at a high cost.”

The study also found North American organizations will allocate 17 per cent of IT budgets to public cloud initiatives by end of 2013.

Just last February, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Co. expanded the scope of its PPM portfolio with HP PPM 9.1 to cover all organizational projects, not just IT projects.

The goal was that the new software version would attract end users beyond the IT depart-ment to any group managing an enterprise project.

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N ARCHITECTURE

Meltwater picks up social search engine, targets Canada

Canadian businesses slow to act on social, study finds

Social networking security threats by the numbersn SOPHOS lTd. SUrVEYEd 2,000 computer users on their experiences with security risks from social networking. The company found that:

By Rafael Ruffolo

n MElTWATEr GrOUP HAS purchased Dallas, Tx.-based real-time social search engine firm IceRocket in an effort to challenge competing products such as Radian6 and expand its Canadian footprint.

The San Francisco-based online analytics software maker will integrate IceRocket’s content aggregating technology into its flagship Meltwater Buzz social monitoring and engage-ment product.

IceRocket, which is backed by angel investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, launched in 2004 and allows customers to monitor trends from blogs and social networks.

Niklas de Besche, executive director of Meltwater Buzz, said IceRocket’s localized approach to social media searches will help the company expand into various global markets, including Canada.

“There are a lot of message boards, forums and blogs that are extremely relevant for Canadian companies that aren’t so relevant to American ones,” he said.

IceRocket, de Besche added, has done extensive work tracking

Canadian news and social media sources.

In addition to getting a better handle on Canadian sites, IceRocket’s search technology will bring more geographic and demographic data to the analytics platform that Meltwater already offers to customers.

IceRocket’s strong filtering technology will also benefit Meltwater’s suite, de Besche said.

And despite plans to integrate its technology and staff into Meltwater’s existing products, IceRocket will continue to operate as a standalone search engine.

The motivation to keep the search engine online is to entice users that find the search results useful to try upgrading to the full Meltwater social analytics suite.

The IceRocket acquisition is the third in a string of recent buys for the company. Meltwater acquired customer relationship management firm JitterJam earlier this year and social monitoring tool BuzzGain last year.

Zach Hofer-Shall, a Forrester Research analyst covering the social intelligence space, said he

sent clients to IceRocket anytime they wanted to take a “quick pulse” of their social brand on a tight budget.

“They can take a quick search on a keyword and that’s usually the extent of it,” he said.

“It’s not a monitoring tool or a research tool, but a social search engine.”

But despite its limited use case, he said, the product is effective at what it does, Hofer-Shall said.

“IceRocket was doing one thing fairly well,” he said. “Well enough that it stayed around for a few years and got acquired.”

Moving forward, Hofer-Shall expects Meltwater to continue buying firms that give it the ability to offer deeper analytics, create reports and engage online users.

“We’re watching them grow right now from being a basic tracking tool to what looks like a suite of marketing tools,” he added.

Meltwater, which generated more than US$100 million in revenue last year, did not disclose the financial terms of the agree-ment.

IceRocket’s four employees will join the Meltwater team.

8 I September 2011 I ComputerWorld Canada ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca

By Rafael Ruffolo

n WHIlE SOCIAl MEdIA monitor-ing is on the rise at Canadian enterprises, engagement with customers through social Web sites is still sluggish, according to new data.

A recent SAS Canada/Leger Marketing survey of 1,000 Can-adian executives at mid-sized and large organizations found that only 17 per cent of responding companies regularly monitor and post to social media sites. About 30 per cent of survey respondents monitor at least once every few days.

The survey also found that 10 per cent of responding executives said their company monitors

for mentions, but rarely posts to social media sites.

Lori Bieda, executive lead of customer intelligence for SAS Americas, said organizations need to both listen and engage regularly to be effective with social media. She said that businesses are not combining the two and finding the right balance between monitoring and engaging.

“Many are sitting back and looking at the results to deter-mine how to act,” Bieda added. “And we see more of that (in Canada) than in other areas.”

Katie Delahaye Paine, CEO at social media measurement firm KD Paine & Partners,

said that Canadian marketing budgets haven’t been slashed as much recently compared to in the U.S., which has forced many organizations down south to shift to lower-cost social media marketing.

“Canadians might just be more into listening than they are at shouting at people,” she added.

Paine said Canadian organiza-tions will want to move toward a 50/50 approach when monitoring and engaging their customers online.

The SAS Canada survey also found that the responsibility for corporate social media strategies can be all over the board. A quar-ter of respondents said tactics

are driven by the CEO, while 21 per cent cited the director of communications as the team lead. Another 18 per cent listed the chief marketing officer as the social media head.

For Paine, IT departments can play a huge role in this potential confusion, and combat the haphazard use of social media by businesses.

“(IT) really needs to be seen as part of a solution and not the opposition,” she said.

Paine added that the compan-ies which have most effectively used social media have assembled inclusive, social media commit-tees that bring together people from IT, marketing, HR and

other areas to discuss strategies at least once a month.

“You can’t just do things from a traditional IT perspective,” she said. “IT will think safety and security first.”

In order for IT to become a partner, as opposed to an enemy, IT shops must focus on gathering the collected social data and organizing it in a way that it can actually help the business. A reliable source of content, Paine said, is half the challenge.

“IT can be the level-headed voice of reason with this stuff,” she said. “They can say, ‘We don’t need five or ten different monitoring systems in place to collect this data.’”

: charting

Changing Security Landscape drives MSSPThe world of data security has evolved at breakneck speeds, driving a growing need for Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs).

Enterprises today are being hit by a triangulation of events creating an entirely new—and daunting to manage—security environment, says says Jeff Multz, director of North America Midmarket Sales at Dell SecureWorks.

On one corner, notes Multz, lies an “acronym soup” of regulation and compliance demands such as PCI –DSS (for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). “Then you have the threat landscape, which has evolved from basement hackers into the world of, what we call, fifth generation hacking; stealth mode.”

Multz notes that today’s hackers are savvy and focused on generating wealth. They include members of criminal-to-criminal networks where exploits can be bought and sold, as well as the ill-gotten information and identities from them. The only marginally positive news he gives is these hackers want easy returns, so a higher dedication to security than other businesses in the same category and geography can discourage attention.

“Add to those the hardest economy in the entire world. With all this coming together it’s a very ugly environment for organizations trying to conduct business safely.” When financial times are tight, often two of the first areas in which budgets are cut are software development and security, both of which create fresh vulnerabilities for companies, he notes.

Still, by necessity, business is conducted in an increasingly networked world from which enterprises cannot possibly disconnect. “The Internet is the dirtiest

place in the world to do business, but I’ve got to do business on it. So, now what?” Multz asks rhetorically.

His answer is a 24x7x365 focus on spotting and combatting threats; however, few businesses can afford a dedicated five security professionals—a minimum for even a small business—to keep eyes on the ball at all times. With many enterprises without even a single dedicated security professional, this is where an MSSP like Dell SecureWorks come in.

Dell SecureWorkSThe problem Multz points out is that software alone sees only the black and white of “absolute threat” or “clearly safe.” Experts need to be watching, and in a way that correlates between different threat points, and must recognize which gray areas are false positive and which seemingly harmless transactions are dan-gers. The operations team at Dell SecureWorks runs around the clock; not just monitoring client networks, but tracking the threat landscape with its dedicated security research team clearing away the “fog of war.”

That unprecedented research, contractual Service Level Agreements and transparency through its comprehensive “Glass House” portal are what sets Dell SecureWorks apart from others, Multz says.

“It’s the difference between being a VAR and taking responsibility and being proactive.”

According to analyst firm Forrester Research, companies are considering MSSPs in order to reduce capital investments, fill in gaps in headcount, increase value over time and keep up with ever-changing regulations and laws. Multiple layers of defense are also needed, for example, for end-point security. Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Services provides continuous protection for the workforce by defending against common viruses and threats while Dell SecureWorks delivers award-winning information security services that protect your IT systems and minimize the impact of cyber attacks within organiza-tions. Multz adds that many businesses would think nothing of ensuring 24x7 security for their bricks-and-mortar establishment.

“For every dollar spent on vaults and guards we should be spending at least that much on data secur-ity,” Multz says.

“Today you are more likely to be robbed through data.”

It’s the difference between being a VAR and taking responsibility and being proactive.

a d v e r t i S i n g f e a t u r e

Go here http://myi.tw/agwm to see how Dell helped

celebrity baker Warren brown overcome business challenges

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10 I September 2011 I ComputerWorld Canada ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca

S

Scott rutherford Director of Technology, 1-800-GOT- JUNK

Chris Moore Chief Information Officer, Office of the CIO, City of Edmonton

Mark CarboneChief Information Officer, Information Technology Services, Waterloo Region District School Board

Brett GagnonVice President, Information Technology, New Gold Inc.

