Computer Weekly Editor's Blog

Is HP too big to fail?

2012-05-24T11:38:13Z

What on earth is going on at HP?

After three years riven by changes in CEO (three times) and in strategy (lost count), the company seems to barely know what it is or where it is heading. This month alone, it has made three extraordinary decisions.

First, the latest CEO, former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, announced to journalists at an event in Shanghai that HP is focusing its strategy and research and development (R&D) priorities to be a technology-focused hardware company. That's hardware - the thing that makes much lower margins than software or services. She said, "PCs are an essential part of HP." That's PCs - the things that IBM decided to stop selling years ago.

What does that mean for its services business - formerly EDS? It seems services are there to support hardware sales. Ask IBM Global Services what it thinks about that. What does it mean for its software business? Apparently the same thing - leading to the second extraordinary decision, to sack Mike Lynch, the British entrepreneur who built Autonomy from nothing to sell it to HP for £7bn last year, apparently because Autonomy had a bad financial quarter.

On top of all that was the 27,000 job cuts, designed, says the company, to promote growth after a decline in revenue and profit. When did cutting jobs ever truly promote growth?

IT leaders are no longer sure what HP is - and if they are told it is a hardware supplier, you can't think the conversations will go far beyond tactical purchases rather than IT strategy. At the moment, HP is an essential part of any purchasing shortlist - but what does it have that is unique or special that will help it over the line to win as many of those contracts as it needs to in the long term? It's not clear to many people.

Cutting jobs and costs, focusing on the products that once made the company great - they are the signs of a firm that is living off past glories. All that R&D investment needs to go into tomorrow's technologies, not yesterday's. HP's slogan used to be "invent". It seems now it is "cuts".

But perhaps the biggest worry for HP is not so much customer perceptions, as its shareholders.

Look at these numbers: HP's 2011 annual revenue was $127bn - but its current market value is less than $42bn. If all HP's customers got together, they could buy the company three times over for what they spend with it in a year.

By comparison, IBM's market value is $226bn, Microsoft is worth $244bn, Cisco is $90bn, Oracle is $132bn. Even storage specialist EMC is worth more at $53bn. Apple, which in its latest quarter overtook HP as the biggest technology company in the world by revenue, is worth $570bn.

Which of those companies would you invest in?

From a customer perspective, HP's saving grace is that it is simply too big to fail - it is the Goldman Sachs of IT. Many major Western governments run on HP - well, on EDS that is. The US Department of Defense is utterly reliant on what used to be EDS - even if the UK government is slowly reducing its commitment, and what is now HP Enterprise Services is a shadow of what EDS once was.

One UK government IT leader told me: "I could probably give you names for 27,000 EDS staff they should get rid of."

Banks, major retailers, global manufacturers - they all rely on HP. So the company famously founded in a Silicon Valley garage is not going away, even if it's not sure where it is going.

But it's the patience of shareholders that will be wearing thin. Apple could buy HP, for cash, tomorrow, if it chose to (it won't).

Through acquisition, HP has swallowed up some famous names - Compaq, EDS, Autonomy. Will the names of Hewlett and Packard be next?

Your last chance to influence government open standards

2012-05-21T11:36:35Z

After the controversy of the early meetings in the government's consultation on open standards, we're now down to the last few weeks of what is a hugely important process.

After a slow start, the open source lobby has engaged more fully with the process, so let's hope this will lead to a more balanced outcome.

There are three more public meetings due to take place, and it's critical that everyone with an opinion on every side of the debate gets their voice heard - this will define the standards for government IT for years to come.

Four meetings have taken place, and there are three to go, as follows:

Roundtable 5: Levelling the Playing Field in the North West 29 May - Manchester
Aimed at SMEs in the North West.

Roundtable 6: Competition and European Interaction 31 May - London and by phone.
A rerun of Roundtable 1.

Roundtable 7: Open opportunities with community and voluntary services 1 June - phone
This is a teleconference-only session to avoid the need to travel. It is aimed at community and voluntary organisations.

Click here for more details.

Get involved now - this may be your last chance.

What the Facebook IPO means for IT leaders

2012-05-18T10:06:50Z

There's a saying in financial circles - one that has been conveniently ignored many times in the past - that says: "If it looks like a bubble, and it feels like a bubble, then it's a bubble."
So, does a $100bn valuation for Facebook look like a bubble? Did its purchase of Instagram for $1bn feel like a bubble? Does the ballooning valuation of Apple - $500bn and growing - seem like a bubble to you?

To any normal person it certainly does, but nobody in financial markets is saying it is. At least, not until they know it's a bubble, by which time of course they will all say they knew it was a bubble all along.

It's hard not to draw parallels with the dot com boom and bust of the early 2000s, but it's equally as hard now to be a doomsayer as it was before the markets crashed that last time. The Nasdaq exchange that houses many technology stocks has never again reached the peaks it hit in the midst of the internet bubble in 2000 - but to have said so at the time was like doubting the Emperor's new clothes. It certainly feels like that now.

There's little doubt the markets are desperate for a success story to alleviate the economic gloom and the downward spiral of the Eurozone. Facebook has been the business success story of the past five years, and investors want a share of that reflected glory.

For the tech community in general, the glow that Facebook emits is a good thing. It brings investment to the sector, and more importantly attracts skilled workers. Hopefully it will encourage young people to consider a career in technology - that so few do these days remains a ticking time bomb for UK IT.

But if this is a bubble, and all that corporate "Like" for Facebook falls flat, the consequences for IT could be catastrophic. A flight from tech stocks would occur, venture capital would go elsewhere, innovation would be stifled.

