Cyber 07

JULY 2015 VOL. 13 ISS.
07
CYBERTREND.COM
INFOSYS
& THE TRUE

MEANING OF
GLOBAL
HOW INFOSYS TRANSFORMS
ENTERPRISES WORLDWIDE
Volume 13 : Issue 7 : July 2015
28
HOW INFOSYS REDEFINED

GLOBAL SCALE
8 COVER STORY
we trace the story of Infosys through the
success of its major product lines, Finacle
and EdgeVerve, and explain how the company
serves enterprises worldwide
12 BUSINESS
how marketers leverage technology to better
reach their audience
14 CLOUD
XaaS means just about anything as a service,
a trend that is quickly taking hold
20 MOBILITY
how to modernize your mobility approach,
and how to choose new laptops
CONTACT US
P.O. Box 82545
Lincoln, NE 68501
or
120 W. Harvest Drive
Lincoln, NE 68521
THE STATE OF
ANALYTICS TODAY
26 COMMUNICATIONS
hosted communications solutions offer
numerous extra benefits
28 DATA
data analytics trends, how to determine who
should be in charge of analytics, and why you
should keep an eye on Apache Spark
44 NETWORKING
there are many positives associated with
virtualization, but there can be problems as
well, and these issues can be mitigated
47 SECURITY
trends in advanced threat detection, security
in the cloud, and why companies hire hackers
38 ENERGY
the latest news and research into
energy-conscious tech
56 WEB
how to determine whether your organization
needs a new website
41 IT
how your organization stands to benefit
from DCIM (data center infrastructure
management) solutions
58 ELECTRONICS
the latest in premium consumer electronics
60 TIPS
advice for mobile professionals
Advertising: (800) 247-4880

Fax: (402) 479-2104
Circulation: (800) 334-7458
Fax: (402) 479-2123
www.cybertrend.com
email: feedback@cybertrend.com
Copyright 2015 by Sandhills Publishing Company. CyberTrend TM is a trademark of Sandhills Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Reproduction of material appearing in CyberTrend TM is strictly prohibited without written permission.
Revenues To Climb Through 2017

In Data Center Colocation Market
If youre a colocation provider, you can
expect the current $22.8 billion annualized
revenue in the colocation market to reach
$36.1 billion in 2017, according to the
latest forecast from technology research
and advisory company 451 Research. In
terms of operational square feet of the
global colocation market, 451 Research
reports that less than half of the worlds
total operation space for colocation is in
North America and it totals 42.58%. Kelly
Morgan, North American data centers research director at 451 Research, says the
colocation industry remains extremely
fragmented, however. The majority of
colocation facilities are provided by local
operators with only one to three facilities
each. However, it is becoming harder for
them to compete with the more geographically diverse providers that are now entering many local markets, says Morgan.
Data Center Investments Will Help The IoT Reach Full Potential
According to research firm IDC, the IoT (Internet of Things) will be primarily driven
by new investments in data center development and expansion in the next four years.
Equal, or even greater, investments in the IoT platform services residing in the data
center will be instrumental in delivering the IoT promise of anytime, anywhere, anyhow
connectivity and context, says Richard Villars, vice president, data center and cloud, at
IDC. Given the number of devices connected and the amount of data generated, businesses must focus on their IoT service platform requirements at the level of the data
center itself, not just the individual servers or storage devices. Some specific findings
from IDC indicate the following:
Service providers will adopt

IoT technologies (smart IT) and services to better monitor and manage
their own data center assets (smart
data centers).
IoT will emerge as the leading
driver of new compute/storage deployment at the edge.
IoT services will place growing

stress in most enterprise and service
provider networks.
The growing importance of
analytics in IoT services will ensure
that hyperscale data centers are a
major component of most IoT service
offerings by 2019.
North American Business Drives

