CA Technologies Corporate Blog: Perspectives : mobile

Peter Griffiths Outlines Technology Vision at CA World 2013

John Michelsen — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:49:00 GMT

How Mobility, DevOps and Cloud are driving business service innovation

Delivering the Technology keynote on Day 2 of CA World 2013, our own Peter Griffiths, EVP, outlined how mobility, DevOps and cloud are raising the stakes for IT management and security with the next wave of Business Service Innovation. (You can catch the full keynote replay here, along with other video content from the event.)

According to Peter, end user expectations driven by mobile applications, cloud and the rapid expansion of services from infrastructure availability to development platforms and APIs are changing the game in both development and operations.

Making IT more relevant than ever before in this complex new reality, he said, requires IT to be agile and adaptive in bringing ideas and innovations to market faster and to be, more efficient in managing and assuring business performance and building trusted security across cloud-spanning applications.

During his keynote, Peter made some key business announcements, including:

The launch of CA Mobile Device Management as part of the company's mobility solution. It builds on a new partnership with SAP which enables customers to mobilize their business with speed and control while ensuring the security of devices, applications and critical content, wherever it may be.
New DevOps capabilities, including the acquisition of application release automation pioneer Nolio and the launch of a powerful new solution, CA Lisa 7, which accelerates continuous delivery across the application delivery chain.
A series of cloud management and security solutions, including CA CloudMinder, CA Clarity Playbook and CA Service Desk. These solutions deliver identity, access and federation management, project and portfolio management, and service management as cloud services.

Peter was joined on stage by moderator and author Mark Jeffries who introduced three expert chat segments on mobility, DevOps and cloud.

The mobility panel focused on how mobility is driving enterprise transformation and featured customers and partners from SAP, Verizon, UBS Investment Bank as well as CA Technologies General Manager Ram Varadarajan.

I covered the DevOps session, focusing on how we're leading the industry in the DevOps movement and accelerating application delivery.

The cloud panel included customers and partners from Citrix, Rackspace and Shell, and CA Technologies General Manager Michael Denning for a discussion around cloud management and security.

The panelists and thought leaders talked about how users are demanding an increasingly rich, responsive and reliable experience. This raises the bar for Business Service Innovation to deliver outstanding end-user experience by linking transactions and applications with the performance, risk and quality of services across cloud, virtual and physical environments.

Peter closed by talking about how the evolving hybrid enterprise of the future will include devices, on-premise systems and data, external cloud services, and new applications developed by the enterprise and deployed in the cloud. In his vision, Peter outlined how IT organizations need to be equipped with a broad range of solutions that help them transform their business.

The audience left the keynote session with an understanding of how CA Technologies can take customers to the hybrid enterprise around an integrated set of platform services and confident that CA Technologies has the solutions that encompass the management and security service delivery lifecycle.

*Thanks to Robert Scoble for snapping this picture from the front row and posting to Twitter. You can find the tweet here.

Consumer Driven IT in Review – 29th edition

Jackie Kahle — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 12:00:00 GMT

With the growing attention on “Big Data” and what enterprises are doing with it have come increasing concerns over personal privacy. I must admit I have been pretty unconcerned so far with companies using personal data and Web history to target me with supposedly more relevant ads. Some people find these ads a bit creepy, but I have always ignored the ads and have never actually clicked on a display ad on a Web site, no matter how relevant. I have also been unconcerned with privacy and social media – I do use basic privacy controls, but since I’ve never posted anything remotely illegal, questionable or in poor taste, I don’t worry a lot about people accessing my information or posts.

Several recent posts in SiliconANGLE, however, have given me pause. The first by John Casaretto highlights leakage of personal identifiable information by both 2012 Presidential campaigns and claims that the notion of true anonymity is a myth, and one that is repeated again and again by policymakers, Web site operators and others.

The second article by Kristen Nicole gives examples of disturbing uses of big data. In one case, American Express used a person’s purchase history on specific Web sites to lower his credit limit, despite an excellent credit score. Their reasoning: “Other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repayment history with American Express.” She then goes on to give other examples in the healthcare industry.

Suffice to say I am going to start to pay a bit more attention to the growing clamor for better privacy laws and improved government policies related to the collection and use of big data.

Here’s what was in the IT consumerization news in the last two weeks:

November 28: What if Big Data is too big? A radical solution may be in DNA by Rita Koselka via Forbes
You can store 70 million books (700 terabytes of data) in a single gram of DNA. Researchers have treated DNA as just another digital storage device, but instead of binary data encoded as magnetic regions on a hard drive, they manipulated the composition of the DNA molecules.