So for IT professionals, the importance of the Facebook IPO rests less in the inflated valuation, and more in the need to engender long-term confidence. IT leaders need to ensure they deliver to their stakeholders the confidence in technology to overcome what may yet be a loud burst ahead.

Microsoft's price hike could hardly be worse timing

2012-05-04T11:58:16Z

Timing, they say, is everything. Microsoft's could not be worse.

There is huge scrutiny and discussion going on about the effects of supplier lock-in and the relative merits of proprietary and open software standards - a debate prompted by the government's increasingly heated open standards consultation.

Microsoft, in particular, is often quoted as an example of the perils of lock-in. Look, for example, at the European Commission, an organisation that has purchased Microsoft software for 20 years without an open competition because of its reliance on the firm's products.

Look also at the experiences of Bristol City Council, which found that it had little choice but to stick with Windows and Office instead of its preferred open source strategy.

Microsoft's aggressive lobbying of the Cabinet Office over its plan for open standards is taken by critics as an example of trying to maintain a monopolistic grip established by proprietary products at its largest UK customer.

So what does the supplier go and do? Raise its volume licensing fees by up to 33%.

That's right - a unilateral corporate decision that will mean well above inflation increases in the price of the most popular forms of licensing agreement for organisations buying Microsoft software. It's happening under the auspices of introducing a harmonised pricing structure across Europe, and because of the weakness of the euro relative to the pound, UK customers are taking the biggest hit.

But it's OK, because if you don't like it, you can easily swap out your Microsoft products for something else, can't you?

Can't you? Oh...

The days of technical lock-in to suppliers and their products are surely nearing an end. "Ah, but there will always be some form of lock-in, even in the cloud," say big suppliers. If so, it's interesting to listen to CIOs, who advise each other that the first question to ask of a potential cloud provider is, what is the exit clause?

If Microsoft wants to convince IT leaders it is no longer a company stuck in the past and hanging on to old business models, huge price rises are neither the way, nor is now the time, to go about it.

Open means open - why transparency matters

2012-04-27T12:25:10Z

The Cabinet Office yesterday scrapped the output from a key part of its open standards consultation over an undeclared conflict of interest from a central participant.

The move came after Computer Weekly discovered that the independent chairman of the first open standards public meeting was not as independent as it seemed, and was in fact being paid by Microsoft to advise the software giant on that very open standards consultation.

As conflicts of interest go, it's a pretty big one, considering the extent to which Microsoft has been lobbying the government to include its own definition of open standards into Whitehall IT policy.

But it's also less a case of secrecy or malicious intent than it is one of naivety and a lack of understanding that the game has changed.

Dr Andy Hopkirk, who was invited by the Cabinet Office to chair the public meeting, is an experienced, knowledgeable and widely respected expert on open standards and interoperability, with a history of advising previous governments on their IT policy. As such, he was an obvious candidate to chair such a high profile and important event.

He failed, however, to tell the Cabinet Office that Microsoft was paying him to also avail itself of his experience and knowledge.

I had invited Hopkirk to write an article for Computer Weekly about the public meeting he chaired, and he kindly accepted that invitation.

When it became apparent that he had not declared his involvement with Microsoft to us, not to mention the government, I asked him to provide a disclosure statement to accompany his article. He was initially reluctant to do so, pointing to the "firm firewalls" he maintains between his different activities and customers.

I do not doubt for a moment that Hopkirk is utterly professional in maintaining those firewalls.

The issue is not the existence of an association - he is, of course, entirely free to take paid work from whoever he chooses - the problem is the lack of disclosure and openness about such an association.

But the storm in which he found himself the central figure is an example of how the relationship between government and its IT suppliers has to change.

Microsoft's behind-closed-doors lobbying of the government over open standards is now a matter of record, but only as a result of leaked documents and freedom of information (FoI) requests.

The Cabinet Office has its hands tied - it was no doubt quite happy to receive an FoI to publish its correspondence with Microsoft, and if it could have done so itself without compromising any stipulations of secrecy from Microsoft, I expect it would have done so.

The output of the meeting Hopkirk chaired has now been removed from the consultation process. Given the domination of that meeting by the Microsoft-backed proprietary software lobby, I doubt the Cabinet Office is too disappointed about that either.

But it poses a rather obvious question: if IT suppliers are so keen to promote their idea of open standards, why not do so in the open?

Shouldn't Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM, HP and every other supplier that has contributed to the consultation publish their contribution? Why can't we see, in public, what the position of each of these incumbent suppliers is?

In the week that a storm engulfed the government over potential conflicts of interest with the Rupert Murdoch empire, this is becoming the IT industry's equivalent of the back-door lobbying of vested interests.

Transparency matters in public life - and in IT at least, the government says it is committed to that principle. That same transparency matters to every supplier to government - whether a major multinational software firm or an individual.

So we call on every supplier contributing to the open standards debate to publish their response, and to be open about their views on open standards.

Dear open standards lobby: SHOUT LOUDER!!

2012-04-17T21:00:08Z

There is a hugely important debate taking place in the UK IT community at the moment, one that will have equally huge significance for almost everyone who buys IT in this country.

It's about open standards - and in particular, what definition the UK government will use for the open standards policy that will determine much of the future of public sector IT procurement. But this isn't just an issue for IT chiefs in government - the longer term implications will affect every IT leader in every sector. With government being such a major influence on IT suppliers, the policy it adopts will have a big input into the product development of any vendor that wants to sell to the public sector, and hence to the products they sell to the private sector too.

It's a complex and often emotional debate.