John CharlesonDirector Supply Chain Manage-ment and Information Technol-ogy, Longo Brothers Fruit Market Inc.

ENTErPrISE ArCHITECTUrE: once regarded as IT-focused, enterprise architects are becoming integral to business strategy. we polled a handful of Canadian chief information officers on how they’re getting the right programs and people in place.

describe the main drivers for developing enterprise architec-ture – your goals and how you’ll measure them

Transparency, approval, accountability, and buy-in. We want to

ensure that the business is aware of the work being done on their

behalf, that they want it to be done, and that ultimately the product

delivered is what they asked for. Our enterprise architecture allows

us to deliver to the business quickly and iteratively.

The main driver is to make proper investment decisions that are

aligned with where the business is going. The funding in municipal

governments in Canada is getting tighter and tighter but I welcome

that because it can be a motivator to get things done. Cities are very

complex: it’s more than talking technology – it’s talking about the

operating model of the city. Then everyone can develop a shared

understanding of the organization about where we are going from all

levels: business, information, and analytics.

The shift is all about moving the classroom outside the four walls –

anytime, anywhere learning. So part of that is changing the teacher

culture and using more Web 2.0 tools and changing the environment

to accommodate mobile technology – those are the drivers. We’re in

the middle of building our architecture – there’s a classroom demand

for capacity and that’s really the impetus here.

The main driver was to bring different processes, cultures and

workflows together into one common infrastructure. Enterprise

architecture to us basically meant how we do everything: it’s not

just people, data, infrastructure or applications; it’s the processes

and procedures that we get behind. It’s about working correctly and

efficiently.

It basically comes down to understanding and documenting how

we’re laying things out and how we’re going to do this. One of the pre-

vious challenge is having undocumented procedures; one of the main

drivers for moving this forward is having something documented and

laid out so that people can refer to it in the future.

1 2What kind of work have you done to date on developing enterprise architecture in your organization?

Technology has led the company on several occasions in the

development and sustainment of processes for chang e; first by

establishing an “initiatives” process for transparent governance of

project initiation and justification; second by adopting a transpar-

ent and cross-functional “agile” process for adoption and delivery

of technical change.

For us enterprise architecture is a huge part of IT governance and

investment decisions. It’s also connected with our corporate IT

strategy. Previously, we hadn’t adopted an enterprise architecture

framework and we felt that it was really important to have that. But

we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. We have an open ecosystem

strategy – open source, open networks, open data/govern-

ment – and it is practical and simple. It’s not about implementing

enterprise architecture, it’s about having a new conversation with

the organization.

Our key focus has been developing an architecture that will support

the business of educating students. We have a large board with

approximately 121 sites and 63,000 students so we need a dynamic

enterprise architecture that can support learning processes and

an increased use of network and web resources and meet our busi-

ness demands are well.

New Gold is a new company – formed from four independent mining

companies into one company. As with any merger there is never any

direction with it comes to enterprise architecture and it was no differ-

ent here. We needed to start from the ground up. There was a great

many things that we needed to do to get to where we are today. We

had to build our organizational structure, review and adjust business

processes. We had to review data and applications and how it related

to our processes and what we were trying to get accomplished.

The last couple of years we’ve really been focused on our growth

as a business. From an IT perspective, we’re focusing on service-

oriented architectures and putting together a framework for how

we’re going to design our applications. Over the past year, we’ve

been mapping out business processes.

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Join our online discussion on what the most distinguished experts in the Canadian technology industry have to say on new ways of delivering IT innovation, managing IT investments and increasing ROI.

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ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca ComputerWorld Canada I September 2011 I 11

3 4 5When do you know when you’ve got an enterprise architec-ture that meets business needs?

We made some significant changes to how we approach busi-

ness. We need to be agile – we know we’re successful when we

make something that the business accepts and adopts quickly.

We want to ensure service interruption is at a minimum, revenue

opportunities are accessible and when employees are fully

engaged, productive, and energized.

From a high level, one success measure is when the business

is thinking about their technology needs, they are involving the

enterprise architects early in the process.

As learning moves to this anytime, anywhere mode, we’ve got

to be in an environment where we can support mobile devices –

laptops, netbooks, mobile devices. That’s a critical piece – in an

educational environment, internet connectivity just needs to be

there. It almost needs to be like hydro, it needs to be there and

need to support learning with minimal hassles.

It’s when the environment is flowing naturally and it’s almost

organic: people are using it for their day-to-day functions. People

can communicate and collaborate on the fly and they are putting

process and procedure within the architecture that we’ve built. And

we’re also able to look at core processes such as ERP systems and

know that we’re able to put one global ERP system in place because

everything else aligns – process management, change manage-

ment, a unified infrastructure and a common set of tools.

We’ve been working to build that framework and pull things

together. Success for us is going to be point where we can use

enterprise architecture as a framework for minimizing the amount

of discussion that has to happen and start to use it to lead up

decisions.

What are the opportunities and challenges about employing dedicated enterprise architects?

In an extremely lean, sales and marketing-driven environment,

dedicated resources of any kind are difficult to attain unless

directly dedicated to one of those two objectives. As the head of

technology, I can be found on any given day either planning enter-

prise architecture or fixing a buggy line of code on a website.

We made the decision when we started down this road that we had

to have dedicated resources. Over the past number of years we’ve

had more than 300 people in IT and over 23 job classifications.

That’s too many. Within these classifications we’ve had technology

architects, software architects. The role of people in technology

as changed a lot in the past 10 years so we’ve needed to elevate

it to the next level and see these people as dedicated enterprise

architects. We’ve done that recently and it’s a process that takes

time. You’ve got to have the right people to achieve our goals within

limited resources. It’s a question of priorities.

Capacity is a challenge and we’re actively monitoring our network –

we know how much data is moved per hour on our internet connec-

tion. Putting a strategic plan that will address those needs is really

critical. We have a great technical team that works on design and

security and they are open to looking at these kinds of challenges.

When you deal with mining companies, it’s sometimes difficult to

assess the actual size of your user base. Each part of the organiza-

tion sees itself as small but as a whole we’re quite large. We didn’t

employ a dedicated enterprise architect, but rather a jack-of-all-

trades that sometimes wore that hat. That challenge was to find

someone that could do a lot of the things that an enterprise archi-

tect would do but also tasks that were sometimes out of the scope.

We have 14 people total in the IT department and five developers

so our software development manager would be the lead. A lot of

the work we do in IT is around supporting the business and keeping

things running.

What’s the biggest challenge in building enterprise archi-tecture in your organization?

Our company’s decision to adopt a franchise model created chal-

lenges for us in the delivery, architecture, and sourcing of tech

solutions. There are additional levels of both service and complex-

ity not experienced in other traditional business models. Our per-

sonnel, strategies, reporting, and data must serve the needs not

only of end consumers and proximal office workers, but also our

180 franchise partners. These are businesses in their own right,

with their own systems and employees, for whom our architectures

can either enable success or hamper it.

As we’re implementing enterprise architecture, we’re also radically

changing our IT governance and also our corporate governance. So

it’s more than ‘IT with more rules’, we’re actually building a frame-

work to work in. To biggest challenge is helping people understand

that it’s about moving forward and more collaboration – and not

more rules. So we’ve developed a planning committee that involves

external people – CIO and thought leaders from other industries –

that’s essentially involves everyone in charting the future. It’s part

of our move to being open and transparent.

The biggest challenge for us as a school board is having enough

capacity to meet our needs as a large organization and to really

accommodate the wide variety of business needs certainly on the

administrative side. Student learning is also a core business and

that’s a dynamic and changing world right now. Teachers are using

more web and network resources in the way that they deliver their

programs – we have to have a dynamic infrastructure that will sup-

port those needs.

The overall concept of change is especially difficult, particularly

in the industry we’re in. People are very adverse to change; the

biggest challenge was the unwillingness to change their work

environment.

It’s about slowing down to move faster. Bringing in enterprise

architecture puts a wrapper around everything we’re trying to do.

In the long run, you’ll be moving faster but you have a documented

process so that we don’t need to revisit every time we need to do

something.

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Join our online discussion on what the most distinguished experts in the Canadian technology industry have to say on new ways of delivering IT innovation, managing IT investments and increasing ROI.

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ewsN

By Rafael Ruffolo

n FOr ONTArIO’S IT chief, the lack of Canadian-built data centres is the only thing standing in the way of increased provincial adoption of cloud services.

David Nicholl, corporate chief information officer at the Govern-ment of Ontario, said after build-ing its new Guelph, Ont.-based data centre earlier this year the province began testing a private cloud solution with a set of hosted Microsoft services. This includes hosted versions of Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Forefront Identity Manager, Windows 7 and Office 2010.