Software-Defined Networking
PC Prices To Rise According

To Latest Gartner Forecast
How The Worlds Largest

Companies Invest In Technology
The LAN SDN (local-area network

software-defined networking) market
is expected to grow in both the U.S.
and Canada over the next three years,
based on a recent survey conducted by
Infonetics Research (now part of IHS).
Specifically, 72% of businesses plan to
have campus LAN SDN in live production by the end of 2017. Enterprises anticipate focusing on specific LAN SDN
use cases, such as automation for provisioning, wired/wireless LAN unification,
BYOD (bring your own device), and
greater network access point security,
says Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., Infonetics
research director.
Currency devaluation will cause device

vendors to raise the prices of PCs this year,
according to Gartner, particularly in the
Eurozone and Japan. We are currently
seeing the sharp appreciation of the dollar
against most other currencies reflected in
companies earnings results, says Ranjit
Atwal, research director at Gartner. PC
vendors selling to Europe and Japan, where
local currencies have fallen up to 20% since
the start of 2015, have little choice than
to raise prices to preserve profits. What
does this mean for businesses? Large organizations, Atwal says, will lengthen PC
lifetimes rather than buying less expensive
models or sacrificing features.
The largest IT spenders are truly taking

steps to transform their business for this
year and beyond, reports IDC. Last year,
the worlds largest companies spent $895
billion on technology, with nine out of 10
companies increasing IT spending between
2013 and 2014. IDC states all the spending
points to a common theme: the expectation for high levels of service. When it
comes to IT innovation, the worlds largest
companies are often criticized as being risk
averse, sluggish, and siloed, says Jessica
Goepfert, IDC program director. But, she
says, marquee organizations can be loyal,
serve as references for industry peers, and
also refer business to their major vendors.
July 2015 / www.cybertrend.com
Business Sector Boosts VoIP

Services Market
Boasting a 3% increase compared to
2013, the worldwide VoIP (voice over IP)
service market topped out at almost $70
billion last year due primarily to growth
in business VoIP services. Business VoIP
accounted for 38% of overall VoIP services sales and grew 9.7% last year, as
well. In contrast, revenues for residential
VoIP services have tapered off. Business
voice services are the driving force within
the VoIP services market as the move
to IP positively impacts cloud, trunking,
and managed services across all business
segments. Larger enterprises in particular
continue to actively evaluate cloud unified communications while also migrating
to SIP trunking for premises-based deployments. And there are no signs of it
slowing down, says Diane Myers, research director at Infonetics Research
(now part of IHS).
Company Websites Still Serve As Primary Connection Point

Almost half (45%) of domestic SMBs (small to midsize businesses) see the most
customer engagement via websites, based on a study conducted by Thrive Analytics.
Coverage of the study by eMarketer highlights that only the social media (39%) and
print yellow pages (26%) channels are within 20 percentage points of the website marketing channel. Related HubShouts research also reveals that 64% of SMB marketers
say that Web development services will be most in demand this year, according to
eMarketer. However, the Thrive Analytics study shows that small businesses dont have
the time to keep their sites up-to-date, and they are most likely to do so quarterly. SMB
media spending patterns from Thrive Analytics are detailed below.
Grow
Stay The Same
Shrink
Company Website
36%
59%
5%
Social Media Sites
35%
62%
4%
Mobile Advertising
34%
60%
6%
Online Display Advertising
33%
60%
7%
Paid Search Advertising
33%
58%
8%
SEO/Organic Search Visibility
32%
62%
6%
Companies To Spend More

On IT Hiring & Spending
IaaS Spending Predicted To See

Significant Increase
IDC: Consider These Scenarios

For Third Platform Adoption
New research from IT industry association CompTIA indicates that almost a

quarter of firms will increase IT spending
on products, services, and staff by 10%
in the next year. For the United States,
an average increase of 5.4% is expected
this year. Businesses increasingly rate
IT as a critically important factor to their
success, says Tim Herbert, vice president, research and market intelligence,
at CompTIA. They view technology as
the primary contributor in their ability
to meet key strategic priorities, whether
its reaching new customers, controlling
costs, improving productivity, or becoming more innovative.
Gartner says that cloud IaaS (infrastructure as a service) is in a state of upheaval

as service providers change strategies to
compensate for a heavily saturated IaaS
market. IaaS spending should total $16.5
billion this year, a 32.8% increase over 2014.
Gartner recommends that organizations
learn to operate in what it terms bimodal
IT (two IT modes: one for scalability, efficiency, safety, and accuracy, and another for
agility and speed) so they dont lose sight
of the need to maintain IT operations while
they innovate with new digital possibilities.
Many businesses are expected to move from
operating on-premises data centers to embracing cloud-based infrastructure.
Manufacturing companies seeking to perform better in the Third Platform of computing (mobility, cloud, big data, and social
business) can look to 10 helpful scenarios
recently released by IDC. For example, companies intending to grow aggressively can
deploy a flexible IT infrastructure, whereas
companies focused on gathering customer
feedback more efficiently can use the Third
Platform via mobile devices to help process and take action on customer information. Organizations can also rely on Third
Platform technologies to meet regulatory requirements, innovate internal collaboration,
roll out as-a-service products, and accumulate product performance data.
CyberTrend / July 2015
How The Business World Intends To Use Wearables