For the layman, when software types start talking about patents and intellectual property and throwing around jargon and acronyms such as RF (royalty free) and FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory), there's a natural tendency to switch off.

Don't worry - I'm not going to get into that sort of detail here, although if you read on I will point you to other articles on Computer Weekly and elsewhere that will help to explain some of those finer points.

Instead, I want to point a finger at the supporters of open standards and open source - simply because they need to make their opinions heard more widely and loudly in this critical debate.

Let me explain.

There is a consultation underway, led by the Cabinet Office, to invite views on the proposed definition of open standards that the government wants to embed into its IT strategy.

Senior IT people in government want to free themselves from the perceived lock-in associated with proprietary software - to cut costs, increase choice, and open up the public sector market to a wider range of products and suppliers; to ensure a "level playing field" between large and small, proprietary and open source; to allow taxpayers' money to be spent on the best outcomes, not the only product that is compatible. Few could argue that is not a good thing.

It's no secret either that there are people in senior government IT positions who have long been proponents of open source and open standards - not least the new deputy government CIO, Liam Maxwell.

It's equally no secret that there are those in government IT who feel the big suppliers that dominate Whitehall IT spending have not delivered value for money and their stranglehold needs to be reduced.

Understandably, open standards is seen as a way to achieve that.

That consultation process includes a number of public meetings, open to anyone with an interest in the topic to air and share their opinions and feed into the debate. There is also an online questionnaire inviting anyone to give their views. The Cabinet Office is being rigorous in ensuring it is open to, and seen to be open to, every side of the issue.

Earlier this week, Computer Weekly contributor Mark Ballard, who writes for our Public Sector IT blog, wrote a report based on his sources, which suggested that the first of these public meetings was dominated by the proprietary software lobby.

Mark has previously written about the extent to which major software firms such as Microsoft are lobbying government to ensure the open standards policy does not go down a path that might make it less likely or more difficult for buyers in its biggest UK customer to procure their proprietary products. You would expect them to do little else.

I leave it to you to decide whether this is "vested interests" or simply standard commercial practice.

Mark's blog post has stirred up something of a hornet's nest, with some participants refuting his reported version of events - and we have offered those participants a platform to air their views in response. We will be publishing their articles on ComputerWeekly.com very soon.

Nonetheless, there is a polarisation forming around what you might simplistically call the "open" lobby and the "proprietary" lobby. And there is a feeling that the proprietary lobby, with its greater resources, lobbying experience, and its business models at stake, is dominating the argument.

This has been the case for many years. I hate to say it, but in 12 years of reporting on IT, and many years before that working in the industry, I've seen the open lobby - open source developers, open standards proponents, free software fans, etc - spend too much time in the corner, huddled together saying to each other, "This is awful, dreadful, don't they understand?"

That's a personal observation - which I expect many in that lobby will disagree with, some quite strongly.

But the open lobby is facing something of an Agincourt here, its Waterloo, or Custer's last stand, depending on your preferred historical analogy.

There are some great people in the open lobby, with relevant and important opinions, whom I have a lot of respect for.

But too many - not all, but a lot - are simply not vocal enough in this debate. They can say they are right until they are blue in the face, but "right" does not mean they will win. They have to play the game the way their opponents have set the rules - unless and until they start winning some battles, they will never get the chance to set the rules themselves.

Mark's blog post reported that many in the open lobby felt the consultation meeting had not been publicised widely enough; there are some taking to Twitter to complain that they were not told about it or invited. Sorry, but that's no excuse. You can't complain you weren't invited next time Microsoft (or whoever) signs a multimillion-pound deal with the government for "proprietary" software.

Get used to the fact that the game is not being played by your rules. You don't win a hand of poker by betting with a five-card trick; you learn how to play a Royal Flush.

Now I'm not trying to say that one side is wrong or one side is right. It is a complex and highly nuanced topic. I have strong sympathies with many of the arguments of the open lobby, I'll admit. But I can see the perspective of the proprietary suppliers too.

I will, however, urge the open lobby to mobilise itself, to organise itself as well as its perceived opponents. Don't moan about not being at the meeting - go to the next one, and the next. Respond to the online consultation now. Comment on this blog post. Comment on Mark Ballard's blog post. Comment on articles from people on both sides of the debate when they're published here and elsewhere. Comment on any of the blogs or articles I've listed below.

Shout louder, walk taller, talk to your opponents and not just your supporters. Engage in the debate - actively, loudly, and with all the passion you have for the subject. Do it now. Whoever comes out on top of this critical debate, we need every voice on every side to participate.

There is only one community I want to win - and that's IT buyers (and ultimately taxpayers, that means you and I). But we need every part of the supply-side to be equally involved if that is going to happen.

Further reading:

If you want an easy-to-read explanation of the jargon of FRAND and RF and so forth, I recommend this article: Ignore the extremists in the software standards wars - by Leading Edge Forum researcher Simon Wardley published on Forbes.com

Cabinet Office open standards consultation

Report from the first public meeting by its host, Cabinet Office policy lead on open standards, Linda Humphries

Details of future public meetings

Blog post by Peter Brown, a participant at the first public meeting

Blog post by IT architect Dr Jeni Tennison on her response to the consultation

Report on the first public meeting of the open standards consultation by its chairman Andy Hopkirk

By Mark Ballard on Computer Weekly's Public Sector IT blog:

Proprietary lobby triumphs in first open standards showdown

Microsoft redeploys OOXML in open standards battle

Questions over open standards lobbyists

Microsoft hustled UK retreat on open standards, says leaked report

Open standards rift tears UK policy to shreds

Open standards: UK dithers over royalty question

Hope shines through crack in lid of open standards coffin

IT security basics will always be the best protection

2012-04-12T14:28:18Z

There is growing evidence that we are entering a new and dangerous phase in the IT security threats that organisations face.