The ability to provision new e-mail accounts and desktops for the influx of seasonal workers or for other provincial service demand peaks helped drive the project, Nicholl said. But similar initiatives with hosted software have stalled because of the lack of homegrown hosting options.

“I’ve been a huge fan of salesforce.com for years and I’ve been pushing them to come to Canada,” he said, referring to his desire to adopt the service for provincial employees. But despite his best efforts, Nicholl sees little chance of the CRM vendor offering Canadian-based hosting options anytime soon.

“With their Chatter service, they’ve got one data centre in the U.S. and another one in Japan,” he said. “The chances of getting one in Canada is so slim.”

In wake of the Canadian government’s recent Shared Services plan, which calls for a huge consolidation in data centre and networking resources across departments, Nicholl hopes to fill this void by working even more closely with the federal govern-ment on service delivery.

The success of Bizpal, a service that works across all levels of government aimed at small

business owners, has laid out the blueprint to this type of partner-ship, he added.

“There’s an incredible op-portunity for us to share,” Nicholl

said. “Why not have a shared federal-provincial data centre in Ontario?”

“We’re all developing similar solutions for the same citizens.”

Gail Beggs, deputy minister of the environment, was also in attendance at this year’s Show-case Ontario event, calling on provincial IT leaders to do more

work across departments and levels of governments.

“Let’s take advantage of the data that we’ve already collected,” she said, referring also to open government initiatives.

In addition to working with the federal government, Nicholl is also trying to devise a way to work more closely with local vendors and emerging Canadian startups.

“I’m really looking forward to spending a lot more time looking at smaller, innovative software companies and see how we can use them, especially here in Toronto,” he said.

Nicholl recently talked with HR management software star-tup Rypple and was impressed with how the firm integrated real-time performance manage-ment and social collaboration into its hosted service.

“The HR space has probably been the least innovative area for IT, but these guys have done a great job,” he said.

Nicholl hopes the province can eventually overcome its risk aver-sion and find ways to work with small, homegrown talent.

Ontario CIO wants to team with feds on data centres

echoworx extends e-mail device encryption to ipad, iphoneBy Kathleen Lau

n MANAGEd ENCrYPTION services provider echoworx has extended its mobile e-mail encryp-tion technology to apple devices, a move driven by the bring your own device (byoD) to work trend that sees IT departments increasingly having to deal with non-corporate-issued devices.

robbie Gulri, vice-president of products with the Toronto-based vendor, said that while IT depart-ments find device management solutions a necessary part of dealing with this trend, it’s not the complete answer.

“There is a lot of proprietary information sitting around on these devices, especially as it relates to e-mail and messaging,” said Gulri.

besides echoworx’s mobileen-crypt endpoint product now sup-porting ipads and iphones, about a month ago the company released a version for blackberry devices. Gulri anticipates there will be an offering for android devices as well.

There’s also the ability to centrally manage devices by the IT department, including user provi-sioning and dealing with misplaced or stolen devices. “If something happens to the device … I can, from an IT perspective, simply just shut down the device,” said Gulri.

a recent survey on mobile secur-ity conducted by Telus Corp. and rotman School of management found that the No. 1 concern across almost all respondents was the fear of losing a mobile device containing corporate data.

moreover, the survey reported that for more than half of respond-ents (47 per cent), their companies’ technology usage included a mobile component that was merely added on. more than a quarter (28 per cent) had an IT policy that didn’t even address mobile device usage.

michelle warren, analyst and principal of Toronto-based mw research & Consulting, said ioS devices are also on the radar for hackers as the number of security threats will increase in relation to the number of devices that users are bringing to the business arena.

“apple users might claim that their devices are impenetrable, but nothing is impenetrable,” said warren. “and, if corporate data is the goal, and an ioS device is the way in, a way will be found.”

Is your car safe from hackers?By JD Speedy

n SANTA ClArA, CAlIF.-BASEd McAfee Inc. recently released a report on the automotive industry called “Caution: Malware ahead.” While the report didn’t specific-ally name any incidents that have stemmed from hackers taking control over any aspect of cars, it did suggest that this is a very real possibility, particularly because of how much technology is in cars now, and how much will be in them in the future.

Tim Fulkerson, director of product pricing strategy for McAfee, said “we’re starting to see various university research-type of work that demonstrates that these threats are very possible and even indications that various technologies are, in fact, being used to create various exploits.”

He added that he doesn’t think this is reason to panic, yet. He did say, however, that it’s something to be aware of as “car manufac-

turers aren’t in the business of securing cell phone technology hacks or Bluetooth technology hacks.” He also pointed to recent U.S. legislation that mandates RFID sensors be added to tires to track air pressure.

Dennis DesRosiers, president of Richmond Hill, Ont.-based Des-Rosiers Automotive Consultants Inc., agrees that, while current cars aren’t without risk to attack, automotive manufacturers have taken into consideration the risks of adding more tech to cars.

“Vehicles have also, for decades now, become very electronic. Everything is monitored electron-ically, everything is run electron-ically. The average vehicle today is more sophisticated than the lunar lander was,” he said. “The features in a vehicle today have provided incredible capability for consumers. At the same point, (every capability) opens up a vulnerability somewhere else.”

Fulkerson said that “probably, on average, 10 million lines of code are in cars these days,” which may not be something the average consumer considers.

“(A recent car buyer might say,) ‘Gee whiz, I just bought a vehicle, I’m just driving back and forth to work.’ No, you’re driving a computer. It happens to have four wheels instead of a box that sits under your desk but you’re driv-ing a very sophisticated electronic device,” DesRosiers said.

What that implies, DesRosiers said, is that while the vulernabil-ities to cars are not quantifiable right now, the fact that we rely on computers for so many of the functions we take for granted — like power-steering and anti-lock brakes — if someone were able to disable any of these features, the results could be disastrous.

“All of the electronics that have addressed safety issues have not really meant much improvement

in the overall safety of the vehicle. It’s obviously helped, but what’s happened is that consumers have lowered their driving capability to match the amount of safety in the vehicle,” DesRosiers said.

For a real-life example, both DesRosiers and Fulkerson recalled the story of a Detroit car dealership that outfitted its fleet with remote kill switches.

“If people didn’t make pay-ments on those leased vehicles the auto dealership could activate the kill switch and deactivate the car,” Fulkerson said.

“It all ended up in court because they were disabling vehicles as they were going down expressways,” DesRosiers said. “How do you know that when you disable something, it’s in a safe position?”

He thinks that the mentality of consumers will have to change in reaction to the amount of technology in cars.

Why not have a shared frderal-

provincial data centre in ontario? We’re all developing similar solutions for the same citizens

— DavID NICHoll

12 I September 2011 I ComputerWorld Canada

ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca ComputerWorld Canada I September 2011 I 13

VM WORLD

cloud security starts on the ground, not in the sky

VMware prepares for the post-PC world

By Jeff Jedras

n lAS VEGAS – The major secur-ity vendors had a strong presence at VMworld 2011, VMware Inc.’s annual user conference. And it wasn’t surprising, given that security remains a top-of-mind concern for many enterprises considering embracing cloud computing.

In its 2011 State of Secur-ity survey released this week, Symantec Corp. reported that virtualization has joined mobile computing and social media as the top three trends driving security challenges in Canada, according to respondent organizations. And the budget is following. The highest growth area in Canadian IT security budgets is security for private cloud initiatives with 38 per cent increasing their spend, and public cloud not far behind at 34 per cent.

On the staffing side, 42 per cent of organizations were adding staff to handle cloud security concerns.

Sean Doherty, vice-president

and security group CTO with Symantec, said the most common security concern customers have about cloud computing is that, by giving data to a third party, the data is out of sight. They fear loss of control.

“We have requests for support around encryption and key management, and we also see requests to be able to provide visibility into the compliance of the cloud service provider to certain standards,” said Doherty.

While computing models have shifted over the years, virtualiza-tion isn’t a new phenomenon, said Doherty, and the responsibility for security hasn’t shifted. It still lies with the IT organization, and Symantec’s role is to make sure it has the tools it needs to manage virtual, cloud and physical en-vironments by providing visibility and tools to remediate issues.

“Most of our customers have a mixture of physical and virtual environments, and we need to create solutions that address both,” said Doherty. “We work

By Jeff Jedras

n lAS VEGAS – with more than 50 per cent of total workloads now virtu-alized and a new virtual machine born every six seconds, vmware Inc. Ceo paul maritz told attendees at vmworld 2011 that the post-pC era is on the way, and with it will come profound changes for IT management.

maritz said the change is being driven by the collision of traditional enterprise IT with the growing IT consumerization trend, where users increasingly want the flexibility to work how they want on the device of their choice. It will bring changes in devices, with smart phones and tablets joining traditional pCs as endpoints where business is done. and it will mean major changes for application development and backend systems, as traditional relational databases can’t handle the scale of application development and delivery necessary to serve users that will demand real-time analytics.

with cloud computing at its core, maritz sees three major challenges for IT coming from these trends.