In a recent Salesforce.com study, nearly 80% of enterprise wearable adopters in the U.S. say that wearables are expected to reshape
the future success of their companies. Moreover, almost 75% of users say that wearables have helped improve business performance.
Wearable-based data collection is causing users to retain some technological reluctanceamong those polled in a TRUSTe pool late
last year, 87% are worried about smart devices, which include wearables, collecting and using their information in ways they were unaware of. However, employees ultimately understand how wearables will make an impact on workplace practices. The accompanying
chart illustrates how businesses plan to use wearable technology compared with how they use it now.
Currently Using
Piloting/Planning To Use In Next Two Years
Tracking Workplace Productivity

Real-Time Access To Customer Data
Hands-Free Instruction Or Guides For Field Service
Access To Business Analytics & Alerts
See-What-I-See Coaching With Live Remote Tech Or Trainer
Access Training Or Pipe Instructions To Field Employees
Augmented Reality To Guide Worker Efficiency
Employee Biometric Vitals
Clinical Trial Monitoring
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
Small-Business Owners
Tackle Cybersecurity
Wireless Consumption Grows,

LTE-Advanced Benefits
Fewer PC Owners Buying

Aftermarket USB Modems
According to a recent survey conducted

by Endurance International Group, 63% of
SBOs (small-business owners) in the United
States reported having plans in place to defend their businesses against cyberattacks.
Where their defenses are lacking, however,
are in the manpower resources that small
businesses say they can allocate to cybersecurity issues. In fact, 83% of SBO respondents
said they personally handle cybersecurity,
whereas only 5% reported having an on-staff
IT person and 6% indicate they outsource to
an IT consultant. Regardless of their plans,
cybersecurity is top of mind; 94% reported
frequently or occasionally thinking about
cybersecurity issues.
Companies deploying network equipment around the world for the 4G cellular
communication standard known as LTEAdvanced are benefiting from the widespread adoption of mobile technologies.
According to ABI Research, at the end of
2014 there were 49 LTE-Advanced networks in place globally covering 100 million people. The research firm predicts that
LTE-Advanced coverage will extend to 1
billion people by 2018. Although network
operators in Western Europe dominate
in terms of commercialization, ABI says,
North American operators cover the largest
percentage of the population, with all four
of the big carriers running such networks.
A combination of factors is creating what

ABI Research is calling a tipping point in
the market for mobile broadband modems
used in non-smartphone mobile computers,
tablets, and CE devices. More than 53 million
such modems and mobile hotspot routers
shipped last year, but more PC owners are
relying on Wi-Fi connectivity rather than
buying aftermarket USB modems, despite
the growth in local high-speed LTE mobile
network access. OEMs are seeing greater
demand for mobile broadband in tablets as
well as ultraportable PCs. The plan could be
foiled, however, if pricey mobile broadband
service contracts deter potential buyers, says
Senior Practice Director Jeff Orr.
STARTUPS
A Startup To Help
Startup Developers
Pure Storage Gets Into The Hardware Business With An

All-Flash Storage Array, A Cloud Platform & A New Upgrade Model
In the software development world,