For years, the received wisdom has been that if you have an Apple Mac, you're safe; that there's no real threat from the insecurity of smartphones; that you only need to worry if you're using Microsoft.

Well, in the past week we've seen 600,000 Macs infected with the Flashback Trojan and Apple showing its complacency after a slow response to the threat. Security experts are increasingly warning that hackers are turning to smartphones, especially as businesses start to allow staff to use their own devices at work and those employees increasingly use their phones for sensitive tasks such as online banking.

Microsoft, meanwhile, recently launched a new trustworthy computing initiative, and is seen in many quarters as an example of how software providers should respond to threats.

How times change.

Look at perhaps the three fastest growing trends in IT today - cloud, mobile and big data. They are, in essence, all about taking applications and data out from behind the corporate firewall; about giving access to corporate systems to employees anywhere, anytime; and about putting large volumes of critical data into the hands of as many people as possible to help improve decision-making.

You can hardly imagine three things more likely to give IT security chiefs palpitations.

It's no good simply saying, "This is bad, we must do something about it." That's been the cry of the frustrated since the first computer virus was detected, and we should be used to the fact by now that too many IT suppliers do not put security at the forefront of their design and development. With the growth of consumerisation, that's not going to change.

But perhaps the statistic that should resonate most is that only 1% of all cyber attacks are from previously unknown threats - the other 99% are from things we know about.

If there is one lesson learned from tackling cyber threats to date, it is the importance of getting the basics right. No matter how the threats are changing, that's the security mantra that all IT managers should follow.

Protocols not products: Why identity assurance is central to the new government IT thinking

2012-04-03T10:40:33Z

I recently had a fascinating and wide-ranging chat with government digital director Mike Bracken, looking back at his first six months in the job and the challenges he has faced. You can read the interview here.

Bracken is one of the most senior and vocal supporters of the need to do things differently in Whitehall IT, and at the heart of that is a new approach to the IT market that avoids big supplier contracts and big technology projects.

Perhaps the greatest test of this approach will come in the plans for Identity Assurance (IDA) - the scheme by which citizens accessing digital public services will authenticate that they are who they say they are online.

Identity has a chequered history in government - identity cards, national identity databases and so on - and even as recently as last December was almost blighted by the internally-focused, big-project mentality that is still all too prevalent in the major Whitehall departments.

When Bracken volunteered to take responsibility for IDA, one of his first tasks was to withdraw a £200m tender issued by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for IDA to support the universal credits scheme, and replace it with a £25m project to achieve the same end.

In the four months between those two tender notifications, the focus for IDA changed dramatically. It moved from a product-focused initiative - the sort encouraged by IT suppliers with a product to sell - to be protocol-focused.

That's a major cultural shift - from the idea that government builds a huge identity system around its universal credit welfare scheme that everyone else will have to conform to; to a market-oriented, collaborative approach that everyone buys into and the private sector sets up and runs.

"What we have to do, and what we've been reasonably successful in doing, is moving away from a [project where we ask] how do we build an IT model, to how do we get a market protocol in place that everyone can sign up to," said Bracken.

"It isn't about building a product, it's about supporting a protocol and a set of discreet services that people can play a part in, and create value from."

That old product-focused approach demonstrates to extent to which Whitehall IT thinking has historically been influenced and infiltrated by IT supplier thinking - that the solution is to buy a product.

Bracken is not the only one decrying the "buy a product" approach of the IT industry.

HM Revenue & Customs CIO Phil Pavitt told IT leaders at a CW500 Club event recently of his rejection of the product-led pitch. He cited as an example thin-client technology, describing it as "the lie the supplier industry gave us." The IT industry seems incapable of understanding this principle, obsessed as they are with the idea that IT leaders want to buy products. That's what they sell, it's not what people want to buy.

For IDA, Bracken has talked to companies that understand identity, not IT suppliers that sell identity products. He and Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude even visited PayPal in Silicon Valley to learn from its approach, ignoring the conventional software firms desperate to sell their products.

"We're saying [to people like PayPal], how did you do that, because actually there's some great lessons in that for us, maybe you can help us do that - rather than saying, well let's go and buy products and let's go and spend hundreds of millions in implementation. The question isn't framed in IT, therefore the answer doesn't come back as an IT answer," said Bracken.

The big risk to this approach, and for IDA itself, is universal credits - probably the highest profile IT project in the public sector at the moment, required to support the Coalition's overhaul of the welfare system. It's one of those projects that simply cannot fail, but to critics it's a perfect example of the old approach that has failed so often.

Universal credits is anathema to Bracken's approach of start small, trial, iterate and build.

"You are not going to get much more visible than universal credit," Bracken acknowledged. "To be honest, no, we probably wouldn't [have wanted to] start with something that big. Remember it's a phasing issue, so it's [only] phase one of universal credit."

The protocol-not-product approach will be central to the wider roll-out of IDA beyond universal credit, recognising as it does that a protocol allows for much better scaling, and to make the solution appropriate for user need.

"The idea there is one-size-fits-all service [for identity] is wrong. The idea there is a one-size-fits-all protocol which allows us to choose along the spectrum is exactly where we want to go," said Bracken.

"We recognise the attributes needed and the validation level needed are not the same for all government services. So, to exaggerate for effect, the submission of multimillion-pound corporate tax and the application to renew a fishing licence should not and probably would not require the same level of identity, validation and attribution. Therefore, we have to scale across services, and that's why we need lots of examples and pilots to learn how that scaling works."