“The first is how do we make it fundamentally more efficient to be able to run that subset of the client server-era apps we can’t leave behind and need to keep going for some time, but need to do more efficiently to focus our effort on new and renewed apps,” said maritz.

The second is to serve the demand for real-time information to drive busi-ness decisions. “This can’t be done by putting more lipstick on our existing applications,” said maritz.

and third, users expect to be able to choose the device they’ll consume these applications on.

“IT can’t control the device, that will be driven by the consumer world,” said maritz. “IT needs to deliver ap-plications and service independent of the device.” It’s what vmware is calling the “post-pC” era, and it’s driv-ing many of the product releases and announcements the vendor made at vmworld. vmware CTo Steve Herrod said a key focus is simplifying man-agement for IT; they need to manage people, he said, not devices.

It’s a vision that’s finding reson-

ance with mcmaster University in Hamilton. The university completed a major vmware deployment 18 months ago and michael Curwin, manager of information & technology services for the faculty of engineering, said they’ve committed to no longer de-ploying traditional desktop computers on campus.

“right now it’s a transitional phase in terms of desktops still being available. but now you can deliver the virtual desktop to a traditional machine, and you also have the op-tion of delivering it to an ipad, or any kind of mobile device that the user chooses as their delivery source,” said Curwin. “I do believe strongly that you’re going to see the end of desktops very shortly, and we’re making a commitment to no longer deploy desktop machines. They just don’t make sense financially for us.” among the new offerings helping drive this vision forward is vmware view 5, the vendor’s desktop virtualization and management tool, with promised improvements to bandwidth, support for 3D graphics, unified communica-

tions integration and virtual desktop personalization.

vmware Horizon has also been updated to extend its identity, policy and entitlement engine to virtualized windows applications and connected mobile workspaces, with a tool for application management and delivery and another to deploy a user’s personal virtualized applications to an android-based device.

while vmware is working to make the endpoint less of a concern for IT by making it easier to serve a virtualized experience to any device, and the trad-

itional pC may soon be in the minority of Internet-connected devices, the end-point is far from irrelevant, said michelle warren, principal analyst with mw research & Consulting in Toronto. “The end devices are even more relevant today. The ipad changed the market but tablets have been around for years, and we’ve had pen-based computing even longer. The change has been in the way we use them,” said warren. “If the end device didn’t matter, we’d all have the same thing using it in the same way. and IT will still be expected to support our hardware, no matter what.”

with VMware and other hyper-visor vendors to ensure they sup-port functions that will increase our ability to deliver security.”

Service level agreements (SLAs) are another concern organizations have with moving to a cloud security vendor, said Tom Moss, director of products and services at Trend Micro Inc., as most of the SLAs they offer fall short of the major compliance regulatory requirements major enterprises must meet.

“Most cloud providers are focused on performance issues and data availability, and they’re trying to address the widest possible architecture with the environment they have, so it’s not really appropriate to build security controls around each customer,” said Moss.

That puts the responsibility for security back, again, on the organization. Moss said Trend Micro’s focus is on host-level encapsulation, so that applications and data hosted in the cloud have all the necessary security controls

built-in before they’re deployed into the hosted environment. The Deep Security offerings encrypt data before it goes to the cloud, and include monitoring and audit tools to detect and prevent unauthorized access. Secure Cloud allows customers to keep their same policy-based encryption as if the data was in their data centre.

“Organizations can continue to enforce policy if the machine is physical, virtual or in the cloud,” said Moss. “We’re trying to educate people about the limits of what cloud providers can offer and where they need to augment workloads pushed to the cloud with their own security controls.”

The hybrid cloud model VMware is advocating also helps address some of these security issues, said Symantec’s Doherty. Organizations can choose what data can go to the cloud, even temporarily on a flex basis, and what must stay in the data centre.

“This is why I think we’ll see VMware very active pushing-out a network of not just global

big-name hosting providers, but also people with local coverage, so a company in Germany can choose a German data centre to flex into,” said Doherty.

It’s a matter of risk management and education, said Warren Shiau, director of technology research with Leger Marketing, and the fact that the hybrid model is where organizations want to go instead of the full public cloud shows they’re concerned about security.

“I don’t think the concerns with public cloud have been addressed, and some of them probably won’t go away because there are just times when a company needs that data in house, and it can’t go into someone else’s hands,” said Shiau.

Security is a big topic and it’s become clear it will take multiple approaches to get it right, said VMware president Paul Maritz. The vendor is working closely with its partners to do that, but Maritz said the other key to the security puzzle will be building a track-record of performance over time.

N

14 I September 2011 I ComputerWorld Canada ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca

: lettersre: don’t be a superhero, Cw, aug. 22

I’ve never seen anyone’s mes-sage boards as filled with furious posts as those of Xandros, with far more long-term users stating they’re going to another distribu-tion (mostly pClinuxoS or Ubuntu) than are saying they’re staying. If I were a Xandros user, I’d be heading for another distribution as fast as possible.

Xandros management are all ap-parently new (and apparently new to open Source). I can’t believe that they did not actually comprehend the firestorm they would be placing their company in, especially with Novell as an object lesson. even if the company is still around in 12 months, it is very likely to be a very slimmed-down organization, with sales just a ghost of what they were before.

as far as the free Software foun-dation goes, I think this will serve as an incentive, rather than a disincen-tive, for developers to move their code to Gplv3. This may also force microsoft to actually engage open Source in challenging the legality of the GNU public licence. yet another company deals with microsoft and pays the price. Gary Layng

OPINIONS AND COMMENTARyorldviewW

: the thread

By Dave Webbeditor, ComputerWorld Canada dwebb@itworldcanada.com

: blogosphere

OPINIONS AND COMMENTARyorldviewW

industry-watchers divided on googorola’s impactn GOOGlE INC.’S $12.5-BIllION purchase of handset maker Motorola Mobility Inc. caught many industry-watchers by surprise, and divided them over what impact the biggest mobile acquisition ever would have on the smart phone market.

one thing they’re almost unani-mous on, though: this buy is about patents, not hardware.

founder larry paGe himself chimed in on the Google offical blog, recalling patent-based legal woes and “anti-competitive threats” from microsoft Corp. and apple Inc.

“our acquisition of motorola will in-

crease competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will better enable us to protect android from anti-competitive attacks from microsoft, apple and other compan-ies,” he wrote.

om malIk, on Gigaom, cites a source that said Google wasn’t the only one at motorola’s table, and the company didn’t have much choice but to eat. microsoft was also sniffing around, recent deal with Nokia Corp. notwithstanding.

“microsoft was interested in acquiring motorola’s patent portfolio that would have allowed it to torpedo android even further,” he wrote. “The

possibility of that deal brought Google to the neghotiation table, resulting in the blockbuster sale.”

we are talking here about 24,500 patents and patents pending, after all, and Google like still has a sour taste in its mouth after apple, microsoft and waterloo, ont.-based research in mo-tion ltd. snatched up Nortel Networks Corp.’s patent portfolio in a recent auction, wrote aDam Clark eSTeS on the atlantic wire.

“last month, a consortium of companies including apple, microsoft and research in motion beat Google in an auction and purchased Nortel’s portfolio of 6,000 patents for $4.5 bil-lion,” he wrote. “with 24,000 patents, motorola mobility’s portfolio dwarfs that of Nortel’s, and the $12.5-billion all-cash price tag makes it seem like Google got a deal by comparison.”

There’s less unanimity about whether Google actually wants to be a hardware maker (I’m guessing no) and what the buy does to the wireless competitive landscape.

“of all the bad news hitting windows phone lately, (this acquisi-

tion) may be the worst,” blogged preSToN Gralla on Computerworld U.S.’s Seeing Through windows blog. microsoft was looking for help from motorola to salvage its struggling smart phone operating system, fear-ing the partnership with Nokia would not be enough to do it single-handed-ly, he wrote. “The chances of motorola making windows phone 7 devices just plummeted, if not vanished. and even if motorola ever did manufacture a windows phone 7 device, fearing an anti-trust look from the feds if it didn’t, it wouldn’t pour any significant resources into the device or market-ing it.”

and the announcement had NewSySToCkS.Com pondering aloud rIm’s future. “(analysts say that) with Google’s cash and software expertise, motorola mobility may present a direct challenge to rIm in the corpor-ate market, the latter’s traditional stronghold,” according to the blog. “They state that this challenge may force rImm to strike an alliance with another company or sell itself to remain competitive.”

RIP webOS: the ComputerWorld Canada view

By Dave Webb

n I’M rEAdING IN STUNNEd dis-belief that Hewlett-Packard Co. will “discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones.”