November 28: "Live to work" driving BYOD in emerging markets by Antony Savvass via Computerworld UK
New survey by Ovum across 17 emerging/high-growth markets shows 57% of full-time employees engage in some form of BYOD, and use is growing faster than in mature markets.

November 27: How AWS can conquer enterprise IT resistance to public clouds by David Linthicum via InfoWorld
Amazon Web Services' Reinvent conference this week is sold out, but you would never know it by looking at adoption by enterprise IT.

November 26: Big data - how the revolution may play out by Larry Dignan via ZDNet
Big data pilots that began in 2012 should start to show results as they go into production in 2013 and beyond.

November 24: Online privacy threatened, but risky behaviors persist by Nathan Eddy via @eWeek
A new survey from ISACA shows Web users are still making risky decisions, while BYOD continues to pose major security challenges for IT departments.

November 24: Looking to industry for the next digital disruption by Steve Lohr via the NYTimes
General Electric bets big on the industrial Internet and Internet-of-Things.

November 23: MDM and BYOD possibilities in healthcare by Bobby Saini via InTheCapital
This article discusses how the growing use of BYOD presents new problems in properly maintaining these devices to protect patient information and remain HIPAA compliant.

November 21: Mobile cloud trends: apps let enterprises handle the risks of cloud computing by Bill Claybrook via TechTarget
Mobile clouds centralize the management and security of mobile devices, placing mobile device users into a safer, more controlled environment.

November 20: Why big data "eurekas" don't just happen by Jill Dyche via HBR
Business leaders have to foster a culture of discovery, allotting resources for big data proofs-of-concept and surrendering expectations for their outcomes.

November 19: BYOD: Is mobile device management the answer? by Paul Carrato via InformationWeek
This article points out that there are myriad challenges in protecting patient confidentiality and in securing personal data in healthcare settings.

November 16: Big Data: before you start restricting it, be aware of all the opportunities CEO Council via the Wall Street Journal
A panel discussion with CEOs from Brightstar, AOL and McKinsey covers privacy concerns and other issues related to the collection of consumer data.

November 14: Why CIOs should fight for innovation, not budget by David Carr via Brainyard
CIOs speaking at E2 Innovate said IT leaders should embrace the spread of tech spending to marketing and other groups.

November 14: 7 dumb cloud computing myths by Charles Babcock via InformationWeek
Most of the myths highlighted in this piece relate to security, costs and technologies.

November 12: 8 real-world big data deployments by Thor Olavsrud via InfoWorld
Some organizations are doing more than talking about Big Data – there are a wide range of projects being deployed across many different industries, particularly government and biotech.

November 11: Rethinking IT in the cloud computing era via James Urquhart via Gigaom
This article explains why IT needs to play a much bigger consultative role in advising the business how their applications need to “play nice” in the broader application infrastructure.

November 9: How CMOs can work with CIOs to gain customer insight by Kimberly Whitler via HBR
As CMOs struggle to convert mounds of data into consumer insight they can use, a partnership with their CIO can help.

Consumer Driven IT in Review – 26th edition

Jackie Kahle — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:00:00 GMT

I recently watched a documentary called Digital_Man/Digital_World about Ken Olsen and the founding and early days of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

I joined DEC in 1975 as a newly-minted college graduate and was still working there 23 years later when Compaq acquired them. DEC first brought computers to the masses, helping move an entire industry out from behind protected, glass-walled rooms into peoples’ offices and onto their desktops. Olsen’s mini-computer revolution was the essential bridge between the early days of large, monolithic mainframe computing and the distributed world we know today, but DEC is also often cited as an example of a successful company which wasn’t able to foresee industry changes and adjust to them.

Yet DEC pioneered and championed two major developments that laid the foundation for what we now call IT consumerization. The first was peer networking and Ethernet, which supported Olsen’s vision of truly interactive computing. In realizing this vision, DEC was the first computer company with a registered domain name, had the first corporate gateway for e-mail over the Internet, implemented the first live streaming over the Web (Mars Pathfinder mission which reached 1,000,000+ users) and created the first firewall and the first comprehensive Internet search engine.

The second development relates to one of the more misunderstood aspects of Olsen’s legacy. He is often derided for a comment he made in 1977: “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” In fact, Olsen was a huge believer in people having instant and easy access to applications that would make them more productive – he just didn’t believe you needed to have a complete computer (i.e. CPU and storage) in your home to do it. Rather, using smart terminals to access time-shared systems over the network would give you the best of both worlds - access to what you needed when you needed it, without all the hassle of having to back up your data and maintain a local computer system. Hmmm…sounds very much like an early version of cloud computing to me.

