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The DIGITAL magazine for European IT leaders FROM Computer Weekly

December 2012

Realise the benefits

of virtualisation
in safety

MITIGATE the
security risks of
Virtualisation
German freight
firm virtualises
data storage
How to Cut a
deal for your
outsourcing
datacentre
energy metrics
guauge green IT

How to cut risk while you cut your

hardware and energy costs

The CIOs in Europe

driving big data
analytics

Thinkstock

southern Europe
Mobile revenues
plummet

European news
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MITIGATE the
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Virtualisation
German freight
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How to Cut a
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energy metrics
guauge green IT
The CIOs in Europe
driving big data
analytics
southern Europe
Mobile revenues
plummet

Google pushes infrastructure

as a service into Europe

Google has expanded its infrastructureas-a-service (IaaS) cloud-computing

platform into Europe and reduced the
price of its cloud-based storage by 20%.
From 1 December 2012, the price for up to
1TB of storage was reduced by $0.025 per
month, to $0.095.

German retailer Otto invests

in neural software

German retail giant Otto invested capital

for a start-up analytics software supplier and achieved 40% improvement in
demand forecasting from the technology.
The company chose Blue Yonder to help it
improve on overstocking items and failing
to meet customer demand.

Telecity buys Finnish

datacentre operator

Telecity Group has bought Finland-based

datacentre operator Academica for 28m
(22.4m). The Academica acquisition
provides Telecity with a capacity of 3MW
in Helsinki.

EU gives green light to 530m

superfast broadband plans

The EU has given the green light to the

UK government to roll out 530m in
broadband funding. The move is intended
to bring superfast broadband to 90% of
homes, and a minimum speed of 2Mbps.

Russian internet blacklist

law comes into effect

Russia has introduced a new law ostensibly aimed at sites with images of child
abuse and other illegal material, but the
law has raised fears of censorship.

Additional resources
The future of computing at IBM labs
A tour of Londons Victorian sewers
Scenes from EMC Momentum 2012
Computer Weekly Supplier Directory
SNW Europe 2012 coverage
Citrix Synergy Barcelona 2012

UK citizens back pre-emptive

cyber strikes, poll shows

Nearly two-thirds of UK citizens back

pre-emptive cyber strikes on states that
pose a credible threat to national security,
a survey has revealed. A total of 1,000
people were polled by OnePoll for security information event management firm
LogRhythm, which compiled the report.

Dublin Airport turns to

virtualisation for CCTV data

The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has

announced plans to use virtualised servers. The organisation will use them to
store CCTV data for easy retrieval and
improved management.

European Parliament opposes

UN control of the internet

European MPs are the latest grouping

to voice concerns that the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) could get
control of the internet through its coming
revision of telecoms rules. n

SAP TechEd Madrid:

SAP chiefs urge businesses to go digital
SAP urged businesses to rethink core business values to become more consumer-centric using
mobile, social, cloud and business intelligence (BI) during SAP TechEd.
During the event in Madrid, Bill McDermott, co-CEO of SAP, addressed delegates via a video
link at the opening by saying: There will be another two billion consumers by 2030, and they
want to purchase in the digital world.
CW Europe December 2012 2

editors comment
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MITIGATE the
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Virtualisation
German freight
firm virtualises
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How to Cut a
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outsourcing
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energy metrics
guauge green IT
The CIOs in Europe
driving big data
analytics
southern Europe
Mobile revenues
plummet

