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October 27, 2012

Gartner's Top 10 Tech Trends for 2013 CIO.com

Gartner's Top 10 Tech Trends for 2013 CIO.com
Courtesy : CIO News


Gartner's Top 10 Tech Trends for 2013

The rise of mobile devices becomes the No. 1 trend as Microsoft joins the fight and seeks to retain a strong share of client platforms.

By Patrick Thibodeau
Tue, October 23, 2012
Computerworld — ORLANDO -First came the heavy adoption of Apple's mobile platform by consumers whose heavy use of the devices for business tasks forced the IT operations at their companies to support them.
Android was the next mobile platform pushed onto IT and now comes Windows 8, Microsoft's latest effort keep its PC empire intact and gain market share in mobile devices.
For Gartner, the arrival of Windows 8 makes the "mobile device battles" its top technology trend for 2013.
Gartner announced its list of Top 10 tech trends at its annual IT/expo here this week.
The battle among mobile device vendors for the attention of consumers is forcing IT managers into increasing heterogeneity.
Tom Minifie, CTO at a software vendor he asked not to be named, said developers at his company have built Apple and Android mobile apps for employees, including a smartphone tool that can separate workplace and personal communications.
Minifie said the company has no immediate plans to support Windows-based mobile devices. Officials will first watch to see how adoption goes.
He noted, when asked, that the decision isn't a chicken and egg problem. A lack of apps shouldn't deter users from adopting Windows-based devices if they want.
He referred the past history of employees at the company who bought Apple and Android devices before they were supported by IT. "They still went out and got them because there were compelling devices for personal use," he said.
Gartner also predicts that on legacy devices "90% of enterprises will bypass broadscale deployment of Windows 8 through at least 2014," said Peter Sondergaard, who heads up Gartner's research operation.
David Cappuccio, an analyst at Gartner, said that the Windows 8 forecast is not a ding against Microsoft.
"Every group of employees has different needs," said Cappuccio.
Salespeople or some executives may want a tablet, other workers may only need a smartphone, and in some cases they may be using their personal device. "We can either force standardization," said Cappuccio, "or you can open things up and let people let people do what they want within reason."
David Cearley, an analyst at Gartner, unveiled the researcher's 2012 Top 10 list, which represents strategic trends the company believes will impact IT over the next several years, on Tuesday.
The list follows:
One: Mobile devices.
By next year, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. Does this mean mobile devices will replace PCs? Yes and no, says Gartner. Some IT departments may only need to support mobile devices for specific workers whose jobs require them while the rest continue to use PCs. But, Gartner adds, the rise of mobile devices does signal the end of Windows as the single corporate platform.
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Forget Bring Your Own Device - Try Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled

Forget Bring Your Own Device - Try Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled

Courtesy : readwrite enterprise

As consumer devices and services increasingly outstrip their corporate competitors in power, productivity and cachet, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has become the latest so-hot-you'll-melt trend in the world of corporate IT. But plenty of IT departments see it as a demon to be exorcised from the cubicle farms - or an opportunity to dump the responsibility for hardware upkeep on their internal customers. Rather than struggle with BYOD, some companies are turning the whole concept of BYOD on its head in favor of Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled (COPE) policies.
The idea behind BYOD is to let end users choose the devices, programs and services that best meet their personal and business needs, with access, support and security supplied by the company IT department - often with subsidies for device purchases.
But BYOD places new burdens on IT as it tries to deal with an infinite variety of platforms and profiles. COPE takes the opposite approach - instead of making corporate functions work on personal devices, it sets up a framework to support and allow personal uses of company devices. 
COPE essentially works like this: the organization buys the device and still owns it, but the employee is allowed, within reason, to install the applications they want on the device, be it smartphone or traditional computer.
For BYOD, the question for IT is "How do I secure information on a device that I don't own?" With COPE, the question becomes, "How can I loosen my grip for my employees to use their devices for personal use?"
That's how Philippe Winthrop, VP of Strategy at VeliQ, framed the questions for me. He's passionate about COPE, even though his work at VeliQ, the mobility Platform-as-a-Service company he recently joined, isn't even centered on it.