No, Olsen didn’t meet his downfall because he lacked technical vision; ultimately a major reason the board fired him in 1992 was because he wouldn’t abandon his “no layoff” policy. He valued his employees and their loyalty to the company, and he felt he owed them loyalty in return, especially during tough times. I think his true legacy is the DEC culture carried by all of us “ex-DECies” now working at many of the industry’s most successful companies, including CA Technologies.

Here’s what was in the IT consumerization news in the last two weeks:

October 11: Blackberry CIO on mobile security, BYOD and modern CIO role by Al Sacco via CIO
This interview with Research In Motion CIO Robin Bienfait covers a wide-range of issues affecting RIM’s own employees as well as their customers.

October 10: A guide to professional social media sites by Bharat Srinivasa via McGill Tribune
This guide provides good information on what’s out there beyond LinkedIn for professionals looking to engage via social media.

October 9: The one tool you need to make big data work: the pencil by Matt Ariker via Forbes
This article offers a practical set of steps you should take before jumping into the big data fray.

October 8: More consumers get health information on mobile devices by Ken Terry via InformationWeek
Smartphones and tablets are playing a bigger role in healthcare, and more change will take place when providers connect with patients using mobile apps.

October 7: Cloud Print: transforming digital data as a service by Sander Nagtegaal via GigaOm
The potential of cloud-based printing may transform the commercial and professional printing markets.

October 6: 3 shocking social media...ahem... errors in judgment by Patrick Murphy via SocialMediaToday
The old saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity no longer applies in the hyper social media world.

October 5: The always-on employee: what does MDM mean for me? By Lynn Haber via Technology Guide
If you are a BYOD employee, it helps to know what mobile device management is all about and what your employers may have in store for you down the road

October 5: 5 ways big data is transforming everyday life Ki Mae Heussner via GigaOm
I particularly like the information about new “magic (i.e. smart) carpets!”

October 5: Another call for market-based pricing of private cloud services by Joe McKendrick via ZDNet
Forrester Research analyst Lauren Nelson says too many organizations think that virtualizing their data centers leads to a private cloud, and she outlines five criteria.

October 4: The Internet of Things - talking socks and RFID trash by Eileen Brown via ZDNet
There are enough unique IPv6 addresses to assign an IP address to every item in the world, natural and man-made. But how will we manage the conversation with our newly intelligent things?

October 3: A big data roadmap for government by Steve Lohr via the NYTimes
Since no entity produces, gathers and stores more data than the U.S. government, the challenges and opportunities of Big Data loom large for many agencies and departments.

October 2: BYOD privacy: are you being watched? by Tom Kaneshige via CIO
Mobile technology and BYOD give companies Orwellian power, testing the relationship between employers and employees. So far, there's a severe lack of trust that is impeding BYOD progress, a new Harris survey says.

October 1: Big data, analytics as a service: likely boom ahead by Larry Dignan via ZDNet
Data outside of corporate firewalls will require aggregators and service providers to package it so it can be used by enterprises. Big data as a service isn't too far behind.

October 1: Unlocking big government data - whose job is it? by Jonathan Feldman via InformationWeek
Why it's not just a good idea for private-sector organizations to help open up the treasure trove of government big data, it’s a necessity.

New From CA Technologies:

• George Watt and Andi Mann talks about how the restaurant industry is using consumerization technologies to better their business in the latest “CloudViews Unplugged” video.

Consumer Driven IT in Review – 25th edition

Jackie Kahle — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:39:00 GMT

As we celebrate the silver anniversary of this blog series covering happenings in consumer-driven IT, it is worth stepping back a bit and considering how this technology trend has evolved.

CA Technologies recently commissioned a major global research study on the topic of innovation, the role of IT in driving innovation within their organizations and the views of business executives on how ready IT is to enable and support innovation. The resulting report, called Why IT Needs to Lead Now: The Innovation Imperative, outlines a number of surprising results, many of which directly relate to, and are the result of, the need for IT leaders to address growing consumerization in the enterprise. Consider the following.

• The top three technologies that organizations will be investing in for innovation over the next 12 months are mobile, cloud and business analytics (big data).
• The #1 instigator of innovation for an organization is its customers.
• The #1 benefit achieved or expected as a result of innovation projects is higher customer satisfaction.
• The #1 type of innovation project for the most innovative organizations is “technology disruption.”

The most innovative organizations recognize two essential truths: 1) the “customer is king” and increasingly driven by consumerized-technology, even in the business-to-business space; and 2) IT leaders must proactively leverage new disruptive technologies to drive innovation or risk their competitors getting there first. It might seem trite to say “innovate or die,” but there are many examples of companies who have faltered in the face of this tidal wave of industry disruption brought on by IT consumerization.