The Post Office, banks, perhaps even supermarkets or social media firms, are the intended targets for IDA - they will provide identity services conforming to the IDA protocol (likely to be an open protocol, not a government-owned one) and public services will piggyback off that infrastructure. So, you choose which identity provider will assure, authenticate and validate your transaction, all the government service has to do is ensure it conforms to the protocol.

IDA - in approach, in thinking, in technology - is critical to the new government IT. To deliver the radical reform that government IT needs, it needs IDA to be a success. It would be a terrible irony if an old-school big project like universal credit were to scupper its chances.

Government to IT suppliers: Does it hurt yet?

2012-03-29T10:26:08Z

When I was a schoolboy, there was a popular if rather sado-masochistic playground game called Chinese burns. This involved grasping your opponent's wrist with both hands, and twisting their skin in opposite directions. They then did the same to you. The loser was the first to yelp in pain or admit that it hurts. For added psychological pressure, if you felt you were gaining the upper hand, you would shout "Does it hurt yet? Does it hurt yet?" loudly in the face of your rival.

Boys, eh?

I have an image of Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and others in government IT procurement doing something similar to their biggest IT suppliers. The difference being that nowadays, the IT suppliers are no longer allowed to take a turn at applying the Chinese burn after years of watching their public sector clients grimacing and trying not to confess how much they were suffering.

Take Oracle, as the latest example.

It was revealed last year that 70% of all software licences used by government are from Oracle - data collated from 18 central government bodies showed that of 17.2 million software licences purchased, 10 million were for Oracle software.

In January, the Cabinet Office cited Oracle as one of two worst culprits, alongside SAP, in response to exclusive Computer Weekly research that revealed some Whitehall departments are paying up to three times more than others in ERP licence costs.

This week, the government finally revealed that its annual spend with Oracle has been in excess of £200m - and that figure is to be reduced by £75m annually thanks to a newly-agreed licensing deal with the supplier.

One of the clauses of the new contract is that Oracle will treat the government as a single customer and apply the same levels of discount to all IT buyers. That's another way of saying that Oracle has been ripping off Whitehall for years by offering lower discounts to some government users than others, based presumably on nothing more than each department's skill as a negotiator.

"The relationship with the UK government has always been very special to Oracle. We are honoured to support its initiatives and to stand together in meeting the changing IT needs of the 21st Century," said Oracle CFO Safra Catz in the carefully phrased statement accompanying the new deal. That's £200m per year of "special".

Minister Maude added: "The days of the government paying different prices for the same goods or services are over."

Does it hurt yet?

Take Capgemini, as another example.

The IT services firm leads the Aspire consortium that holds one of the biggest multibillion-pound outsourcing deals in the public sector, with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

It's a fairly typical, old-school outsourcing contract, where the supplier charges hundreds of pounds every time a light bulb needs to be changed.

Earlier this month, Maude announced a £200m cut in the price of the Aspire contract.

Furthermore, HMRC CIO Phil Pavitt told a Computer Weekly CW500 Club meeting this week that the renegotiated contract also involves bringing certain services back in house, and ending Capgemini's exclusivity for new projects. From now on, the supplier will have to compete for everything - Pavitt cited one example already where a small Silicon Valley supplier bid several hundred thousand pounds for a project, against a quote of many millions from the incumbent. Guess who won the business?

Oh, and by the way, that Silicon Valley firm had approached Capgemini twice to offer its services and been rebuffed both times.

Does it hurt yet?

One of the IT leaders in the CW500 audience asked Pavitt, "What was it like beating up Capgemini, and did you enjoy it?"

Pavitt gave a politician's answer, citing the fact it was a win-win situation, that Capgemini is still HMRC's main IT supplier, and that everyone was happy with the outcome.

If I was a betting man, I would lay plenty of money that privately he loved every minute, and that Capgemini's wrists are red raw.

Does it hurt yet?

Let's come back to SAP, cited alongside Oracle as the worst culprit for over-pricing ERP. HMRC is rationalising its seven different versions and installations of SAP into a single common platform. As a result, the department has handed back thousands of SAP software licences that were being paid for, but not used.

Does it hurt yet?

Meanwhile, the G-Cloud framework and the CloudStore services catalogue are forcing suppliers to be open and transparent about pricing, and it's already shown huge discrepancies between the fees charged by many of the existing suppliers to government and the new challengers breaking into the market.

That's got to hurt.

It is a shame, of course, that it has taken this long; that it's taken the worst economic crisis in living memory for Whitehall to reform its relationship with the IT industry.

For years, private sector CIOs will no doubt have scoffed at their public sector colleagues, convinced that they were the best negotiators, that they had their suppliers where they wanted them, that they were getting the best price and the best service. Those crusty old Whitehall mandarins, all bogged down by bureaucracy and purchasing laws, what do they know, eh?

Every private sector CIO should look at the scale of the price cuts and the contractual changes now being forced by government on those suppliers- who certainly didn't offer a penny voluntarily - and question whether they really do get the best deal, and ask whose hands are wrapped around whose wrist in that relationship. And they should look at their raw skin and ask themselves, "Does it hurt yet?"

Budget 2012: Promising, but not yet enough for UK IT

2012-03-22T11:43:00Z

Every year we assess what the Budget means for the UK IT community. Most years we conclude: Nothing much. This year, we'd have to acknowledge progress, by concluding: Well, a bit, probably.