I’ve never been shy about my fondness for webOS, from the

first iteration of the Palm Pre, nor about my disappointment in the poor marketing support it received under the Palm badge and the molasses-slow development after the HP takeover two years ago. As an operating system, webOS is far

more intuitive than Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBery OS, offers far more business integra-tion and functionality than Apple Inc.’s iOS, and compares favourably with Windows Phone 7 as a hybrid personal/business platform.

According to the press release quoted above (which also describes a plan to sell or spin off HP’s Personal Systems Group), HP says it “will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS going forward.” I can only read that as, “we’re going to sell it if we can, but we doubt it.”

Combined with Google Inc.’s recent Motorola Mobile purchase, there’s been a significant impact on the mobile landscape in recent days. A first-glance analysis:

* One more alternative to Apple’s One True Tablet® is eliminated. But it’s not that those likely to be buying webOS devices would be evaluating head-to-head against the iPad.

* Google has solidified An-droid’s position regarding patent challenges. Motorola’s hardware business will likely be spun off or killed, as much to appease Google’s Android partners, who are probably quietly seething over the purchase, as to reflect Google lack of interest in the hardware market. The webOS news is likely better for Android than for iOS,

though webOS was more of a potential threat than a clear and present danger, given the small but growing market footprint.

* RIM probably is the company treating the webOS news with the most glee, given that webOS devices were aimed squarely at RIM’s enterprise wheelhouse, and it also leaves one less platform to fight for a critical mass of developers. I don’t believe the Google-Motorola tie-up is a huge threat to RIM; at least, it’s no more of a threat than Android was before.

* I’d call Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone 7 OS the clear winner here, fighting for share in the enterprise/personal hybrid market, but there have been noises that Microsoft’s going to go the Windows 8 route with future tablets, a move I can’t get behind for two reasons: A) The last aborted wave of tablets five years ago demonstrated that desktop OSs won’t fly on a tablet form factor, because they’re aesthetic-ally phones, not laptops, and 2) Microsoft finally got mobile right with Phone 7, and it’s a shame to lose the operating system that, now anyway, best combines intui-tiveness with business utility.

On a related note, Beta is still dead. Mind you, so’s VHS now, but wrapping my head around what that lesson means is something for another day.

Re: rIM SHOUld GO All-IN ON ANdrOId, SHUT dOWN APP WOrldby rafael ruffoloDaily IT Wire, Aug. 26

That’s just crazy. Get rid of the blackberry app store? rIm might as well give out its bbm to all its competitors for free! That doesn’t even make sense. Take a deep breath and realize there is more than apple and android. both apple and android are toys meant for consumers who don’t care or realize the security in those devices are worthless. I would NoT trust using apple or android devices to access my banking information. look what happened at the DefCon Hackers conference. lots of people had their phones hacked just by walking into the building. There was nothing they could do about it. as far as I’m aware the only device that could not be hacked was the blackberry, and even if it could be hacked all the data is encrypted! oh, by the way, you think their devices are lacklustre hardware? Have you picked up the latest blackberry devices? There is room in the smart phone and tablet sector for a secure device. It would fit just nicely on a shelf above the apple and android toys.

> Steve

an enterprise should not allow unlimited access to any applica-tion market. for limited access android is actually better suited. for example, enterprises could dis-able installation of any application that requests access to contacts, user credentials, sms/mms or other sensitive information and function-ality. This is much more secure than trusting the blackbox app Store approval process without any kind of proof or audit.

> 2cent

No! rIm’s strength is in the security of its platform. android, not so much. There have already been several mass purges of malware-infested apps from android’s app stores. How can an enterprise trust a platform that doesn’t check apps before offering them to users? blackberry may be considered dull by those who value glitz above all, but it keeps our data safe.

> Lynn

ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca ComputerWorld Canada I September 2011 I 15

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n rESEArCH IN MOTION lTd. has taken a lot of heat from press and investors recently, so the latest reports out of Waterloo, Ont., deserves some applause. But, I’ll need to know more before the company gets a standing ovation.

The cause for optimism is a new bloomberg News report which cites three people familiar with rIm’s plan to make its next generation QNX phones completely android-compat-ible. rIm has said the new phones should be on the market in early 2012.

The move has the potential to be a great one for rIm, which has two ma-jor problems that it needs to fix — its poor selection of apps and lacklustre hardware design.

but despite the strong speculation of an android-compatible blackberry device, I am still a little concerned.

If android compatibility means that rIm will simply let developers upload android apps exclusively onto rIm’s app world site, I don’t see the point. plus, android developers will not be happy repackaging their apps for rIm’s app store.

rIm needs to embrace itself as a superior messaging and communica-tion handset. That should be its only concern. keep blackberry messen-ger and the rIm network as the key differentiator for the brand and fully embrace the android market.

The speculation earlier this year that rIm would open up bbm to android and ioS users was absolute crazy talk. enterprise users and bbm fanatics are the lifeblood of the company. To pull in a portion of those consumers moving toward Samsung, HTC and lG, rIm will have to fully embrace android market as its app platform.

To me, that also means shutting down its app store entirely.

The news will also be met positively from many enterprise IT departments moving away from “blackberry-only” and opening up their environment to android and apple devices. It will allow businesses to narrow its app development to only two platforms.

Unless the QNX oS is completely revolutionary and garners huge inter-est from developers, this is the only play to keep rIm strong.

n SO I’M SITTING in the office of a Canadian CIO having a discussion, throughout which he is taking notes on his Apple iPad. I notice, however, he has a RIM BlackBerry PlayBook on the table behind him. I have to raise the question.

“I like this. It does the job,” he says of the iPad. He picks up the PlayBook. “This I’ve just played with and haven’t really touched in months. What does that tell you right there?” The problem comes down to the difficulty to really type on the PlayBook, and more importantly, the wealth of iPad apps versus what’s available on RIM’s store.

“But this is the bigger problem,” he says, putting his BlackBerry on top of both his iPad and his

notebook. “What am I supposed to do about all this?”

Indeed. It’s amazing in such an innovative industry that this basic problem never really goes away. We talk about device consolidation, but no one is really

doing it. We’re adding different devices for different use case scenarios and trying, where possible, to use one device for a couple of things – always with a usability tradeoff of some kind. And despite the occasional OEM attempt at a convertible or all-in-one machine, it’s never really happened.

I think part of the problem could be a failure to think more freely about what such a device might look like. We picture a tablet that looks kind of like a glorified phone (the PlayBook) or a notebook that converts into a tablet, which included many of the early tablet designs. Perhaps we’re all restricting ourselves to these compromised visions because of the difficulties we

imagine around engineering, but the most innovative products are never conceived that way. Innovation is about imagining what people would really like, and then figuring out a way to do it. So what would real device consolidation look like?

This isn’t really a hard question to answer. It would be a device that could not only be used like a phone, laptop or tablet, but would actually look like one depending on the use case scenario. Something that would become large and display-oriented if you needed a sleek tablet, but could be folded up into a handset if all you needed were a phone. Or something that could be extended into a keyboard/display if a laptop made more sense. An amorphous, shape-shifting chameleon that could be converted as easily as folding out a newspaper.

Can’t be done, you say? I’m not so sure. It might be made out of a bendable, stretchable rubber rather than metal or plastic, with

a tiny core computer/phone based on the more microscopic circuitry that will likely be developed in less than 10 years. Surface technologies on the market today are already far more flexible than ever before, and miniaturisation is the most likely next step. This is the kind of idea Xerox’s R&D Centres have played with for years, as have Intel, IBM and others.

Right now such a device smacks of science fiction, but so would the iPad and PlayBook 15 years ago. The job of vendors, IT departments and others in the industry is to recognize what people really want rather than pretend the problem doesn’t exist or will go away. What people want is a single device that will look and perform as they need at the time, and not to carry around multiple devices. A teletabtop, in other words. First out of the gate will redefine the personal computing market.

Any takers?

: computerworld by shane schickSchick is the editor-in-chief

of IT World Canada. sschick@itworldcanada.com

device convergence in an era of tablets, notebooks and phones

: mobile watchby rafael ruffolo

Senior Writer, ComputerWorld Canada rruffolo@itworldcanada.com

rIM should go all-in on Android, shut down App WorldHow software consolidation

might dictate your next smart phone purchasen IN rESPONSE TO THE Google-motorola buyout, there is speculation that microsoft will retaliate with a purchase of its own. The likely choice is perhaps HTC or Nokia. Since striking a partnership with Nokia for windows phone 7, this may be a simpler move for acquisition. Does this mean that software (oS) providers will dictate the hardware for your smart phone ?

