In Depth

In Depth

• Smart speakers: How to give apps a voice

  Experts discuss how to go about creating compelling voice-enabled user interfaces for smart speakers  Continue Reading

• Net gain? Why networks matter when it comes to hyper-convergence

  The rise of hyper-convergence is radically changing how enterprises manage their IT estates, but its effect on the network has yet to be fully realised  Continue Reading

• Organised thinking builds app success

  We look at how large enterprises can create an efficient organisational structure for mobile app development  Continue Reading

• Navigating ASEAN’s patchy cyber security landscape

  Cyber resilience remains low across Southeast Asia, a regional economic powerhouse that is increasingly susceptible to cyber threats as its digital economy grows  Continue Reading

• Developers at the mobile edge

  We look at the challenges and opportunities to be found in creating mobile apps for an expanding array of devices  Continue Reading

• Shell downstream CIO Craig Walker: Invest time in your team

  Craig Walker, CIO for Shell’s global downstream business, says IT leaders need to invest time in their teams and take them and the business on any change journey  Continue Reading

• Do website design platforms pose too big a security risk?

  Cloud-based website design platforms are booming in popularity because of their simplicity and affordability, but business security should be considered carefully when using such services  Continue Reading

• GDPR: Not too late to ensure real risks will be addressed

  With just four months to go before the General Data Protection Regulation compliance deadline, there is a growing anxiety in many parts of the regulated community that their GDPR plans may not be fit for purpose  Continue Reading

• The rights and wrongs about GDPR compliance

  We explore some common myths surrounding the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation  Continue Reading

• Private cloud storage 101: Key components and hardware options

  Private cloud makes consumption of storage easier for the user and simplifies delivery for the IT department. We walk through the key components and the platform choices  Continue Reading

• Four CIO trends to watch in 2018

  As automation becomes more popular, bringing with it plenty of opportunities, 2018 is all about investing in in-house skills and innovation, with a focus on equality and flexibility  Continue Reading

• Why GDPR is great for SMEs

  SME laggards facing potential fines for non-compliance should wake up and smell the tasty carrot of a leaner, smarter business post-GDPR  Continue Reading

• How secure are smart energy grids?

  The improved efficiency of smart grids need to be weighed against the cost of security - presenting a unique opportunity for the tech sector and a new market for security companies  Continue Reading

• Inside DBS Bank’s digital journey

  The Singapore-based bank laid the foundation for its digital strategy a decade ago, starting with an overhaul of its IT systems before going big on cloud computing in later years  Continue Reading

• Storage in containers: The answer to persistent storage needs?

  With compute requirements often fragmented, short-lived and bursty, traditional storage architectures can struggle to cope – so is storage in containers the solution?  Continue Reading

• In the know: how a digital workspace can drive innovation

  In a digital world, engaged employees can support innovation using a new generation of tools that leverage behavioural science and more  Continue Reading

• Get tooled up to meet GDPR requirements

  We look at options for tools to help organisations comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation  Continue Reading

• Smart speakers open new windows into customer behaviour for CRM

  Voice recognition has become a new frontier for customer relationship management. What does the new voice channel mean for understanding consumers and how will voice data integrate with existing customer intelligence?  Continue Reading

• Cloud culture calls for flexible networks

  Cloud-based workloads demand more flexibility, so how can businesses rethink their WAN strategies to accommodate this  Continue Reading

• Storage briefing: The evolution of software-defined storage

  The evolution of software-defined storage, from simple software products to those that offer scale-out, hyper-converged, NVMe, public cloud and container functionality  Continue Reading

• How Southeast Asia is keeping pace with AI

  Forward-looking organisations in the region are embracing artificial intelligence, but uneven access to connectivity and a lack of skills and understanding of the technology are holding back wider adoption  Continue Reading

• Cloud-to-cloud backup: What it is and why you need it

  Applications that run in the cloud are protected, but only so much. For full protection of data generated by cloud-based apps you need cloud-to-cloud backup  Continue Reading

• The death of the mainframe is greatly exaggerated, says CA

  With mainframe software tools forming a key part of its overall growth strategy, CA Technologies remains proud of its mainframe heritage  Continue Reading

• Steal a march on cyber criminals through security by deception

  Security by obscurity, although a common and tempting practice, is generally not recommended, but security by deception offers a way for defenders to make it more difficult for attackers to succeed and easier for defenders to catch them  Continue Reading

• UK sale of surveillance equipment to Macedonia raises questions over export licence policy

  The UK approved an export licence for the sale of surveillance equipment to Macedonia – while the country was engaged in an illegal surveillance programme against its citizens. A senior minister was consulted on the decision  Continue Reading