The headline statement was George Osborne's promise to make Britain "the technology hub of Europe". Sadly there seemed little concrete policy or action to reveal how he intends to make that happen. If you use the broadest possible definition of "technology", which the chancellor seems to have done, and include creative industries such as film and TV, plus scientific research such as pharmaceuticals, then you can start to build a case.

But for what we know as technology - information technology and communications - not so much.

There are some positive moves to improve tax breaks on research and development and for start-ups. There was the re-announcement of £100m promised in last year's Autumn statement to fund 10 "super-connected" cities, plus £50m extra for 10 smaller cities. And there were some minor promises to improve rural mobile coverage and to boost signals around key roads and on the railways.

But there was nothing that you could hold up and show as proof of a clear action plan and commitment to that ambitious "technology hub" objective.

If anything, the Budget just goes to prove business secretary Vince Cable's leaked comments to David Cameron, that the strategy is "piecemeal", and there is an urgent need for "more leadership in identifying and supporting key technologies".

Clearly it is better that Osborne said what he said than if he had said nothing, but we need more visible action and a more co-ordinated plan. Research last week from Boston Consulting Group showed that the internet plays a bigger role in the UK economy than in any G20 country - worth 8.3% of GDP - so we urgently need a vision and policies that build on that lead and use technology to pull us out of the downturn.

If ministers need educating about the role that technology can play, then at least they can expect some IT training - the most entertaining announcement in the Budget being that, "From 2014 new online services will only go live if the responsible minister can demonstrate that they themselves can use the service successfully."

So there is hope. By 2014, every minister will at least have to know how to use the web.

Donate your PCs to Computer Aid - 200,000 so far, 50,000 more needed now

2012-03-13T15:43:46Z

The IT charity Computer Aid International has celebrated a significant milestone - the delivery of its 200,000th PC to worthy causes in the developing world.

I have no problem in admitting a high degree of bias in proclaiming this achievement and giving it a shameless plug - I'm a big fan of Computer Aid, I've worked with them professionally and personally for a number of years, and I'm proud to say that two publications I've edited have made important contributions to their cause. Computer Weekly is a supporter, and we provide a lot of free promotion for the charity's events.

But this isn't about doing our bit for "charidee" - it's about a small UK charity, with limited resources but a committed group of people, proving what a huge contribution technology can make to education, healthcare, food security and economic development in countries less financially privileged than our own.

Here's a statement from Computer Aid, released to mark the 200,000 milestone, that explains more:

The 200,000 donated PCs have provided over one billion usable IT hours to not-for-profit organisations in Africa and Latin America. They are being used to support the Millennium Development Goals of eradicating poverty, enriching education and improving health and medical care in the developing world:

Education - The majority of PCs are used in education, enabling children and adults to gain the IT skills necessary to enter further education and obtain higher-paid employment.
Health - With IT, rural doctors and nurses can connect to specialists in city centres and participate in e-learning courses, helping them access the support and training they need to provide life-saving medical care to rural populations.
Agriculture - Access to IT allows farmers to find and share information with other communities and keep up to date with weather forecasts, helping them to increase crop growth. Once harvested, the internet can also help farmers gain entry to new markets.

Much as technology has become essential to the business success of western companies, IT has become essential to international development. The days when cynics would cry that starving families need food and water not computers, are over - by which I don't mean that computers are a higher priority than food and water, but that without technology the long-term, sustainable provision of those basic needs is a lot harder to achieve.

There's an old cliché about international development work that says: give someone a fish and you feed them for a day; give them a fishing rod and you feed them for life. It's now true to say that if you give them access to a computer too, they'll know where the fish are, what bait to use, when to fish, and which market will give them the best price. And then you don't just ensure someone has food on the table, you ensure the growth of their income, the stability of their family, an education for their children, and the long-term development of their community.

Computer Aid, like every charity, needs cash to do its good work. Uniquely, it also needs your PCs and laptops. Every PC you would otherwise dispose of can be recycled and reused overseas for a great cause. All those 200,000 PCs were donated by businesses and individuals, and more are needed - Computer Aid needs a further 50,000 computers in the next 12 months, such is the demand for the equipment and services it provides. That's where you and the IT community come in.

Computer Weekly research identified that Windows 7 upgrades are going to be one of the biggest initiatives for many IT leaders this year - that, presumably, means a lot of PC refreshes. And that means a lot of equipment that could go through Computer Aid to do great things in developing countries.

Computer Aid's largest donor to date is retailer Sainsbury's, which has provided nearly 5,500 PCs and laptops, plus more than 6,000 monitors - a contribution that adds up to thousands of hours of education, of life-saving medical work, of community-building agricultural development.

What possible reason can you have for not wanting to be a part of that?

To find out more about donating PCs to Computer Aid and the charity's free professional decommissioning services please contact the organisation on 020 8361 5540, e-mail enquiries@computeraid.org, or visit www.computeraid.org. Do it now.

We are in the post PC-is-the-only-option era, but that's not quite as catchy for Apple marketing

2012-03-08T11:32:58Z

Are we, as Apple would have us believe, in the "post-PC era"? I'm not so sure.

The phrase has become something of a tech meme lately and Apple has understandably embraced it, claiming at the wholly underwhelming launch for the "New iPad" that it sold 172 million "post-PC" devices last year - a figure that combines sales of iPads, iPhones and even iPods.

It's stretching things somewhat to label the iPod as a "post-PC" device, but we'll let that one pass.

There is always a knee-jerk reaction to any successful new technology that foresees it replacing whatever came before, when the evidence of history shows us that simply is not the case.