While we will continue with this blog specifically focused on consumer driven IT, we will also be dealing with these broader issues of innovation in our Innovation Today blog, the @TrendsinTech Twitter account, and on our new Innovation Imperative Web site, where you can get all the latest research and best practices around innovation.

Here’s what was in the IT consumerization news in the last two weeks:

September 26: Smearing the lines between B2B and B2C by Mark McDonald via Gartner
IT consumerization is causing differences between a Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) business to fade and redefine expectations and the customer experience.

September 25: On the horizon for marketers: new platforms help manage social data by Mike Lewis via SocialMediaToday
Social CRM systems will be increasingly used to integrate social data with traditional marketing and sales data to allow marketers to close the loop on their integrated marketing efforts.

September 24: Social media holds key to unlock $1.3 trillion by Ben Rooney via WSJ/Tech Europe
If global enterprises fully embraced social media, then between $900 billion and $1.3 trillion of economic value could be unlocked each year, from London’s Social Media week panel.

September 23: Why CIOs desperately need a technology literate society by Irving Wladawsky-Berger via CIO Journal
There is a serious skills gap in the country and not enough students are majoring in STEM fields — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math – which is causing big challenges for CIOs.

September 21: Mobile can be the personalization lens for offline stores by Robert Andrews via GigaOM
Smartphones have a unique potential not just to support online shopping, but also to enhance the physical store experience – news from GigaOM’s Mobilize conference.

September 20: Do you really want your CMO in charge of IT? by Barb Darrow via GigaOM
While CMOs do need to play a key role in marketing technology investments, too much autonomy may lead to rogue IT.

September 20: How big data brings BI, predictive analytics together by Allen Bernard via CIO
Big data is breathing new life into business intelligence by putting the power of prediction into the hands of everyday decision-makers.

September 19: IaaS resonates in public cloud boom by Justin Kern via InfoManagement
New Gartner research says the cloud infrastructure market is expected to flourish over the next four years, gaining nearly 50% by the end of 2012, rivaling SaaS.

September 19: Why healthcare needs social media by Claire McCarthy via HuffPost
This article includes reports from the recent Medicine 2.0 conference on all things digital, social and healthcare.

September 18: The social executive: a basis for rethinking business by Ayelet Baron via The Community Roundtable
The bottom line is not to just add another tool but to understand how that tool can move the business forward.

September 18: With the power of the cloud comes great responsibility by Laurence Hart via Piewords
Users need to take responsibility for the cloud apps they bring into the enterprise, particularly in the area of support and managing their expectations.

September 17: CIOs look ahead: Millennials, consumer tech and the future by Tom Kaneshige via CIO
This article details how CIOs can give millennials what they want without relinquishing control.

September 17: How do you take a photograph of big data? by Liau Yun Qing via ZDNet
Photographer Rick Smolan, working on ways to visualize big data, explains how seals, taxis, rain and the human nervous system helped him to give analytics a "human face."

September 17: Build your big data strategy on what tomorrow will look like by John Wethington via TechRepublic
If you’re building your big data strategy based on what people are talking about today, you need to start over.

New from CA Technologies:

• Great post by John Hawley, Identity is the new perimeter, makes the case for why recent technology advances and adoption mean a central identity service will soon be the main access door for every application.
• "Innovation cannot be self-serving" says CA technologies CTP John Michelsen in this blog post on ZDNet.

The CMO doesn't want to be in charge of IT either.

Andi Mann — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:22:00 GMT

Over at GigaOm last week, the excellent Barb Darrow (@gigabarb) put out a short and provocative article, “Do you really want your CMO in charge of IT?” In it, Barb cites research from Gartner, as well as interesting insight from GigaOM Pro analyst Jo Maitland (@JoMaitlandSF), and InterArbor analyst Dana Gardner (@Dana_Gardner). Barb quotes me too - you should check out the article. I’ll wait for you! :)

As you can see, Barb rightly points out that SaaS is a big part of this change, accounting for much of the additional technology spending by marketing leaders. There is also new spending by marketing on tablets and mobile applications, and on customer-facing technologies like point-of-sale marketing, e-commerce systems, channel management, and web site development.