If motorola becomes the Google phone, Google will be one of the companies that has an operating system and its own hardware, competing with apple and rIm. Does this mean if android is deployed on motorola hardware, Google will pull android off the market mak-ing it no longer open source? If so, then will other hardware suppliers who have hitched to the android wagon, namely HTC and Samsung, be stopped from using android on their devices? If HTC and Samsung can no longer use android, which oS will they then choose to put

on their hardware devices? If hardware manufacturers have to select which oS is on their device, could this possibly limit adoption if android becomes no longer available?

This has further implications, especially in the tablet market. Samsung, HTC, Hp and Dell, all major players in the tablet market, use android. will they be forced to choose another oS if android becomes unavail-able? looks like rIm could end up being the big winner, as their rendering of web pages gives a true rendition of the site for your mobile device.

another key component here is the enterprise play. motorola already owns Symbol Technolo-gies, a leading provider of hand-held radio frequency manage-ment in the enterprise space.

will the android influence on motorola devices seep into the enterprise? If so, will function-ality be more convenient for enterprises? and will this have an effect on other handheld hardware players such as psion, Intermec and pSC? This could possibly change the hardware handheld market entirely.

In our estimation, Google can put android onto its motorola hardware and continue to keep android open. for them to close android and make it proprietary would be a mistake, as there are other hardware providers that have invested heavily in the android project. It would make sense for Google to use motorola as its hardware and continue to keep android in its open-source nature. If hardware is now limited to the oS, will consumers have more or less choice – we think it may be the latter.

Google has a lot to think about as to their strategy with motorola. It should be interesting to see how this all plays out.

:insightby dylan persaud Dylan persaud is the managing

director of consulting firm evalSource

16 I September 2011 I ComputerWorld Canada ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca

IT businessSTRATEGIES TO IMPROVE OPERATIONS, MANAGE COMPLEXITy AND REDUCE COSTS

FIVE ESSEntIalS FOR MOBIlE aPP dEVElOPMEntWhile nailing down the features of a successful app might be difficult, developers agree on some key themes about building them

By J. D. Speedy

ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca ComputerWorld Canada I September 2011 I 17

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So your business needs an app. It’s probably taken a lot of deliberation to get to this point but the

reality has sunk in. Now the plan-ning starts. Whether it’s to serve a real customer need or create one, building an app can be a har-rowing task. Commissioning one, however, can be just as brutal.

The mobile application land-scape seems to ebb and flow with the tides and it can be hard to tell exactly what characteristics make for a successful app.

Various features have been trumpeted since smart phones and tablets began their domina-tion of the gadget landscape, but after polling a handful of local developers, there seems to be a few key themes.

PLan With youR BuDget anD auDience in minDJosh Sookman, CEO of Toronto-based Guardly Corp., thinks that a lot of budget is wasted before any code is even written. “First, look at, ‘what’s the underlying budget?’ and always make sure to balance performance and the breadth of availability,” he said.

There’s no point getting elbow-deep in development only to find that you’ve missed your key demographic. Performance for your app, whatever its use, must be taken into as much considera-tion as how many people you need to reach, and how many platforms they use. Otherwise, your budget will be quickly spread thin maintaining multiple sets of code.

Ed Van Beilen, principal at Toronto-based New Toronto Group, designers of mobile apps for RIM, the Weather Network and Chrysler LLC, said that while previously he got only requests for native apps, “more typically we’re seeing more of the ‘we want to cover all our bases’ sort of approach.” He said that the advent of HTML5 and Mountain View Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc.’s AIR Runtime has given businesses far more depth of features while requiring only one set of code.

Both AIR Runtime, a packaged version of Adobe’s Flash environ-ment, and HTML5, a new Web standard for coding, can run on multiple devices with a lot less coding budget.

“The advantage there is you

can write your code basically once and run it on all these different platforms. The slight disadvantage might be perhaps in performance,” Van Beilen said.

While it may seem to be desirable to code on more flexible platforms, there are pitfalls.

Sookman warns that “native apps typically deliver a much more elegant, easy-to-use and snappy, response-based interface. It also allows you to customize a lot of the look and feel of the device itself,” whereas designing for so many different platforms at once can neglect the standard buttons and features users expect.

Location-BaSeD SeRviceSNoel Webb, vice-president of Toronto-based SpeakFeel Corp., developers of apps for HomeSense, SVEDKA Vodka and Royal LePage, said integration of location-based services is next on his list as a must-have feature.

Webb said they “are hugely requested right now.” In particu-lar, SpeakFeel is getting a lot of requests to make daily deal apps, similar to Groupon, that inte-grate automatic location checks to personalize content and ensure coupons will work where you are.

Sookman calls the location phenomena “one of those game-changers (that) mobile really opens that up. Certainly, we’ve seen a lot of innovation around location and how we can use that for certain things, whether that’s games between friends, location-based coupons, or figuring out when you want to pickup grocer-ies nearby.” He said the tools for location services are constantly evolving. GPS services are being bundled into nearly all phones, and that not only profoundly affected the development of Guardly, but, in fact, allowed it to be created.

gameificationWebb also said “gameification” could be the next big app trend. “Some of the bigger (apps)

that are coming out, and more specifically, what a lot of people are beginning to look (for to) integrate into their apps, is this whole idea of ‘gameification,’” he said. “(For example,) Foursqaure gameifies the idea of checking in somewhere.”

Instead of merely offering up content in a portable form, or framing a mobile experience of a Web site in an app, many app makers are being tasked to gameify content by tying in an unlock and achievement system to app content.

Webb said it can be something as simple as giving rewards, or badges, to prompt stickiness in app use, and as complex as integrating a meta-game within the app that can be played on its own and actually spurs users to discover more services or products they didn’t know about.

exPanDaBiLity on muLtiPLe PLatfoRmS

Ideally, every business could afford the time and budget it requires to commission and maintain native apps for every platform. But, much like the first point, designing to your budget, often being able to expand to multiple platforms from the get-go is a more holistic, and realistic, approach.

Van Beilen said that “as much as creating native applications is the most efficient way to program, in terms of using the least amount of memory and getting the best performance per device, the limitation there is you end up having to potentially write three or four versions of the same program for those different platforms. The upside (is) raw performance.”

He also said that, while it seems great having three sets of code, you’re not done there. You also have to budget the mainten-ance and updating of those differ-ent code sets, so that none of your apps are ever left in disrepair or with outdated content.

Webb suggests a hybrid approach if you can’t pin down

your audience to just one OS. “The idea of doing a cross-collateralization with an iPhone app and an HTML5 Web app, that is something that’s becoming increasingly asked for to be able to reach the largest user base and demographic that you can possibly get,” he said.

In fact, even the makers of Guardly, who painstakingly, and at great expense, coded native versions of the app for nearly every device, often question the need for native apps at all. “If I were making recommenda-tions, and I have to many other companies, more and more I’ve found myself saying, ‘why are you building native? It doesn’t make any sense,’” Sookman said. “If you don’t need access to rich APIs, (or) a lot of the core-data APIs that some of the native clients give you, then don’t waste your time with it. It’s not necessary.”

eaSe of uSeThis should be obvious, but it’s the mantra for every app developer. User experience is paramount. Even if you’re build-ing your app on the slimmest budget and expected to hit every single device on the market, you cannot neglect the users or they will neglect your app.

Manish Jetly, CEO of Toronto-based dotH Inc., said that every programmer, and anyone who pays those programmers, should be aware of any and all environ-ments the app will be consumed within. Each OS and handheld has its own set of buttons for specific actions, or assumed rules for navigation.

Building these user experience (UX) traits into the interface of an app can be the difference between making a painful, yet useful app, or one that even “laymen can easily use.”

Sookman agrees that, for instance, “iPhone users are used to a certain UX, whereas Win-dows Phone users would be used to a metro-style experience, and sometimes building (one app) for every platform doesn’t deliver that type of experience that users on the platform who use other apps and the OS would expect.”

It can be tricky to balance that, but each developer was clear; no number of features can supersede good user experience and user interface design.

What’s next in mobile app development?IT’S All FINE ANd dANdY to know what to look for when you’re mak-ing the app you need today, but it’s also worth keeping in mind what’s on the horizon.

for most companies, this is just a chance to drool a little at features that aren’t widespread, but for others, this could be where your next develop-ment dollars will be spent.

neaR fieLD communication (nfc)while NfC has gone by a few different names (such as rfID) and bears slight resemblance to the functionality of bluetooth, NfC is a form of incredibly quick wireless communication with a very small range.

Noel webb of Speakfeel said that it allows you to “technologically, swipe your phone near a location and it (can do anything from) give you a mobile web site all the way to making a pay-ment for a particular item.”

This is the same technology that will eventually allow you to pay for your grocery store purchases by swip-ing your cell phone, which is then tied to your credit card.

augmenteD ReaLity (aR)augmented reality has already started popping up in small test cases but mostly relegated to one-off advertising campaigns and gaming. recently, Japan-based Nintendo Co. ltd.’s Nintendo 3DS handheld gaming platform showed off a form of ar that allowed gamers to point the 3DS camera at specially designed cards which spawned a monster viewable only through the camera on the device.