Virtualisation: In
pursuit of efficiency

espite having gone through several phases

over the past few years, virtualisation is still
very much a word of the moment. It has enabled many users to reduce their hardware assets
and make IT more efficient, with multiple virtual
machines running on the same hardware.
Moving beyond the mainframe, the term virtualisation is now often used to refer to a wide range of
technologies, including products for platform, desktop, server, storage, application and network.
Many benefits come with virtualisation; however,
as it spreads into a variety of technology areas it is
important IT professionals keep up with the skills
and expertise required of them to ensure their business remains safe and efficient.
The rise of cloud computing and budget constraints means more businesses are opting for
virtual environments on premise and in the cloud.
However, a lack of expertise in these areas may be
exposing businesses to unnecessary security risks.
In this issue of CW Europe, read about why
researchers and other members of the security
industry believe virtualisation security is often
either overlooked or tagged on. Find out what the
Information Security Forum (ISF) recommends for
those considering virtualisation and top tips to support you in your decision.
A case study involving German Federal Office for
Freight Transport Bundesamt fr Gterverkehr
(BAG) reveals how it used storage virtualisation
to overcome data management issues.
BAG is responsible for controlling and monitoring freight transport services in Germany. Due to
tight budget constraints, the organisations IT team
needed to find a way of doing more with less and
turned to storage virtualisation to solve its data
storage challenges.
In this issue you will also find a selection of European news and additional resources about virtualisation and other hot topics throughout Europe. n

Kayleigh Bateman
Editor of CW Europe
Special projects editor for Computer Weekly

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Virtualisation security

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MITIGATE the
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Virtualisation

Seeking Nirvana: In search of

virtualisation without security risk
Cost pressures and the rise of cloud computing have led many businesses to
turn to lower-cost virtual environments on the premises and in the cloud, but
a lack of expertise and experience may be exposing these organisations to
unnecessary security risks. Warwick Ashford reports
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esearchers and other members of the

security industry believe that, in
addition to a general lack of understanding about how virtual environments
work, the business focus on performance and
cost often means security is either overlooked or tagged on only at the end.
According to Forrester security and risk
analyst Andrew Rose, many IT professionals
think a virtual server is the same as a physical one, even though the risks are different.
As organisations seek the economic benefits of virtualising their IT environments,
servers are no longer individual pieces of

equipment hard-wired into carefully controlled physical networks. Instead, they are
complex software instances running on top
of virtual networks and connecting to
increasingly virtualised storage layers, and
data protection must change accordingly.
So what should information security professionals do to ensure their organisations
virtual environments are secure as well as
cost efficient? The Information Security
Forum (ISF) has worked with its members to
identify key responses that have been
included in a standard of good practice for
securing virtual environments.
CW Europe December 2012 4

Virtualisation security
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MITIGATE the
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Virtualisation
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outsourcing
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energy metrics
guauge green IT
The CIOs in Europe
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Mobile revenues
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The ISF believes these key responses

should include:
n Establishing a policy for the use of
virtual servers;
n Limiting the number of virtual servers that
can run on a single physical server;
n Controlling the number of critical business
applications run on a single server.
Virtual servers should be protected by
applying standard security management
practices to hypervisors, which are the key
points of protection, says Adrian Davis,
principal research analyst at the ISF.
These practices include: applying a strict
change management; monitoring, reporting
and reviewing super-user activities; restricting access to the virtual server management
console; and monitoring network traffic
between different virtual servers and
between virtual servers and physical servers
to detect malicious or unexpected behaviour.
Each virtual server should be protected by
applying similar security management
practices to those applied to physical servers,
including restricting physical access, system
hardening, applying change management
and malware protection, monitoring and
performing regular reviews, and applying
network-based security controls such as
firewalls, intrusion detection and data leakage protection, says Davis.
He also believes that security professionals
should not consider only virtualised environments in their own organisation, but should
also focus on virtualised environments in
their suppliers, and demand that those

Each virtual server

should be protected
by applying similar
security management
practices to those
applied to physical
servers

Adrian Davis, ISF

suppliers adhere to the same good practices.
Lee Newcombe, managing consultant at
Capgemini, says he supports the view that
security professionals must consider new
strategies and technologies to apply the
most appropriate security controls in such
virtualised environments.
We should not simply be replicating the
familiar deployment models from the physical world in the virtual world, he says.
Traditional n-tier architecture which
separates out the presentation, application
and data tiers via physical firewalls is not as
effective in the virtual world, he says, where
there may be two or more of these tiers
hosted on the same physical hardware.