COPE vs. BYOD

According to Winthrop, COPE offers big cost benefits. Under BYOD, employees buy and expense the devices and services they need, while the employer may reimburse all or a portion of these costs, based on preset policies.
But that can leave companies paying retail prices. COPE lets IT departments keep their sweet corporate discounts.  With BYOD, Winthrop said, "CFOs see a way to save a couple hundred bucks on CapEx [capital expenditures]. They're missing an opportunity to save far more on OpEx [operational expenditures]."
Keeping data where it belongs is the other big problem within BYOD. Worries about misplaced and insecure devices or malware-infected machines keeps the IT folks reaching for the antacid.
Not only are employee-owned devices at greater risk, but sometime laws can hamper what a company can do to help itself. In the European Union and South Korea, for instance, laws specifically forbid a company from wiping data from equipment it doesn't own. So, if a smartphone gets left in the airliner's seat pocket, any data on that phone is out in the wild.
COPE neatly circumvents challenges like this. If the company owns the device, it can yank data back regardless of regulations. And, since they can preconfigure the device before handing it to employee, IT can easily insert security and application-management protocols.
"With COPE, it's all about balance," Winthrop explained. "When I said 'loosen my grip,' I didn't say 'let go.'"
COPE also eases support issues by deploying the same hardware to every employee. In the BYOD scenario, IT might not even be able to repair all the possible devices, and vendor or third-party support services may not be completely secure.
To be fair, there are ways of mitigating the BYOD issues. Many companies that support BYOD maintain lists of approved devices, and let employees choose only from lists of approved devices and engage trusted third-party service and support vendors. Others keep all secure company data and access in a cloud-based virtual desktop or profile, reducing the risk if the device is compromised. 

What's Keeping COPE Back?

Still, COPE has many benefits compared to BYOD, at least from the IT perspective. So why aren't more IT shops adopting the COPE model? It's those darn users. 
Winthrop attributes the fixation on BYOD to the GenY-ers, staffers who insist on wanting to do everything their way and their way only.
"You could call it the Frank Sinatra Syndrome," Winthrop joked. (Clearly not a Sex Pistolsfan, then.) Faced with these attitudes, many IT departments seem to think their only options are caving entirely or completely stonewalling user requests.
It doesn't have to be that way. By embracing COPE, IT can reassert the control it must have to keep data and work processes secure, while still giving employees the shiny toys they so desperately want.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Android malware exploding, says Trend Micro

Android malware exploding, says Trend Micro


The amount of mobile Android malware has surged this year, from a count of 30,000 malware specimens in June to almost 175,000 last month, according to Trend Micro's SecurityRoundup report for the third quarter of this year.
"When we predicted earlier there would be 125,000 by the end of the year, Google called us charlatans," says Raimund Genes, Trend Micro's chief technology officer, who says the security firm is counting Android malware variants as it does with Windows-based malware specimens. The Trend Micro report notes the fake versions of legitimate Android apps are the most prevalent type of Android malware, counted at 29,309. Others have names like Boxer, Kmin, Opfake, Trojsms, Ginmaster and Droidkungfu.
Ironically, since the Google Android operating system has undergone a kind of fracture due to so many variations of it being used by different manufacturers on Android mobile devices, this has probably actually slowed down hackers trying to attack the Android OS, Genes notes. And despite the surge in mobile malware, it's still far below the many millions of MicrosoftWindows-based malware variants.
With directness, the Trend Micro report also takes aim at an area of growing concern, Android adware, devising a "Top 10 Most Aggressive Android Adware" list of adware that may send an excessive, undeclared amount of personal information captured off a device to ad networks.
A lot of this adware has come though the legitimate Google Play app store, and sometimes has been yanked when objections were voiced, but in Trend's view, this marketing adware has to be considered insidious if only because it's grabbing user personal data off Android devices outside of the adware's declared purpose by the developer, including licensing agreements.
This might be anything from geolocation data to unique ID of the phone and phone numbers you call and your contacts, among other things, Genes says. Often, "there's no way to opt in or opt out," he notes. "In Europe, it's illegal to grab that information."
Trend says it's analyzed adware for what it considers clear privacy violations, and some of these adware suppliers are not pleased to be named as "aggressive Android adware" and their lawyers are sending threatening letters to Trend Micro.
But Genes says Trend feels confident in its position and will continue to voice its concerns about ad networks that fail to alert users of adware's data-gathering behavior. The mobile adware issue evokes similar circumstances of years ago when what then came to be known as "spyware" targeting Windows desktops for marketing purposes became a battle in the security industry, too.
On Trend Micro's "Top 10 Most Aggressive Android Adware" list is:
Airpush with 26,321
Leadbolt with 20,502
Touchnet with 8,541
Gappusin with 6,978
Adwizp with 4,254
Plankton with 4,137
Adswo with 3,342
Wooboo with 2,032
Wapsx with 515
|Mobiletx with 100
Trend Micro bases much of its report findings on data collected across its cloud-based Smart Protection Network for global threat intelligence. There's also an update on the top spam-sending countries where email spam originates (though it's often thought to be controlled through botnets whose masters may reside in an entirely different country). Currently, the surprise is that Saudi Arabia has suddenly come from nowhere to become the top spam-sending country.
"This is really new," comment Genes, and it's probably because spam filtering has improved in other countries, such as the U.S, India and Turkey, and spammers are currently turning to Saudi Arabia as a new place to exploit compromised computers and networks to blast spam across the world.
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Gartner: 10 critical IT trends for the next five years