New technology fragments markets, introduces new options for buyers, and breaks down barriers for new entrants. Overall, the market itself becomes bigger than it was before as more people buy more of the greater options available to them.

That's exactly what's happening now, in what we have come to call the consumerisation of IT.

Tablets, smartphones, netbooks, Chromebooks and all these new form factors have introduced alternatives to the PC, which in some cases compliment rather than replace what went before.

I don't yet see many business users who have bought iPads throwing away their PCs or laptops as a result. Some are, of course, and more will. But what many are finding is that the iPad or whatever tablet they are using, allows them to use technology in a different way and at different times or situations.

iPads and tablets are not replacing PCs, but they are becoming the preferred device for certain functions previously performed by a PC or laptop. They are replacing the PC for doing things that iPads are better at than PCs, like surfing on the move, accessing e-mail and calendars on the move, and so on. There's not a lot of wordprocessing or spreadsheet manipulation taking place on tablets or smartphones, nor that much ERP and CRM data entry.

The IT managers I've seen taking "post-PC" devices into meetings for their connectivity and ease of use typically end up back at their desk on a PC/laptop once they have received a message or alert that they are needed elsewhere.

Indeed, in a timely coincidence, the morning after the iPad launch the night before, Gartner forecast that PC sales will grow 4.4% this year, with 368 million units shipped, rising further to 400 million in 2013. That's still plenty of cash for an era that is meant to be over.

What we are actually entering is the post PC-is-your-only-option era.

New form factors are replacing some of the time we used to spend on PCs, but not yet fully obviating the need for PCs. We'll still be using PCs 10 years from now, just not as many of them, and not spending as much time using them.

A new device doesn't necessarily replace an old device, but it does replace some of the time spent on the old device.

We have certainly entered is the "Apple marketing is getting more and more annoying era", but that's another era that has plenty of time yet to run.

"Technology leadership must drive economic activity" - the other bit of Vince Cable's letter to the PM

2012-03-07T12:22:56Z

There was plenty of national coverage of business secretary Vince Cable's leaked letter to the prime minister, in which he lamented the lack of a "compelling vision" for UK economic growth, and called for the break-up Royal Bank of Scotland.

Lost among those headline-friendly soundbites was one of the major points in Cable's letter - the first of his five suggestions for a "strategic vision" for the UK's industrial future, namely the urgent need for "more leadership in identifying and supporting key technologies" - the letter even underlined "key technologies" for emphasis.

Cable used a phrase that Computer Weekly readers may be familiar with - it's something we've called for many times through many governments: "...technology leadership must drive economic activity in the future."

Technology is the future of the UK's economy, and Cable is spot on to say this, and equally to say that the government of which he is a part continues to fail on this - "our actions are rather piecemeal", as Cable says.

He calls for greater focus and more resources to co-ordinate the government's technology priorities. He's absolutely right.

Cable goes on: "Despite fantastic SMEs, we have produced no Amazon, no Google and no Intel. Key issues are in finance and skills, including how our equity markets function that leave too few potential giants to expand organically rather than sell up."

There's a couple of obvious comments to be made on Cable's observations. First, that the technology shortfall was such a strong theme of his letter, yet it received zero coverage at a national level. Second, that Cable is of course responsible for our technology and IT skills base as the minister for business, innovation and skills, so he's not exactly without his share of the blame.

It is refreshing on one level to see this issue being raised in such a senior political environment, but depressing that it still has to be said. I know I'm biased as a technology writer, but surely it is patently obvious to anyone that technology innovation is the future for any major developed Western economy, and that the UK has a unique opportunity - and a very limited window for that opportunity - to put a strategic policy emphasis on all things digital to make us a real world leader.

We are sadly not privy to David Cameron's response, and we will have to wait for the Budget later this month to see any evidence of a policy shift or new funding available.

But it will prove to be a devastating legacy for this, and any other government, that fails to see the opportunity of technology innovation as a core economic cornerstone. Let's hope we are not to look back in 10 years' time and read another leaked ministerial letter lamenting how we missed our chance back in 2012.

Loving it when an identity plan comes together

2012-03-02T11:59:32Z

To quote a phrase that was mightily popular in the 1980s: I love it when a plan comes together.

In this case, it's not even my plan, but it's one I've found myself writing about often over the past few years. Here's just a couple of recent examples:

Government identity banks start to take shape

Goodbye ID cards - is it time to say hello to identity banks?

I'm referring to the start of the roll out of what has now come to be called Identity Assurance (IDA), the government's programme for securely verifying that we are who we say we are when accessing online public services.

The Department for Work and Pensions has issued a tender to purchase an IDA system that will support the introduction of the government's flagship welfare reform, universal credit, to allow 21 million benefit claimants to use the new "digital by default" services they will be offered. IDA will authenticate who they are, and allow them access to online public services.

The DWP tender will establish a framework for use by every other public sector organisation, which promises to revolutionise the digital delivery of government services - potentially achieving a vision of what we all used to call e-government, first laid out by Tony Blair as long ago as the late 1990s.

Commercial organisations are already gearing up to offer IDA services - the Post Office recently tendered for an IT partner to help establish its network as an identity assurance provider. Banks, credit agencies, perhaps even supermarkets and social media firms will no doubt be looking at the opportunities that IDA presents.

The concept has been around for ages and it's been a rocky road to get this far.

Blair's government started an IDA-like programme in 2000, using digital certificates, with backing from Royal Mail, Barclays and NatWest. Despite some small-scale trials, the plan foundered over the lack of a commercial model and the fact that so few potential customers were using the internet as actively as they do today.