Consider compliance

In designing security for virtualised environments, Newcombe advises that information

security professionals consider compliance

Tips for virtual security design

n Consider compliance requirements. Are there any requirements that enforce a degree of

physical separation? Such requirements may necessitate multiple virtualised environments with
physical firewall (or air-gapped) separation.
n Identify the resources that the service requires to function. Think in terms of network access,
compute resource and storage rather than servers and network segments.
n Identify the different types of users that require access to the service, for example external
users, internal users or trusted partners.
n Group the identified resources into zones (security domains) based on the characteristics of
the data, user communities and access requirements.
n Conduct a risk assessment. Identify the risks that need to be managed per zone.
n Base the security controls around these zones; controlling and monitoring the activities within
each zone and, more importantly, controlling and monitoring the interactions across each zone.
CW Europe December 2012 5

Virtualisation security
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guauge green IT
The CIOs in Europe
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requirements, identify resources required,

identify types of users who will access data,
conduct a risk assessment, group resources
into zones or security domains, and base
security controls around these zones.
Gartner researcher Trent Henry says that
by providing virtual switches that allow
communication between guests on a physical host, virtualisation hides a considerable
amount of traffic from traditional physical
network protection, including intrusion
detection and intrusion prevention systems.
Zoning and network visibility not only help
with defence in depth, but also answer
compliance obligations and limit infrastructure scope for audits, says Henry. Gartner
clients take three approaches: routing virtual
traffic to physical choke points (routers/
firewalls); increasing protection in guests via
system firewalls; and using hypervisorintegrated protection like virtual firewalls.
While controlling and monitoring the activities within, and interactions between, security zones is important, this often raises
concerns, says Capgeminis Newcombe.
In a virtualised server environment you are
limited to the firewalling and monitoring
tools that the virtualised management
infrastructure can support unless you can
afford the expense of physical firewalls and
multiple virtualised server farms, he says.
Furthermore, the hypervisor itself represents a single point of separation failure that
is not present in the physical world, albeit
one that may have undergone formal security evaluation. Newcombe believes security
professionals need to be pragmatic, adapting
to the capabilities of virtualised environments and making the best use of these new
capabilities, rather than seeking to simply
lift and shift designs from the physical
world to the virtual world.

In a virtualised
server environment
you are limited to
the firewalling and
monitoring tools
that the virtualised
management
infrastructure can
support unless you can
afford the expense of
physical firewalls and
multiple virtualised
server farms

Lee Newcombe, Capgemini

Security standards for virtualisation
But securing a virtual environment is not
just about focusing on technology; you also
need to look at standards, processes, controls, monitoring and logging, says Kevin
Wharram of the London Chapter ISACA
Security Advisory Group.
In securing virtual environments, information professionals first have to identify what
virtualisation technology their organisation
has in-house. It is then advisable to find
various online resources for securing that
technology, such as VMware security advisories, says Wharram. n
Warwick Ashford is the security editor of Computer Weekly

ISF recommendations
n Segregate virtual servers according to the confidentiality requirements of data they process.
n Separate virtual servers to prevent data being transferred between discrete environments.
n Restrict access to a limited number of authorised individuals (eg hypervisor administrators)

capable of creating virtual servers and making changes to them correctly and securely.
n Encrypt communications between virtual servers (eg using Secure Sockets Layer or IPSec).
n Segregate the roles of hypervisor administrators (for multiple virtual servers).
CW Europe December 2012 6

case study
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Virtualisation
German freight
firm virtualises
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How to Cut a
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outsourcing
datacentre
energy metrics
guauge green IT
The CIOs in Europe
driving big data
analytics
southern Europe
Mobile revenues
plummet