Gartner: 10 critical IT trends for the next five years

ORLANDO -- Trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to IT issues is not a job for the faint of heart. That point was driven home at Gartner's IT annual IT Symposium fest here where analyst David Cappuccio outlined what he called "new forces that are not easily controlled by IT are pushing themselves to the forefront of IT spending."
The forces of cloud computing, social media/networking, mobility and information management are all evolving at a rapid pace. These evolutions are largely happening despite the controls that IT normally places on the use of technologies, Cappuccio stated. "IT was forced to support tablets, and end users forced them to support IM and wireless networks a few years ago. And more such technologies are on the horizon," he said.
Cappuccio's presentation listed the following as the "Ten Critical Trends and Technologies Impacting IT During the Next Five Years." The following is taken from Cappuccio's report:
1. Disruption: Business users expect the same level of IT performance and support as they experience with consumer-based applications and services. Business-user demand for customer satisfaction is far outstripping the IT support organizations supply. IT organizations must invest in the development of IT service desk analyst skills and attributes, and organize appropriately to increase IT's perceived value to the rest of the organization. Business-user satisfaction can be a moving target, but enabling higher levels of productivity at the IT service desk level demonstrates that the IT organization cares about the business, and that it's committed to ensuring that users meet their goals and objectives. While a focus on traditional training, procedures, security access, knowledge management and scripts is warranted, a focus on next-generation support skills will be paramount to meet the needs and expectations of the business more efficiently.
2. Software Defined Networks: SDN is a means to abstract the network just as servervirtualization abstracts the server. It transforms the network topology from box/port at a time configuration to flow at a time -- linked to application. Abstracts the network like a hypervisor abstracts the server and it gives programmatic control. With SDN the controller has a view of the entire network topology both the virtual and physical components of it including switches, firewalls, ADC, etc. and provides the abstracted view to provisioning and managing the network connections and services that the applications and the operator requires.
OpenFlow is a great example of that generalized network tunneling protocol that provides a generic API that any network operator can use to create his own control and management schemes based on the application requirements of his organization. And there will be other OpenFlow type SDN protocols that are designed ground up from an application level logic than from the traditional network paradigm of protocol, device and link-based thinking.
When used along with encapsulations like OpenFlow SDN can be used to dynamically extend a private cloud into a hybrid model to masking the enterprise specific IP addresses from the cloud provider's infrastructure. SDN also promises to allow service providers to offer dynamic provisioned WAN services, potentially across multi-provider/multi-vendor networks. Of course, there is the potential for significant organizational disruption as traditional network skills begin to shift, and alignment with specific vendor products or platforms becomes less rigid.
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NASA-style mission control centers for social media are taking off - Fortune Tech

NASA-style mission control centers for social media are taking off - Fortune Tech


Companies from Gatorade to Dell are building multimillion-dollar mission control centers to man their social media operations.