A few examples come to mind from some recent CIO discussions:

a national service provider is arming its sales folks with tablets and custom apps, paid for out of marketing’s sales enablement budget
an international retailer has their marketing team working to deliver new virtual points of sale beyond their retail stores
an entertainment organization is building a social, mobile, gamified cloud application (bingo!) to increase customer attraction and retention

All are very significant budgets directed primarily by their respective CMOs. And it is not just CMOs - as I said to Barb:

“Marketing is just another business unit, and like all business units it is spending its own budget in part on directly acquiring technology. Just like finance, production, executive, operations, and others are.”

Some see this as a harbinger of doom for the CIO and for IT.

I see this is just another example of the iterative epicycle of business technology - and an opportunity for the innovative CIO to step forward and enable a new set of choices for their business peers.

We saw a similar scenario when mainframe resources were too costly and constrained by the IT department, so business groups bought their own distributed or ‘open’ systems. Similarly, departmental use of commodity servers and personal computers were a reaction to the costs and constraints of centrally managed midrange systems.

Over time business managers realized that even the newer, simpler technology was difficult and costly to maintain, and more importantly that managing technology was not their core competency. So IT departments and CIOs stepped up, took over management of these new technologies, and freed up business departments to focus on their core goals.

Now we are seeing this with SaaS and other new technologies, as business departments acquire technology themselves, in reaction to the constraints and costs of today’s IT department. And I expect it to play out the same way, with IT eventually taking back these new technologies and managing them for the business.

If your business and IT people are building the right relationships, then you will figure out together how to do this, rather than just wait for the business to react. IT will be the expert consultant on how business transactions work, the workflow that exists in the business, where the data is, etc. The skillset of IT will become more like an MBA than an MSc., open to doing anything that is faster, better, and/or cheaper for the business.

If we do it right, IT becomes more like a system integrator and less like a data center manager. With deep knowledge of business processes, IT can bring creative ideas to life in an “embedded” partnership with the business. In the end, much of this ‘rogue IT’ spending will transition back to the CIO, who will become a business service orchestrator - in addition to being an IT manager (because so-called ‘legacy’ IT is not going anywhere either).

More or less.

SaaS is just one example of where I see this happening. Clearly SaaS is a very different proposition from distributed systems, commodity servers, or personal computers. SaaS acquisition and termination is quicker and easier; SaaS providers do much of the work, like applying patches or upgrades; SaaS applications frequently allow substantial customization without coding or scripting. Some SaaS applications are simple, inexpensive, non-critical, low-maintenance, arcane, and/or embedded, and it will not make sense for IT to take them over.

However, spend a couple of years working with, customizing, and populating many SaaS applications - especially enterprise applications with persistent data accumulation, like CRM, Financial Management, Marketing Automation, or ERP - and you will see that they are still at heart complex IT systems, with a substantial administrative requirement. Moreover, they cause substantive technology issues when non-IT people find they need to integrate these applications with the enterprise general ledger, order-entry, or human resource systems. Maintaining enterprise policies for security and compliance, including identity and access controls, data loss prevention, data leakage, retention and disposal policies, etc. add even more maintenance requirements.

So over time:

Sales will not want to spend the time and effort to update their SaaS CRM to accommodate new territories or to clean up aged data
Finance will not want to own a development team to maintain and enhance a customized SaaS accounting suite to align with business changes
Marketing will not want to code and run ETL to migrate program and campaign content from one SaaS marketing system to another
Manufacturing will not want to dedicate resources to updating a SaaS ERP application to work with new inventory tracking technologies
No one will want to spend the time, money, and resources to integrate their SaaS applications with each other and with enterprise applications - or to make sure they are secure and compliant

Business units will want to focus on business goals - sales, accounting, marketing, manufacturing, - and not ‘waste their time’ on managing technology, even SaaS. In time, business units will increasingly find that managing many SaaS applications detract from their core competencies, and will ask IT to take over these efforts instead.

In fact, this is exactly what has started to happen at my employer, CA Technologies - a large public company, and an award-winning user and innovator of technology.

CA Technologies uses many SaaS applications, most of them originally acquired through line of business budgets (including sales, marketing, and operations). However, our CIO is starting to take over many of our SaaS programs - including the staff and budget to manage, maintain, customize, integrate, and enhance them as needed. He is becoming our Business Service Conductor, providing the services the business areas want, while freeing them up to focus on their core goals, rather than the acquisition, management, and delivery of SaaS applications.

I believe this is an innovative move, and one that more IT leaders will follow. More CIOs will need to step up to embrace the cloud and other new technologies. The best CIOs will not just take over management of these technologies when the business asks them to, but will actively lead the adoption (and management) of these new technologies, so that other business leaders in sales, finance, marketing, production, and more can get back to their own core competencies.

Just as they always have before.

Just as many innovative CIOs are already doing.