German public sector firm beats

storage woes with virtualisation
German transport organisation BAG turned to virtualisation when its data
storage burden looked set to overwhelm capacity, writes Antony Adshead

ata management was becoming a big

problem for the German Federal
Office for Freight Transport, Bundesamt fr Gterverkehr (BAG).
As a limited budget forced the IT team to
do more with less, it turned to storage
virtualisation to beat data challenges in a
cost-effective way.
BAG is responsible for multiple tasks
relating to the control and monitoring of
transport services in Germany.
The functions and responsibilities of its
1,700 employees ranges from the central
data system that coordinates deferred toll
calculation to driver registration and transport law, from truck tolls to the overseeing of
multiple aspects of the transport market.
One of the biggest challenges facing the
office is the growth of data, says Colja
Steinmetzler, systems administrator at BAG.
The data at BAG stemmed from various
sources; from email programmes to the

UMTS-connected mobile client.

The abundance of tasks does not make
the job of the planning IT resources any
easier, he says.

Strict standards in Germany

As with all public bodies in Germany, BAG

is required to abide by strict standards of
cost-efficiency in planning and operating its
IT facilities.
These standards include the total cost, but
also the consideration of the effective lifespan. Any purchase must be economically
sustainable, with an operational duration of
at least three to five years, says Steinmetzler.
For the IT team at BAG, it was important to
develop a storage system that was flexible
and scalable in every sense.
Performance should not be put at risk at
any cost. This is a challenge in the fast
moving world of IT, and one that is even
more specific to storage systems in the
As with all German public
sector organisations, BAG
is obliged to observe strict
standards of efficiency

CW Europe December 2012 7

case study
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backdrop of exponential data growth,

Steinmetzler says.
We could be assigned new tasks and
responsibilities at any time. With a planned
system life-span of five years, we need a high
degree of flexibility, he adds.

Storage from Hitachi Data Systems

Steinmetzler is responsible for the challenge

of dealing with all things storage-related.
For a number of years now, the IT team has
been using storage products from Hitachi
Data Systems (HDS).
It was using HDSs Universal Storage
Platform (USP V) to store around 140 applications serving the 12 field offices and their
employees. For its files, it used HDSs network attached storage (NAS) product.
The NAS system was integrated in the
environment via common internet file system (CIFS) and network file system (NSF),
says Steinmetzler.
But as data continued to explode and as
data retention regulations became stricter,
the IT team realised that an increase in
storage capacity was necessary.
The organisation had already virtualised its
servers using VMwares Sphere platform and
was reaping the benefits. Hence, it decided
to add storage virtualisation as the next step.
It selected Virtual Storage Platform (VSP)
from HDS for storage virtualisation.

Cost recovery

Instead of simply increasing storage from

60TB to 120TB, the team decided to change
to a higher performing virtualised storage
system which would be more economical,
efficient and easily scalable.
Because of its modular nature, it can be
easily expanded, with an upgrade of storage
and CPU power being both quick and inexpensive, he says.
The project would not just bring flexibility
and scalability, but it also helped BAG cut the
electricity and cooling costs used by its old
non-virtualised storage hardware.
But the results were better than expected,
says Steinmetzler. The cost savings with the
new virtualised systems were about 52%
every year.
Such savings mean that the initial set-up
cost of the project would be gained back
within the first three years of the projects
five-year lifespan, he says.
As part of the migration, the team conducted a test run that showed the viability of
the planned migration process. It also used
Hitachi TrueCopy Licence a replication
technology which made the process less
stressful, says Steinmetzler. n
This an edited excerpt. Click here to read the full article online
Antony Adshead is the storage editor of Computer Weekly