Sadly Blair and Gordon Brown then stormed down the ill-advised and poorly thought-through idea of identity cards as the so-called "gold standard" for e-identity. We all know what a costly failure that proved to be.

The idea for commercially-operated "identity banks" was briefly resurrected in 2008, when former HBOS CEO Sir James Crosby wrote a report, commissioned by Brown as chancellor of the exchequer, that recommended banks and trusted institutions act as authenticators of our digital identity. Crosby even introduced the phrase "identity assurance".

The idea, at its most simple, was not dissimilar to the way debit cards work: A bank verifies your identity and establishes a trusted relationship with you. When you need to prove your identity for some form of electronic transaction elsewhere - such as a benefits claim - the bank is able to digitally confirm you are who you say you are, much as they would confirm you have the funds to make a debit card purchase.

In all his wisdom, and blinkered by an apparent obsession with ID cards, Brown ignored the report he had commissioned when he became prime minister.

IDA attempts to resurrect that principle in a move that could revolutionise how we trade online.

If IDA establishes a proven and secure mechanism to confirm to government that we are who we say we are online, then surely every commercial organisation would want to take advantage of that same authorisation service.

Before long, if successful, IDA could become an established and world-leading mechanism for tackling identity theft and online fraud across the entire UK economy.

IDA avoids the "Big Brother" elements that identity cards implied with its central identity register. Indeed, government would not even own the mechanism for authentication - it would just be a customer for it. Each of us would have the right to choose the organisation through which we verified our electronic identity, and just like a bank account if you found someone else offering a better service you could switch. IDA aims to establish a whole new marketplace for such services.

For me, the concept is a no-brainer.

Clearly it's not without its challenges, not the least of which is simply that it hasn't been done before. But to meet an obvious need - proving our online identity - which is so essential to the future of a digital economy in the internet age, IDA is a plan for its time and one that could prove to be hugely significant.

The man who might be king (well, deputy king)

2012-02-24T12:41:25Z

When Computer Weekly interviewed Cabinet Office permanent secretary Ian Watmore recently, he cited three names as the key people driving change in IT across the public sector.

Two were to be expected - digital director Mike Bracken, who is leading the move to "digital by default" public services; and open data czar Tim Kelsey, who is opening up government data and enabling the transparency agenda.

For some, the third name might be less well-known: Liam Maxwell, director of ICT futures at the Cabinet Office, most recently a local authority politician and head of IT at David Cameron's old school, Eton College, who is currently serving on a short-term advisory contract.

So, who is the person identified by the second most senior civil servant in Whitehall as the key to change in government IT?

Maxwell seems set to be the fulcrum of that process of change. Numerous well-placed Whitehall IT insiders have strongly implied to Computer Weekly that Maxwell is the clear favourite to be appointed as the new deputy government CIO.

With Andy Nelson taking over as government CIO while continuing in his day job as CIO at the Ministry of Justice, it's clear that the top role is primarily that of a figurehead and spiritual leader for government CIOs - in a similar manner to current incumbent Joe Harley, who combines the role with being CIO of the Department for Work And Pensions until he retires next month.

It's increasingly apparent that the deputy role is where the real day-to-day power will lie, responsible for the dirty work in forcing recalcitrant Whitehall IT departments to adopt the government IT strategy that encourages the use of cloud computing, open source, agile development, short-term contracts and SME suppliers - all areas that previous governments have tried to force onto the laggards in public sector IT only to be thwarted by inertia and by those who feel more comfortable with the expensive status quo.

Maxwell is already fulfilling much of that role - setting the standards and processes for IT procurement and projects to force through change - to the extent that some suppliers even identify him as a bottleneck in IT because he has so many projects to approve.

The new deputy CIO needs to be someone willing to bash heads together, and not take "no" for an answer. Is Maxwell that man?

He has been a central figure in Tory IT policy since before the General Election that brought the coalition to power. He helped draft the Conservative technology policy for Francis Maude - now his boss at the Cabinet Office. He was closely involved in a tech think-tank, the Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age, which in September 2010 proposed dismantling the IT systems and business ecosystem established by Labour, with the promise of saving £8bn a year in IT costs.

The influence of the Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age could be seen from the fact that David Cameron himself helped to launch it.

Before taking on his current 12-month contract at the Cabinet Office, Maxwell was a Tory councillor at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. His political connections were clearly a factor in his appointment to the Cabinet Office, but he is a long-term IT guy too. He was head of computing at Eton College for seven years; head of IT at Capita Resourcing for three years before that; and IT chief for a variety of recruitment firms further back.

Not insignificantly, he was also at Accenture for two years - the IT services firm that also once employed Ian Watmore and Andy Nelson.

Maxwell is a vocal supporter of open source and cloud. He is close to Simon Wardley, one of the UK's leading thinkers on using cloud to commoditise IT provision, and open source as a competitive weapon. There seems little doubt that Maxwell's views will be similar.

The Cabinet Office seems to be laying the ground for Maxwell's promotion - he has recently been a speaker at some high-profile IT conferences, raising his own profile accordingly, spreading the word on open standards and promoting the use of SME suppliers.

If there is one potential drawback, it could be Maxwell's political ambitions. Insiders suggest he wants to be an MP, a role that would surely present an unacceptable conflict of interest with a Civil Service IT job - although who's to say we shouldn't have a capable minister for IT?

Even if the rumours are wrong and someone else turns up as deputy government CIO, there's no doubt that Maxwell will have a significant influence on the future of public sector IT - and in particular on its relationship with the IT industry.

If you're an IT supplier, and you don't yet know who Liam Maxwell is, you'd better find out.