• Build IoT apps the easy way

  CIOs may find themselves spoilt for choice when assessing digital platforms for IoT. We look at the options  Continue Reading

• Key choices in Docker container storage deployment

  Containers often need persistent storage, but how do you achieve that? We look at the key options, including Docker volumes versus bind mounts, and Docker Volume Plugins  Continue Reading

• From consumers to contributors: The evolution of open source in the enterprise

  The use of open source software is commonplace in enterprises, but many organisations are still reluctant to contribute their own code, despite the benefits it can bring  Continue Reading

• The multi-cloud myth: Why workload portability is still a pipe dream

  While IT providers are fond of suggesting moving workloads between clouds is as easy as dragging and dropping apps between environments, the reality can be far more complex  Continue Reading

• How Cyient streamlined its HR functions with the cloud

  The India-based supplier of engineering services is counting on a cloud-based human resource management system to improve efficiency and support its growing business  Continue Reading

• What ‘born in the cloud’ means for developers

  When it comes to building cloud-native apps, developers must code with an inherent appreciation for where processing, storage and analytics happens  Continue Reading

• CIO interview: How River Island is using cloud to fend off its fast fashion competitors

  River Island's CIO, Doug Gardner, discusses how embracing cloud, online and mobile devices is driving sales in its high street stores  Continue Reading

• Container technologies for cloud-native apps

  A deep dive exploring the layers that go into a container-based platform for enterprise applications  Continue Reading

• Making public cloud ERP work for your business

  If you work with specialists, migrating ERP to the public cloud can bring big business benefits – but it’s not for everyone  Continue Reading

• OpenStack vs hyper-converged: Open-source cloud in the datacentre

  We look at how to deploy OpenStack on hyper-converged infrastructure and how HCI suppliers’ products can support deployment of the open-source cloud in the datacentre  Continue Reading

• Where the device hits the network – a mobile device management update

  As business becomes increasingly mobile, we look at the latest trends in mobile device management to give businesses the edge  Continue Reading

• How retailers are using technology to remain relevant

  From the constant innovation at Asos, Amazon and Missguided to the new supply chain prowess flaunted by Diesel and Gap, fashion retailers are investing in tech to stay relevant to their customers  Continue Reading

• Formula 1: Mercedes team turns to big data in quest for victory in Grand Prix

  Data analytics could help Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport team gain an edge on rival Ferrari during the 2017 and 2018 Grand Prix season. Its head of IT, Matt Harris, reveals the team’s plans  Continue Reading

• Hyper-converged choices: DIY HCI software deployments

  What are the advantages of do-it-yourself hyper-converged infrastructure deployment and who are the key suppliers of HCI software? We run the rule over the DIY hyper-converged market  Continue Reading

• Integration is key to Office 365’s progress

  We look at how Microsoft Office 365 works and how far it has gone towards becoming a platform for integrating other tools  Continue Reading

• Automated decision making shows worrying signs of limitation

  AI and data-driven decision making projects need to be handled with care – worrying limitations revealed in the law and healthcare  Continue Reading

• How logic games have advanced AI thinking

  Pitting a chess computer against a chess champion used to be the end goal for machine intelligence. We explore how game play has improved artificial intelligence  Continue Reading

• Is cloud ERP software ready for prime time?

  While cloud-based enterprise resource planning applications are more widely adopted in the Asia-Pacific region, some companies are still hanging on to on-premise systems that remain core to their business  Continue Reading

• Data management: What does the future hold?

  We explore how firms are replacing transactional database management systems with new database architectures  Continue Reading

• Upset in Athenry: Examining the impact of Apple's delayed Irish datacentre build

  Apple is set to hear at the end of this month whether its much-delayed Irish datacentre build can go ahead. Computer Weekly examines the ins and outs of this complex case  Continue Reading

• Cryptocurrencies: a niche pursuit?

  Cryptocurrencies are on the rise, but why have digital currencies yet to reach the mainstream market?  Continue Reading

• GDPR brings serious implications for data storage

  New European Union data protection regulations put tough requirements on organisations that store “personally identifiable data”. We look at what is needed to achieve compliance  Continue Reading

• Nando's technology director explains using cloud to digitally disrupt its own business

  Nando’s technology director, Richard Atkinson, describes how the restaurant chain is using cloud to get closer to its customers and build stronger ties with its 14,000-strong workforce  Continue Reading

• Why immutable buckets are a worthy risk management tool

  Immutable buckets offer businesses benefits in terms of data compliance, backup, archiving and security  Continue Reading

• Côte banishes planning ‘pain and anguish’ from menu with Anaplan

  Restaurant chain has replaced spreadsheets with Anaplan financial planning software as it seeks more strategic control over growth  Continue Reading