Dublin Airport overhauls IT with virtualisation

As workloads expanded at Dublin Airport Authority, it launched a major IT infrastructure overhaul in 2012 with HPs converged infrastructure and VMware vSphere platform. In under a year,
the virtualisation project has given the IT team cost savings, standardised IT, highly available
infrastructure and a centrally managed environment.
The virtualisation project at Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) is a five-year IT plan worth about
2m (1.6m) and will drive IT efficiency across its airports and bring cost savings.
It all started when the IT team started developing a virtualisation test environment in 2010 on
Microsofts Hyper-V platform.
We used Hyper-V for testing and found out that virtualisation brought a lot of IT efficiency,
improved our speed to delivery and helped us save costs, said Martin Clohessy, server and storage manager at DAA.
But for the actual production environment, it chose VMwares vSphere platform for a more
stable and high-performance infrastructure.
While the IT team found the Hyper-V platform-based test environment efficient and costeffective, when systems failed, it took too long to failover the system to another server, said
David McCabe, technology solutions manager at DAA.
CW Europe December 2012 8

Outsourcing
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How to renegotiate your

outsourcing agreements
As European firms boost services budgets to weather the economic climate,
many are finding their existing deals are unfit for purpose, reports Karl Flinders

rganisations in many sectors

The events of recent years may mean
banks outsourcing deals are no
are seeking to renew the terms
longer fit for purpose
of their contractual agreements
as they attempt to weather the
economic climate. IT outsourcing is going
through substantial change as the result of
an economic downturn of extreme proportions and major advances in technology.
Tight budgets and increased service
options resulting from new technologies
such as the cloud mean many IT outsourcing contracts are no longer fit for purpose or present the best option available.
For example, a bank might have signed a
10-year agreement to outsource its datacentres in 2006; but a lot has changed since then. The financial services crash of 2008
might mean the bank has fewer customers, processes a smaller number of transactions
and has less money. At the same time, cloud computing has matured, meaning the bank
does not require as much datacentre space and does not need to pay for equipment up
front. Retail, manufacturing and travel sectors are all examples of markets hit hard by
recession and targeting new technologies to help them recover.

Downturn drives renegotiation

Steve Tuppen, director at sourcing advisory ISG, says the companys tax and price index
(TPI) shows that renegotiations across all types of outsourcing contracts are on the rise.
As a proportion of total outsourcing contracts awarded, they are at a 10-year high, at 33%,
and the first quarter of 2012 revealed an even higher figure of 44%, says Tuppen.
In the first half of 2012, restructured contracts worth 20m or more made up 15% of
total IT outsourcing contracts, he adds: IT outsourcing contracts are simply a projection of
future requirements and renegotiations are now seen as a normal adjustment to changing
business conditions.
Many businesses today find themselves in ineffective IT outsourcing agreements and
need to change. Kit Burden, head of technology sourcing at law firm DLA Piper, says the
number of contract renegotiations has been high over the past year.
We were doing almost as many renegotiations as new deals last year. It has eased off,
but there are still a lot, says Burden.
He says that, while some of the negotiations are attempts by the client to reduce costs
further, many are driven by a desire to restructure deals that were hurriedly agreed.
The first wave of deals, done in haste during the first stages of the recession, are in
trouble and need to be reworked, says Burden.
As a customers business has constricted during the recession, the pricing regime
hasnt flexed as much as intended and so the deal has become uneconomic.
CW Europe December 2012 9

Outsourcing
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Reasons to rethink your contract

