Computer Weekly readers' give their views
Extend SOA beyond four walls to gain true
value
The report that 84% of IT leaders do not believe their CEOs or
finance directors understand service oriented architecture
(Computer Weekly, 4 April) suggests that IT directors are
struggling to make a clear business case for SOA in the
boardroom.
The real benefit SOA can bring to an organisation is by enabling
more effective, flexible and cohesive working with partner
companies within the external community. The re-usability and
agility of platform-agnostic business processes will deliver
greater benefit for business in the space between enterprises.
Although SOA undoubtedly offers the ability to move enterprise
integration to a more flexible and agile model, it is only by
extending that service oriented approach beyond the four walls of
the business that maximum value and competitive advantage can be
derived.
If IT leaders can get this point across in the boardroom, I am
certain that board-level buy-in to SOA is achievable; indeed, the
promised benefits make the business case irrefutable.
Chris Hayes, solutions manager, Sterling Commerce
One system does not fit all for complex NHS
I very much endorse the call for an independent audit of the
national programme for IT in the NHS (Computer Weekly, 11 April).
It strikes me that the objective is laudable, but the overarching
structure that appears to be the architecture of the system is
almost certain to lead to problems.
Part of the issue is the level of patient data that has to be
maintained. For example, a GP surgery needs full patient data on
each record. However, they do not need to pull it down when a
patient goes into a surgery with a cold. The NHS is a very
complicated organisation that has fairly simple drivers. One system
does not fit all.
Douglas McGregor, Denham Associates
NHS IT needs to re-engage with users
I agree with the calls for the need to audit the NHS IT
programme. I have seen programmes of this nature fail, though not
on this scale. Some years ago Forrester Research stated that 23% of
IT projects fail, and 65% experience issues related to timescales
and budget. This was commonly linked to poor scoping, release
management and expectation management. It is about time that we
learned from these stats.
The NHS programme could be experiencing problems and not
delivering because there is a dogmatic approach to planning and
associated communication.
Being a government initiative, I suspect that there is also a
lot of spin on the facts before anything reaches publications such
as Computer Weekly.
Sometimes the leaders of such projects will not acknowledge the
need to re-plan because this might involve re-scoping. This is not
failure as such, since the need to re-plan and re-scope is a
reality. A plan, after all, is only a plan based on a perception of
what should happen. And the plan needs to remain in line with the
objectives supporting the strategy. Sometimes these things change,
especially if a programme is running late, as is the case with the
NHS IT programme.
The other issue is the disenfranchised user community. There
needs to be a concerted effort to bring these people back on board,
although in some cases I imagine this will be hard to achieve. If
people have lost faith in the programme's viability, what is
Connecting for Health doing?
Yes, there needs to be an audit; yes, it needs to be
independent; and, yes, it needs to be repeated regularly. In the
long run, this should benefit everyone.
Danny Dixon
Legal implications of RFID cannot be
ignored
You are right to point out the vastly increased role of radio
frequency identification tags in the supply chain (Computer Weekly,
4 April), and it is clear that RFID is going to play a major part
in the future of retailing.
However, it is vital to point out the legal implications that
such a technology can produce. The decision by Wal-Mart to mandate
the use of RFID has generated complaints from suppliers about who
pays and who benefits. Therefore, it is vital to get the contract
right. The use of RFID will change the way retailers work so
dramatically that it is naive for retailers to think they can run
their business in the same way as before.
Retailers must take care to manage all the legal risks of RFID
implementation. They should ensure that the contract with the RFID
service provider includes appropriate incentives for the service
provider to deliver the required level of performance in the
contract, address the key commercial objectives for the RFID
implementation, address systems integration issues and provide for
adequate legal remedies if the project fails to deliver expected
benefits.
A key issue for the retailer is to identify and map likely
systems and process integration issues, for example, whether old
and new databases link and whether there is sufficient resource to
handle large volumes of data generated by the new technology. This
involves careful negotiation of contracts between a number of
different parties. Strict service level agreements should be
inserted to ensure that each party keeps up to schedule and
delivers the necessary services.
Vinod Bange, associate, Addleshaw Goddard
Protecting your network from remote workers
In your article "Where are they and what are they doing"
(Computer Weekly, 4 April), Nick McQuire at Yankee Group was right
to point out that mobile devices should be supported like IT assets
to give administrators clear visibility of what hardware and
software the company owns.
An important consideration for any IT manager supporting a
remote workforce should be security. Protecting a network from
remote workers is often an afterthought for many IT
departments.
One way that IT managers can solve this issue is to implement
quarantine technology. This will alert administrators to those
users who have contracted a new virus and do not have the correct
protection in place. Non-compliant machines will be quarantined
away from the network until they have been provided with the
necessary patch or virus, preventing infected files from affecting
the rest of the network.
If firms continue to ignore the potential security implications
surrounding remote workforces, they risk exposing sensitive
corporate data to hackers, who will always welcome new ways into
the network.
Paul Butler, principal services consultant, Altiris
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