• Datacentre decisions: Converged vs hyper-converged infrastructure

  Converged and hyper-converged infrastructure are ready-tested ways to put compute and storage into the datacentre. But which should you choose for your deployment?  Continue Reading

• MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor speaks about ‘expanding universe’ of BI

  Co-founder and CEO of MicroStrategy takes the long view on business intelligence and sees its universe expanding with mobile technologies  Continue Reading

• What it takes for the internet of things to take off in ASEAN

  Besides lowering adoption costs, an ecosystem of governments, technology suppliers and telcos is necessary for the internet of things to flourish in Southeast Asia  Continue Reading

• The Macedonian surveillance scandal that brought down a government

  Macedonia has been accused of using surveillance technology for covert spying - the subsequent political protests were instrumental in the ruling party losing power after 10 years  Continue Reading

• NVMe flash storage: What are the deployment options?

  NVMe offers to unleash performance potential of flash storage that is held back by spinning disk-era SAS and SATA protocols. We run through the key NVMe deployment options  Continue Reading

• Virtual reality as a healthcare tool

  Virtual reality is being used as a treatment tool across healthcare, tackling issues such as mental health, phobias and chronic pain management  Continue Reading

• Why and how men in the technology industry have helped women progress

  Many have argued gender parity will not happen in the technology industry without help from the top. Since the top is predominantly male, we’ve reached out to some of the men in the industry who are helping to drive tech equality  Continue Reading

• DevOps practitioners open up about enterprise adoption challenges

  Ahead of next week’s DevOps Enterprise Summit in London, practitioners have warned enterprises to stop thinking of DevOps as something only Silicon Valley firms and startups can do successfully  Continue Reading

• Cloud data portability: Obstacles to it and how to achieve it

  Cloud providers are very keen to get your data into their systems but sometimes it can be difficult or costly to move it elsewhere. We look at solutions to cloud portability  Continue Reading

• Organised crime exploiting new technology

  European law enforcement is to focus on collaborating with industry around cyber crime as organised crime groups increasingly exploit new technologies, according to a regional crime threat report  Continue Reading

• GDPR: a quick start guide

  We look at how UK organisations can prepare for the General Data Protection Regulation  Continue Reading

• MyRepublic sharpens competitive edge with open source

  Singaporean internet service provider has disrupted broadband markets, thanks to the agility and speed afforded by open source technologies  Continue Reading

• Understanding analytics and storage performance

  Analytics workloads place specific demands on storage. We take a look at the workload profiles of analytics use cases and the storage platforms available to support them  Continue Reading

• Backup testing: What to test, when to test, how often to test

  We run the rule over what’s involved in backup testing in virtual and physical server environments, how often you should test and the key pitfalls to avoid  Continue Reading

• How cloud, IoT and mobile devices are driving demand for edge datacentres

  The demand for edge datacentres and computing resources is steadily rising, but what's driving the trend?  Continue Reading

• How to tune storage performance for different workloads

  We run the rule over what’s needed to get the best storage performance for databases, virtual servers and desktops, web and email servers and analytics use cases  Continue Reading

• How UK organisations are leaving themselves open for cyber attack

  UK organisations are leaving themselves wide open to cyber attack despite huge investments in cyber security systems, according to two former hackers now working in cyber defence  Continue Reading

• How to implement a low-power WAN to support the IoT

  We explore the options and the implementation process for an LPWAN to support internet of things projects in the enterprise  Continue Reading

• Blockchain starts to prove its value outside of finance

  Technology behind bitcoin is being adopted in supply chains, power networks and even to support independent musicians  Continue Reading

• Time to restore from backup: Do you know where your data is?

  Making a backup is only the start of the process. You must be sure you can restore, that backups contain what you need, and that they will work with the applications that need them  Continue Reading

• Inside the well-planned metro network: how CityFibre does it

  Computer Weekly met metro network builder CityFibre to find out why, and how, the organisation believes it can mount a credible challenge to Openreach’s dominance of wholesale fibre  Continue Reading

• Australian startups find their way in the cloud

  Public cloud services have empowered Australian startups to scale up and go global from day one  Continue Reading

• How composable applications can improve software development

  We speak to experts in the field of software development about the pros and cons of componentising application software  Continue Reading

• Silicon Valley startups aim to make big data capture and prep slicker

  A group of California-based startup and early-stage data analytics and management companies are bidding to make big data, including sensor data, more tractable for analysis  Continue Reading

• Storage performance 101: Server, array and fabric/network basics

  We look at the key performance attributes of storage media in use today, and the choices and basic tuning steps you can take to get the most from your storage  Continue Reading

• Storage 101: Object storage vs block vs file

  We recap the key attributes of file and block storage access and the pros and cons of object storage, a method that offers key benefits but also drawbacks compared with SAN and NAS  Continue Reading