Tuppen at ISG says reasons for renegotiating can be broken down into internal or external
factors. The main internal factor is low satisfaction, he says. He cites an ISG survey that
found, on average, companies reported receiving only 72% of the value they anticipated
from outsourcing contracts. Tuppen says deals that lack clearly defined objectives and
structures are most likely to have lower levels of satisfaction.
This is not always the suppliers fault unrealistic client expectations and low client investment in managing the relationship can also lead to contract renegotiation, he
adds. Tuppen also says that contracts are not always renegotiated for negative reasons:
It can also be to increase scope within a successful relationship and can be triggered by
the service provider which has identified an opportunity to introduce innovative practices or technologies that add increased value.
He says external factors that trigger a desire to renegotiate might be a change in business conditions; mergers and acquisitions; new service offers or channels; and the desire
to embrace technologies and processes.
Peter Schumacher, CEO at management consultancy Value Leadership Group, says in
the current economic conditions buyers are primarily aiming to cut costs and improve
the performance of services suppliers. A typical problem is that incumbent suppliers offshore and traditional become complacent over the years. Contracts are often
renegotiated or a second supplier introduced to keep the prime supplier on its toes and
create a wake-up call, he says. Schumacher adds that there is often a problem when IT
services providers interpret agreements differently to customers: Over time, companies
find that these contracts do not properly reflect operational realities and actual capabilities of the business/supplier.
Robert Morgan, director at sourcing consultancy Burnt Oak Partners, says the number
of renegotiations he is dealing with has increased by 50% over the past year. He says
businesses are in a strong negotiating position: It is open season from clients which are
approaching a break or merely because they feel that they can extract a better price from
the market and they can.
Factors driving renegotiations include competitors to the incumbent supplier offering
price cuts which the customer can use to get a better price on the existing deal, says
Morgan. This combined with pressure on procurement teams to reduce costs is even
leading to recently signed contracts being renegotiated. n
This is an edited excerpt. Click here to read the full article online
Karl Flinders is the services editor for Computer Weekly

European outsourcing budgets up 14% in three months

Megadeals are driving increased total spending on outsourcing in Europe, which had the highest
total spend of all global regions in the third quarter of this year.
European businesses increased outsourcing investments by 14% in the third quarter of 2012,
compared with the previous three months, but spent 12% less than the same period a year ago,
according to the latest TPI index.
Research from Information Services Group (ISG) also revealed that megadeals fuelled the rise
in Europe, with over half of global megadeals worth over 80m signed in the region.
Globally, the number of megadeals signed in 2012 is up 60% and has already surpassed the
full-year total of 2011.
Monitoring deals worth over 4m a year, the research found that a total of 2bn was spent in
Europe on outsourcing in the quarter.
CW Europe December 2012 10

datacentre hardware
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Energy taskforce adopts

datacentre efficiency metrics
Datacentre operators have new metrics to calculate how much energy comes
from green sources and is exported for re-use. Archana Venkatraman reports

German freight
firm virtualises
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How to Cut a
deal for your
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datacentre
energy metrics
guauge green IT
The CIOs in Europe
driving big data
analytics
southern Europe
Mobile revenues
plummet

global taskforce, comprising government authorities and industry body The

Green Grid, have selected three new metrics to improve a datacentres energy
efficiency. The metrics are Green Energy Coefficient (GEC), Energy Re-use Factor (ERF) and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE).
GEC, ERF and CUE will now join the metric Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), currently
used by datacentre managers globally. PUE was developed by The Green Grid in 2011.
PUE is determined by dividing the amount of power entering a datacentre by the power
used to run the computer infrastructure in it. Although used widely, experts have pointed
out datacentre cases where PUE does not work.
The new performance metrics by the global taskforce aim to help datacentre operators
understand their facilities energy performance quickly and easily.
The taskforce included the US Department of Energys Advanced Manufacturing Office
and Federal Energy Management Programs; the US Environmental Protection Agencys
Energy Star programme; the European Commission Joint Research Center (JRC) Data
Centers Code of Conduct; Japans Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry; Japans
Green IT Promotion Council; and The Green Grid.
We want to make it as easy as possible for the datacentre community to understand
and embrace these metrics, and how they can work together, says Joyce Dickerson,
board member of The Green Grid. When implemented correctly, they can save organisations a lot of time, money, and additional resources.
The first new metric - GEC - will quantify the portion of a datacentre facilitys energy
CW Europe December 2012 11