“If you have an augmented reality layer in your application, you (could) put your phone up to (an) advertise-ment, and when you put your camera up to it you would see an image of a brand new handbag or brand new car that you could interact with in three dimensions.”

He also dismissed the connection between ar and Qr codes.

“It’s way more advanced than Qr integration,” he said.

“you can do an augmented reality layer (and) have it directly interact with a specific image or a specific location. So, your ar can be tied to a GpS point or (even a) geolocation.”

make sure to balance performance and breadtH of aVailability – JoSH SookmaN

By Kathleen Lau

n OrGANIzATIONS WANTING to hire graduates trained in business analytics and predictive modeling can look to Canada’s first graduate certificate program in this area, resulting from a collaboration between Centennial College and business intelligence technology vendor SAS Canada.

The program, starting in September, was developed in response to an “exploding” ana-lytics industry, said Centennial College professor Victor Sousa. While individual courses already exist across various colleges and universities, a 13-course curricu-lum spanning two semesters has never before been offered.

“That’s the big difference,” said Sousa.

The program is designed for those who already have an undergraduate university degree or college diploma. The target student varies: those wanting to develop a specific skill; those who have been out of the workforce for a while and want to brush up on existing skills; or, those who

are new immigrants who want to make themselves more market-able in Canada.

The niche program responds to the trend that sees large

organizations relying on business analytics and predictive modeling techniques to make sound busi-ness decisions, said Sousa.

The curriculum includes courses such as database mining and analytics to help organ-izations mine and report on, for instance, point-of-sale data. Another course in advanced mar-keting research teaches concepts in statistics using software but without a heavy math focus. And, another is an industry research project.

“The new program is not just reporting on data, but rather to report and predict and do analytics. So we went a step beyond,” said Sousa.

Building upon an ongoing relationship with Centennial Col-lege, SAS Canada is providing the analytics software for free along with training for instructors. The two parties have also collabor-ated on the curriculum.

Cameron Dow, vice-president of marketing for SAS Canada in Toronto, said the market demand for business analytics continues to grow rapidly. In fact, a recent survey by SAS shows 84 per cent of Canadian businesses view analytics as critical to making decisions, but the number one barrier is lack of analytical talent.

“The good news is there are jobs for them out there in the market space,” said Dow.

SAS Canada is working with other academic institutions to offer similar business analytics programs but with “different flavours” to address the multiple areas within an organization

18 I September 2011 I ComputerWorld Canada ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca

anagement & careersM

5 surprising It skills that hiring managers want nowBy ann Bednarz

n EVEr WONdEr WHICH up-and-coming tech skills are catching the attention of IT hiring managers? Careers site Dice.com keeps track of the most popular terms that employers search for, and it also notes when emerging skills start appearing in keyword searches with greater frequency.

New trends often show up first in resume database searches, since 80 per cent of employers search resumes before posting their jobs, says Alice Hill, manag-ing director of Dice.com. “It gives us a glimpse of some of the trends that are coming up.”

Most recently, Dice.com identified five up-and-coming skills based on searches of the Dice resume database. Topping the list is iRise, which makes a

simulation platform that allows companies to test-drive business software before getting too far into the development process.

Next is an old-school term: COTS, or commercial off-the-shelf software. If job-seekers have developed software for a com-mercial software maker, it might not occur to them to include the term “COTS” on their resumes, but that’s one of the top search terms on Dice.com.

Rounding out the top five emerging search terms are Crystal SDK, PeopleSoft Security and NetApp.

Interestingly, iRise also made the list of most popular search terms overall, an indication that it’s emerging at a fast and furious clip. Dice.com’s most popular search terms overall, ranked from 1 to 10, are: Java or Java developer

or J2EE; .Net or .Net developer; business analyst; SharePoint or SharePoint developer; project manager; Oracle DBA; C#; QA or quality assurance; iRise; and PHP.

Being aware of the tech skills hiring managers are looking for can help job seekers fine-tune their resumes, Hill says.

Job seekers oftentimes focus on sifting through and applying for posted jobs without realizing it’s a two-way street: Potential employers are also on the hunt for candidates, sometimes for jobs that haven’t even been posted yet, and they find talent by doing their own resume searches. The Dice.com platform provides tools to comb through millions of resumes and mine the data.

“Our customers have very powerful backend searching

tools,” Hill says. “It’s not enough just to have a good resume and apply for jobs. You also want to make sure your resume has the right keywords so that potential employers are able to find you when they’re doing searches.”

Search optimization is equally important for hiring managers, particularly as the job market heats up and competition for key talent increases. “We work a lot with employers to teach them how to use the backend more efficiently,” Hill says.

“There’s competition among the hiring managers. The ones with the best searching skills will probably get to those candidates faster,” Hill says. “And for the seekers, the more optimized their resumes are, the more likely they’ll be found. The race is on for both sides.”

WOMEN IN IT CElEBrATE TrIUMPHS, TACklE CHAllENGESComputer Dealer News hosted its first ever women in the IT Channel event took place in Toronto, with conference goers meeting to discuss the successes and challenges of women working in tech. The event, sponsored by Ingram micro Canada and hosted by CDN, drew in women of all ages looking to share their ideas on how educational institutions, business and government can promote the “cool factor” of women in IT. IT world Canada spoke to several speakers and attendees throughout the day. watch the video at http://myi.tw/afE.

centennial offers canada’s first business analytics program

the new program is not

just reporting on data, but rather to report and predict and do analytics. so we went a step beyond

— vICTor SoUSa

: itworld video

where analytics is useful, such as risk management and finance, said Dow.

Sousa said he anticipates about 30 students to register, an initially small number because

it’s “not a broad generic program.” But after, he expects interest will grow as it gains traction.

Centennial College, established in 1966, has four campuses in the Greater Toronto Area.

ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca ComputerWorld Canada I September 2011 I 19

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How writing a book can boost your it career and incomeWhy does writing a book give people so much credibility? Because it’s hard work and requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline and persistence, say the people who’ve done it

By merideth Levinson

n JASON AlBA AlWAYS WANTEd to write a book. when he started his own business, a service for job-seekers called JibberJobber, in 2006, he finally had the time. one night in January 2006, while dining out, alba shared his book idea — an explanation of how job-seekers could use linkedIn in their job search — with some friends who had books published. alba says they loved the idea, and one of them offered to introduce alba to his publisher and serve as his executive editor.

Two weeks later, alba had a contract from Happy about books, a boutique publisher based in Cuper-tino, Calif., to write I’m on linkedIn, Now what???

five years later, alba has sold about 12,000 copies of the linkedIn book and earned just under $100,000. In the business book publishing world, I’m on linkedIn, Now what??? is by all measures a wild success. most busi-ness and trade books don’t sell more than 500 copies, he says.

I’m on linkedIn, Now what??? has paid off for alba’s career in many other ways. first, it gave his fledgling startup, JibberJobber, instant cred-ibility. He became a media sensation, which led to lucrative speaking and consulting engagements. alba says he’s made more than $100,000 from speaking at conferences and events and pocketed $75,000 in gross sales

from an instructional DvD he spun out of the linkedIn book.

“being an author is a big deal,” says alba. “even if your book sucks, even if it’s small, even if it’s lame, just being the author of a book is something that a lot of people want to do. It gives you credibility.”

why does writing a book give people so much credibility? be-cause it’s hard work and requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline and persistence, say the people who’ve done it. “everyone says they want to write a book, but there are few people who actually do it,” says russ edelman, president of Corridor Consulting, a microsoft Sharepoint consultancy, and author of Nice Guys Can Get the Corner office.

writing and publishing a book also establishes your authority as a thought leader in a way that far ex-ceeds anything you could do through a blog or Twitter, adds edelman. you deepen your knowledge and expertise while writing a book because you spend so much time investigating your subject matter.

Indeed, a published book illustrates to the world that you understand a subject so thoroughly that you can fill an entire book with your knowledge, says ben Snyder, Ceo of System-ation, a Colorado-based project management consulting and training company. Snyder is self-publishing everything Is a project: 70 lessons from Successful, project-Driven organizations in December 2011.

finally, having the book author moniker in your bio sets you apart from others in your field. Snyder notes that the consulting and training firms with which Systemation competes haven’t published any books. Dan roberts, president of bedford, N.H.-based IT consultancy ouellette & associates, uses his firm’s book, Unleashing the power of IT (wiley 2011), to build relationships with potential clients.

“when a CIo reaches out to us and is interested in our services, rather than sending him a bunch of market-

ing junk, we send him a book,” says roberts. “we want to give potential clients something that will help them understand our philosophy, our approach, what we’ve done with over 3,000 IT departments. It starts the re-lationship off in a whole other place.”