By Ryan Holmes, contributor
FORTUNE -- Houston, we have a tweet. Growing numbers of global organizations -- from Gatorade to Dell and major universities -- are building multimillion-dollar mission control centers for social media: dedicated physical hubs for monitoring and responding to the torrent of social commentary and queries flooding in via Facebook, Twitter and other channels.  Decked out with giant flat panel screens, sleek mood lighting and banks of monitors, the command centers track a dizzying array of real-time stats and indicators, from mentions on Twitter to general consumer sentiment and social media market share.
The glitziest of the bunch would give NASA a run for its money.  Dell's social media ground control and command center in Round Rock, Texas, has a total of 70 employees monitoring social conversations from around the globe, according to ReadWriteWeb.  Scanning Facebook (FB), Twitter and other networks, the team processes 25,000 daily social media events about Dell (DELL) in 11 different languages, responding to most queries and complaints within 24 hours.
While not every company is swamped with thousands of social media mentions, even mid-sized businesses and brands are facing increasingly daunting demands from social-savvy customers, says Altimeter business analyst Charlene Li in a recent post. "Today, 66% of online Americans are actively using social networking, but only 16% of companies use social media to engage with customers," Li says.  "You cannot have credibility saying you are customer-centric if you ignore your customers in social media channels."
With consumers flooding social media, and companies integrating Facebook and Twitter into business strategy, command centers are becoming standard equipment.  Applications range from tracking ad campaigns and monitoring community engagement to handling crisis management.  Gatorade pioneered the social command concept in 2010, deploying a mission control center in its Chicago headquarters with six reporting screens and space for five workers.  Today, they use it to analyze product reception and connect followers with star athletes via Twitter.  Earlier this year, the Red Cross launched a digital operations center staffed by three people to reach out to victims during natural disasters, with modules displaying everything from posts by people seeking family members to recent press coverage.  And Clemson University recently developed a social listening center where students monitor a half-dozen screens, pooling data for, among other purposes, research on how to better respond to campus emergencies.
Behind the sudden command center craze is a serious case of data overload.  Social technologies have given companies access to an unprecedented flood of new analytics, metrics and user data.  But making sense of it all has been a challenge.  Underneath the hood, command centers are wired to analyze millions of social conversations from not just Facebook and Twitter, but YouTube (GOOG), LinkedIn (LNKD), blogs and more.  Results are spit out onto wall-mounted screens customized with dozens of different modules -- colorful charts and graphs tracking everything from retweets and Facebook Likes to buzz in the blogosphere and overall consumer sentiment.  At a glance, teams can take in social trends from thousands of users that would otherwise require hours, if not days, to sort through.
During the 2012 Super Bowl, organizers set up a massive 2,800-square-foot social media ground control in downtown Indianapolis, outfitted with 150 square feet of networked screen space and more than a mile of ethernet cable.  For more than two weeks, 50 experts logged 15-hour days inside, sorting through some 64 million social impressions.  On average, they responded to questions within three minutes.  The payoff?  By providing real-time answers to queries on everything from parking availability to half-time shows while also amplifying fan feedback, the command center generated $3.2 million in positive press and a 12.5% boost in consumer sentiment.
"[Organizations] are monitoring online conversations about their brands, reacting instantly to viral buzz and creating companies that consumers feel involved in -- and, in some cases, even bringing in bigger profits as a direct result," says Intel (INTC) social media strategist Ekaterina Walter in a recent Fast Company article.  The latest generation of command centers is already taking this a step further. (Full disclosure: my company provides software, HootSuite Command Center, which powers these kinds of nerve centers.)
For corporate managers and members of the C-suite, investments in command centers are already proving money well spent.  The ability to instantly visualize key metrics has helped streamline decision-making and bridge different departments, keeping sprawling companies on the same page.  "I think it is worth noting that the social media "mission control" is not just about contact centers or customers with support issues," explains Manish Mehta, Dell's former vice president of social media and community (and the man behind the 110,000-employee company's 70-person command center), in a recent post.  "[It's] about getting that information to the right people wherever they are . . .  globally and functionally."
Ryan Holmes is the CEO of HootSuite, a social media management system with five million users, including 79 of the Fortune 100 companies.  In the trenches everyday with Facebook, Twitter and the world's largest social networks, Holmes has a unique view on the intersection of social media and big business.
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