datacentre hardware
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that comes from green sources. The metric can be calculated on the basis of the green
energy consumed by the datacentre (in kWh kilowatt-hour) divided by total energy
consumed by the datacentre (in kWh).
The second metric ERF will identify the portion of energy that is exported for re-use
outside of the datacentre infrastructure. ERF can
be computed as re-use energy divided by total
energy consumed by the datacentre.
The third datacentre energy efficiency metric
atacentres can
CUE aims to enable an assessment of the total
greenhouse gas emissions of a datacentre relative
ensure energy is
to its IT energy consumption.
used efficiently
It can be calculated as the total carbon dioxide
emission equivalents (CO2eq) from the energy
and intelligently
consumption of the facility divided by the total IT
energy consumption.
Dominic Philips
Although there is more work to do, we think
the new metrics will bring us one step closer to
Datum
a universally adopted set of metrics, indices and
measurement protocols that will have a positive
effect on the industry, says Dickerson.
The three new metrics were selected through discussion, exercise and trial among the
taskforce participants.
The datacentre efficiency taskforce has also launched a memo which provides a framework for users to approach the metrics holistically, ensuring datacentre owners and
operators can assess and improve the performance of their mission-critical facilities.
Taking an environmentally intelligent approach to energy efficiency will be critical to
satisfy the demands of the regulatory authorities, says Dominic Philips, managing director of Datum.
Datacentres cannot easily claim to be green, but what they can do is ensure that
energy is used efficiently and intelligently, he adds.
The taskforce aims to harmonise metrics and measurement protocols for key energyefficiency metrics.
The taskforce will continue collaboration as an ongoing effort to improve datacentre
energy and greenhouse gas emission efficiencies, according to The Green Grid. n

Archana Venkatraman is the datacentre editor for Computer Weekly

Half of enterprise data stored outside the datacentre

Globally, almost half (46%) of enterprise information is being stored outside of its own datacentre, with 23% stored in the cloud as mobile computing and cloud services go mainstream,
according to the State of Information Report 2012 from Symantec.
The report, launched at Symantec Vision 2012 in Barcelona, highlights the significant effect of
cloud computing and mobility on businesses today.
With mobile devices and cloud giving employees access to information from nearly anywhere, were also seeing more sensitive information living beyond the traditional IT boundaries,
says Francis deSouza, group president of enterprise products and services at Symantec.
This is creating concern about how to best protect this information.
The study shows 12% of business data resides on private or hybrid clouds and 11% of data on
the public cloud. The advantages in cost and agility presented by cloud computing are leading to
significant use of the cloud to store business information, according to Symantec.
CW Europe December 2012 12

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Customer understanding
drives big data analytics
A pan-European survey reveals the motivations behind big data analyses lie in
business growth and gaining competitive advantage. Brian McKenna reports

aining a better understanding of customers is the main motivation for big

data programmes. This is one finding
from a Computer Weekly/TechTarget
survey of 184 UK and continental European IT
and business professionals who are primarily
engaged with data matters.
The survey, carried out from July to September
2012, indicates the state of big data technology
adoption, but also brings out the business drivers
for big data programmes.
The survey ranged beyond big data and
revealed that organisations are investing significantly in data management and business intelligence (BI) more widely.

Business growth,
organic or by
acquisition,
emerged as the
main driver in the
growth of data
volumes

Thinkstock

southern Europe
Mobile revenues
plummet

CW Europe December 2012 13

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southern Europe
Mobile revenues
plummet

Some 56% of survey respondents expect to spend more on BI and analytics over the
next year. The survey found 43% are keen to spend more on data warehousing and analytical databases.
Nevertheless, a 27% planned increase in big data technologies is noteworthy, given
these are still in the early days of adoption. Some 23% of respondents already have big
data programmes at various stages of development.
Business growth, organic or by acquisition, emerged as the main driver in the growth
of data volumes. Gaining better customer understanding is expressed as the main motivation for big data programmes (50%), and organisations see big data as a way to gain
competitive advantage (48%).
Social media data much discussed in big data
circles is important, say respondents. Some
33% said they were looking to track sentiment
ocial media data
towards their organisations on social networks.
But more important still is machine data, with
much discussed
38% seeking to make better use of sensor and
log data to improve operations.
in big data circles
Although the survey shows that big data is for
is important
real, advanced technologies that pre-date the big
data hype such as data mining and predictive
according to
analytics are still ahead in adoption.
Currently 63% of respondents carry out data
respondents
mining, 62% use predictive analytics, and 48%
use big data analytics.
ome
said
Moreover, the days of relational database techthey were looking
nologies are far from over.
Only 20% of respondents said they find existing
to track sentiment
relational databases and data warehousing to be
inadequate for dealing with new forms of data,
towards their
such as video, images and social media data.
organisations on
Structured data emerges as critical still. Its
importance has not been eclipsed by unstrucsocial networks
tured data, commonly said to comprise 80% of
any organisations data. n