• DevOps done right: Why work-life balance matters to digital transformation success

  DevOps practitioners warn enterprises off neglecting the health and well-being of the IT staff responsible for delivering their digital transformation projects  Continue Reading

• The changing shape of mobile apps

  We find out how organisations can gain the agility they need to keep pace with mobile app innovation  Continue Reading

• Software asset management maturity in the age of SaaS

  For asset tracking, software as a service is no different from any other type of software licensing – but the process of software asset management needs adapting  Continue Reading

• Cloud contracts are still a minefield

  Cloud computing is maturing in the enterprise space, but the contracts that underpin cloud services have not evolved at the same pace  Continue Reading

• Private cloud: Orchestration, storage and containers

  We look at the key requirements and components of private cloud – including the use of container platforms – and the impact of private cloud on storage in the datacentre  Continue Reading

• Breaking the cyber kill chain

  Traditional antivirus is no longer good enough for fileless malware attacks that don’t leave a trace  Continue Reading

• DevOps done right: Creating a collaborative and supportive business culture

  Cultivating a supportive and collaborative business culture is considered central to getting DevOps to take hold in an organisation. We take a look at what this entails  Continue Reading

• Storage 101: Queue depth, NVMe and the array controller

  We look at queue depth and fan-out and fan-in ratios. With NVMe they could become a thing of the past, but for now there’s still a bottleneck at the storage array controller  Continue Reading

• Moore’s Law is running out – but don’t panic

  Can system performance continue to improve to cope with the burgeoning needs of datacentres  Continue Reading

• NVMe: PCIe card vs U.2 and M.2

  We talk NVMe form factor choices – add-in card vs U.2. vs M.2 – and their uses, for primary storage or cache, with Server StorageIO founder and analyst Greg Schulz  Continue Reading

• Challenges of complying with the Investigatory Powers Act

  Despite opposition by civil liberties groups and technology companies, the UK government has passed the controversial Investigatory Powers Act, adding a host of security and contingency requirements that UK businesses need to consider  Continue Reading

• Hybrid cloud 101: Using the cloud as a storage tier

  We look at what’s possible when it comes to hybrid cloud, what types of data and what hybrid cloud architectures can combine on-premise and cloud storage capacity  Continue Reading

• Backup 101: Incremental vs differential vs synthetic full backup

  Backup methods pros and cons: Full, incremental, differential, synthetic full, incremental forever, and reverse incremental. We set out the advantages and drawbacks of each  Continue Reading

• How information security professionals can help business understand cyber risk

  Information security is continually moving up business and board agendas, but information security professionals find it challenging to help business leaders to understand fully the cyber risks across increasingly digital businesses.  Continue Reading

• Secure IoT before it kills us

  Experts say more must be done to mitigate the potentially catastrophic threats presented by connected devices  Continue Reading

• NVMe over fabrics vs Fibre Channel, Ethernet, Infiniband

  NVMe over fabrics takes the built-for-flash advantages of the PCIe-based protocol, and allows NVMe to be sent via Fibre Channel, Ethernet and Infiniband networks  Continue Reading

• Disaster recovery testing: technology systems to test DR

  In this concluding part of a two-part series, Computer Weekly looks at ways of testing disaster recovery plans, with methods including array-based replication and hypervisor-based approaches  Continue Reading

• End user devices require careful orchestration

  Options for access to IT have soared since the desktop PC’s heyday, and organisations must conduct a balancing act  Continue Reading

• Storage briefing: NVMe vs SATA and SAS

  NVMe brings blistering performance gains over existing HDD-era disk protocols, and is a straight swap-in for PCIe server-side flash with array and hyper-converged products on the way  Continue Reading

• Disaster recovery testing: A vital part of the DR plan

  Disaster recovery provision is worthless unless you test out your plans. In this two-part series, Computer Weekly looks at disaster recovery testing in virtualised datacentres  Continue Reading

• Future of the server operating system

  We look at the evolution of the server operating system, and how the next generation is moving into the cloud  Continue Reading

• Looking beyond PUE to assess the true environmental impacts of datacentre growth

  Sustainability experts want operators to look beyond the accepted datacentre metrics to assess the impact the industry's growth is having on the environment  Continue Reading

• Software-defined storage: The pros and cons, and what is available

  Software-defined storage is a rapidly rising trend in the datacentre, but what are the advantages and disadvantages of building your own storage, and is it suitable for all organisations?  Continue Reading

• Value chain mapping – making sense of executive strategy

  In this first excerpt from his book on value chain mapping, Simon Wardley explains why business leaders need to understand the importance of maps for corporate strategy  Continue Reading