If you need to give your career a boost, establish yourself as a thought leader, or brand your business, writing a book should be on your agenda. published business and trade authors offer tips for getting started and for determining which direction to go, self-publishing or traditional publishing.

hoW to get StaRteDfor better or worse, you don’t have to have a passion, or even a gift, for writ-ing. If you hate writing but still want to publish a book, ouellette & associates roberts recommends finding a ghost writer who can communicate your ideas and capture your personality.

edelman wrote Nice Guys Can Get the Corner office with two co-writers, his longtime friend Timothy Hilt-abiddle and Charles manz. Contacts at the Harvard business review recommended manz to edelman. The three co-authors wrote portions of each chapter.

edelman advises professionals who are thinking about hiring ghost or co-writers to figure out how to compen-sate their writing partners, who will serve as the figurehead for the book when they begin receiving invitations to speak at conferences, and if the writing partners will receive any royal-ties from speaking engagements.

If you’re sure you want to write a book on your own, edelman rec-ommends exercising your writing muscles by starting a blog. “Get comfortable with writing and express-ing yourself,” he says, “then step your way up from there.”

ouellette & associates’ roberts agrees that blogging is a solid first step toward writing a book.

“as you look back over a year’s worth of blogging, you have a pretty good body of work that you can more easily put into a book format,” he

says.

eStaBLiSh a ScheDuLeall authors agree that writing a book requires self-discipline. Since most working professionals don’t have the weeks or months of uninterrupted time that’s conducive to writing a book, they have to carve out time for writing every day.

“one of my favorite authors, Thom Singer, told me if you sit down for 20 to 40 minutes each day, by the end of 90 days you will have your first draft done,” says alba, who wrote I’m on linkedIn in two straight weeks. “That’s pretty doable.”

tRaDitionaL PuBLiSheR oR SeLf-PuBLiSh?alba published his first two books, I’m on linkedIn, Now what??? and I’m on facebook, Now what???, with a traditional publisher, Happy about books. He’s planning on self-publishing his third and fourth books, both of which are currently in the works and are tentatively titled eight lunches and 101 alternatives for the Jobseeker.

alba’s decision to self-publish, though, isn’t a knock on his rela-tionship with Happy about books. alba enjoyed working with the small publishing house out of Silicon valley, adding that Happy about books was flexible and worked quickly. alba gave his manuscript to Happy about books in may 2006, and by September of the same year he had books in hand to sell at a conference.

He’s opted to self-publish subse-quent books because he wants to increase his profits. “If I can sell 1,000 books, I want to end up with $17,000 of margin instead of $3,000 of mar-gin,” he says.

Systemation’s Snyder says he originally went to a big publisher, wiley, with a book proposal, but wiley passed on it.

He considered shopping his pro-posal to other traditional publishers, but colleagues who had published with traditional publishers recom-

mended self-publishing. “They told me that once you get

your book published, the big publish-ers don’t market it as aggressively as you think they should. plus, they take a cut,” says Snyder. “Having someone vet your work and say you’re worthy of being published is an ego thing. we’re not in this for ego. we’re going to give our books away.”

Snyder chose lightening Source to publish his book. He says it’s going to cost around $13,000 to print 1,500 hardcover books, a sliver of System-ation’s marketing budget.

roberts successfully sold wiley on Unleashing the power of IT, which the publisher released earlier this year with an initial print run of about 5,000 copies. roberts is thrilled with wiley’s publishing work and marketing of the book. “out of all of our publishing partnerships, the one with wiley has been the most fruitful and rewarding so far,” he says.

roberts anticipates that the book will sell out in 2012 and that wiley will do a second printing next year.

That said, roberts doesn’t expect to make much, if any, money off of the book.

“we’ve never looked at our books as a revenue stream. If I look at all the books we’ve published over the past 15 to 20 years, it’s probably a break even proposition at best,” says roberts.

“very few books are real revenue generators. you have to hit it really big. The percentage you get through your publishing relationship is pretty small. That’s not a complaint. That’s reality. The real motivation is the cred-ibility it brings to our company.”

edelman has reaped both financial and credibility returns from publishing his book, Nice Guys Can Get the Cor-ner office, with portfolio, an imprint of bigtime publisher, penguin.

Having Suzy welch, literary agent Jill marsal and a pr firm championing his book certainly helped its success. edelman estimates the book has sold between 15,000 to 20,000 copies since its debut in 2008.

ortfolioP

20 I September 2011 I ComputerWorld Canada ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca

: new products

Hewlett-Packard has radically expanded its line of all-in-one PCs. Omni series all-in-ones are available in 20- and 21.5-inch models, while touchSmart PCs offer 20-, 21.5- and 23-inch touchscreens. touchSmart Elite and HP Pro models are aimed at the business market.

Storage company Sanrad has launched the first front-loadable, PCIe-connected flash module, with eight parallel lanes of flash storage bridged to eight lanes of PCIe connectivity. It’s available in 500gB, 1tB and 2tB capacities.

lenovo aims to spark an android tablet price war with its 7-inch IdeaPad a1 tablet, priced at $199. the a1 weighs 400 grams and is less than half an inch thick. the expected battery life is seven hours. It runs on android 2.3, with no word whether it’ll be upgraded to Honeycomb.

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22 I September 2011 I ComputerWorld Canada ITWorldCanada.com • ITBusiness.ca

sHARK tAles

SuMMER BlOCkBuStERS WItH a tECH uPgRadEtechnology has often played a central role in hollywood productions, from the sublime (tron) to the gawdawful (that ridiculous file searching scene in Disclosure, anyone?) We imagine what this season’s movie hits would be like with an it angle.

OPEn SOuRCE COdE2011, THrIllerJake Gyllenhall stars as a soldier who relives the last eight minutes of a bomb-laden commuter train over and over, each iteration slightly dif-ferent thanks to contributions from the community at large. Rating: 3.5/3.5.1/3.5.2 out of 5

PlanEt OF tHE aPIS: RISE OF tHE aPIS2011, SCIeNCe fICTIoNNotable for the motion-captured CGI performance of andy Serkis (lord of the rings) as a genetically modified, hyper-intelligent chim-panzee who creates a facebook game, angry apes, that wipes out farmville. Rating: two hairy thumbs up

tHE HElP dESk2011, Dramaa spunky line-of-business manager exposes the dreary, depressing conditions of her company’s tech-nical support operations. Trust me, this one’s a five-hanky weeper. Rating: Ctl+alt+del

a dangEROuS MEtHOd Call2011, THrIllerCode written by Carl Jung and Sigmund freud conflicts, driving debuggers crazy. Rating: 1 cigar

nO SEaRCH StRIngS attaCHEd2011, ComeDyNatalie portman and ashton kutcher (really?) star as a man and a woman trying to keep their rela-tionship purely physical, but realize they’re looking for something more. on Google. Rating: 1 of 325,491 results

for more TeCH movIeS of 2011, CHeCk oUT THe SlIDe SHow aT http://myi.tw/af8.

twitter ‘terrorists’

Google’s greenwashing

U.k. TECH NEWS Web site The Register pokes holes in Google’s claims of carbon footprint reduction. The search giant’s plethora of massive data centres consumed upward of 260 megawatt-hours in 2010, Google’s senior veep of tech-nical infrastructure Urs Hoelzle told the New York Times. But, he added, that environmental impact is partly offset by saving people the drive to the library.

Pardon?The Register’s Richard

CHirgwin astutely points out that Google (and most IT) cre-

ates additive electricity usage. It “creates new behaviours, and consumes electricity to power those new behaviours. Someone wondering about the meaning of curmudgeon is also someone unlikely to go any further than their own front door to find out. Living in ignorance is easier than driving to the library.”

Not only that, he says, but a substantial chunk of that power drain isn’t related to search at all, but powers the processing of user data associated with Google’s advertizing model.

ONE HUNdrEd FOrTY characters can get you into a lot of trouble, a Mexican journalist and math teacher have discovered.

Radio commentator Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola, 57, and 47-year-old teacher Gilberto Martinez Vera, are rotting in a Coatepec jail over tweets warning of a potential terror attack, ac-cording to the L.A. Times. Authorities claim the tweets caused mass hysteria and several dozen car accidents.

Martinez apparently tweeted about an armed attack at a grade school near Vera Cruz, citing his sister-in-law as a source. He later tweeted that he had misidentified the school, then mentioned another, adding to the confusion and, presumably, hysteria.

The pair face a maximum jail sentence of 30 years. And 15 other tweeters are apparently being investigated, the Times writes.

This, it says here, is patently absurd. Thirty years for attempting to render a public service? And they’re not asking for any jail time for Ashton Kutcher’s posts?

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