33%

Brian McKenna is the business applications editor for Computer Weekly

SwissCom removes Business Intelligence from IT

to support business transformation
During the integration of three separate groups of Swiss telecoms provider SwissCom, the business intelligence (BI) function was the only place to get a view of the whole organisation.
Following its decision in 2008 to converge groups dedicated to fixed line, mobile and business services into a single company with divisions serving consumers, SMEs and corporations
SwissComs IT team was locked into protracted integration of enterprise resource planning
(ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and billing systems, says Jean-Marie Fiechter,
SwissComs head of BI governance.
Business intelligence was the only team to get a good view of the whole business at the time.
We helped the company survive, Fiechter says. In the first year we were convergent, BI was
more or less the only place where we could get data and do some of the reporting for control
and management in a more or less convergent way.
CW Europe December 2012 14

Mobile networking
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Mobile revenues
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Vodafone blames southern

Europe as revenues plummet
Mobile operator reports substantial drop in revenues as the Eurozone crisis
takes its toll on southern European network markets. Jennifer Scott reports

odafone has reported a significant downturn in revenues for the first six
months of fiscal year 2012, blaming markets in southern European countries.
Revenues for the Vodafone group were down 7.4% year-on-year to just under
21.8bn. But in southern Europe, revenues for the period dropped 17.5% to
slightly shy of 5.4bn.
Vodafone did not break down all of the countries in this section, but revealed that Spain
and Italy were the worst offenders when it came to service revenues, dropping 19.3%
and 18.1% respectively, compared with 2011.
We have continued to make progress on our strategic priorities over the last six
months, with good growth in data and emerging markets in particular, says Vittorio
Colao, CEO of the Vodafone Group.
In the short term, however, our results reflect tougher market conditions, mainly in
southern Europe. We remain very positive about the longer-term opportunities and our
Vodafone 2015 strategy reflects our confidence in the future.
Key aspects of the Vodafone 2015 plan include a focus on unified communications in
enterprise and growing exposure to emerging markets.
Revenues in northern and central Europe were not so badly affected, but still reported
an overall fall in revenues of 1.5% year-on-year.
When it came to service revenues, the UK tumbled by 2.6%, but Germany reported an
even worse figure, falling 6.5% compared with 2011.
The one positive report Vodafone could celebrate was a 2.4bn dividend from Verizon
Wireless, the US mobile company it holds a 45% stake in. This is due to be paid by the
end of 2012. n
Jennifer Scott is the networking editor of Computer Weekly

UK beats France and Germany for superfast

broadband, says Stakeholder Group
The UK is embracing superfast broadband at one of the fastest rates in Europe.
Figures released by the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) show UK superfast broadband
uptake remains below Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and the Netherlands in the percentage of
households with superfast broadband installed, at 6%.
Both Spain and Germany are below this number at 5%, with France coming in with 3%. Italy
does not register on the chart.
The report shows the UK is one of the fastest growing areas, reaching current bandwidth in
three years compared with nine for Sweden and seven for Denmark.
Only the Netherlands and Portugal have stronger growth rates. But as BSG points out, the
Netherlands has a much larger cable network, meaning more people could sign up.
The BSG report says there are a number of factors that could affect growth, including the quality of the network and the price of superfast connections.
CW Europe December 2012 15

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