dark launching means releasing code privately so that a limited number of users
can test the software and provide feedback. In this way a company can improve
the software before releasing it for broader
use. The trouble is that such private testing
can be costly, which is a problem San
Francisco-based startup LaunchDarkly
is addressing with a private testing service of the same name. LaunchDarkly enables customers to gather feedback quickly
and to filter it based on user base segments and other criteria. The company
recently announced it had raised $2.6 million to further its efforts. In a blog post,
Edith Harbaugh, CEO and co-founder of
LaunchDarkly, said the money will allow
us to ourselves move faster by bringing on
additional new hires in engineering, marketing, and developer evangelism.
Pure Storage, a startup that raised $225 million last year and reached a $3 billionplus valuation, has made a name for itself with its all-flash storage products. Now the
Mountain View, Calif.,-based company has entered the hardware storage arena in
a big way. That is, in addition to introducing
an all-flash storage array
called FlashArray//m (pictured here), Pure Storage
launched Pure1, a cloudbased management platform that provides greater
flexibility and support for
IT, as well as Evergreen
Storage, a procurement
and upgrade model designed to keep the storage
array in place for generations with what Pure Storage calls flat and fair pricing for
hardware upgrades and software updates. Now customers can invest in a storage platform that can add value to their businesses for a decade or more, and make individual
component, non-disruptive upgrades to capacity and/or performance when required by
the business, says Matt Kixmoeller, vice president, Products.
Startup Offers Faster Big Data

Analytics, Gets $35 Million
Pipedrive Wants To Inject More

Sales Into Your Pipeline
Visual Analytics Startup Aims To

Ease Pain For Hadoop Users
Campbell, Calif.,-based startup Saama

is a big data company with the stated goal
of helping organizations (typically larger
ones) complete their analytics projects in
a much shorter time frame than might
be achieved otherwise. To do this, Saama
offers multiple solutions geared toward
specific segments. There is not one technology that will guarantee Big Data success, says Ken Coleman, Saama board
chairman. By having a solutions-based
approach, Saama is able to create instant
value for each customer with a value engineering approach. Recently the company
announced it would receive $35 million
in funding from Carrick Capital Partners.
Only the luckiest salesperson closes

a deal in just one step. Usually the sales
process requires many steps taken over
time. Tracking those steps and arranging them visually so that salespeople
can quickly see where things stand with
their potential customers is a chief goal
of Pipedrive, a startup based in Menlo
Park, Calif., and Estonia. Pipedrive also
delivers mobile apps, comprehensive reporting, and many customizable features.
Pipedrive recently landed $9 million in a
Series A funding round led by Bessemer
Venture Partners. The company intends
to use the money to expand its technology and its marketing efforts.
Having picked up $11.5 million in a

Series A funding round that closed in June,
Arcadia Data is in a good position to expand its customer base. The San Mateo,
Calif.,-based startup serves organizations using Hadoop for big data needs,
offering visual analytics and business intelligence tools that are designed to grow
along with Hadoop and the data it collects.
Businesses want to be more data driven,
yet have lacked an easy-to-use, integrated
product that gives them accurate answers
to their most pressing business questions,
said Arcadia CEO Sushil Thomas in a press
release. Our converged analytics platform
solves these problems on data as scale.
How Infosys Redened Global Scale

INFOSYS HAS CHANGED THE WAY ENTERPRISES OPERATE WORLDWIDE
KEY POINTS
Infosys has had a global focus
from the beginning. Starting in
India, its first client was located in
New York City.
The company offers established
products and services to its customers, as well as custom engineering and consulting.
Finacle is an all-in-one, endto-end banking platform with
CRM, mobile banking, and other
features.
EdgeVerve works for a wide
range of industries and helps not
only with financial and customer
management, but also digital marketing and brand awareness.
A LOT OF COMPANIES start off with a
International From The Start
group of friends or colleagues asking themselves, Wouldnt it be cool if . . . ? But

few of those companies came from such
humble beginnings as Infosys, which was
established in 1981 by seven young engineers with $250 in startup capital in Pune,
India. Infosyss wouldnt it be cool idea
was to not only develop software for the
worlds largest enterprises, but to offer its
solutions via a global delivery model.
Nearly 35 years later, Infosys is now
180,000 employees and 950 clients strong.
Beyond giving its customers the software
they need to run their businesses, the company also offers consulting, engineering,
business process development, and a wide
variety of other next-generation services.
But a great deal has happened between
1981 and today, and the Infosys story is
one of constant innovation coupled with
maintaining a culture of learning and
creativity that makes the companys solutions stand out in a bustling and quickly
evolving industry.
Although Infosys started off small, its

founders didnt waste any time going global
and revealing lofty ambitions. In fact, the
companys first client, in 1981, was based
out of New York. In 1983, Infosys moved
its corporate headquarters to Bangalore,
India, and in 1987, Infosys opened its first
international office in Boston. Only 12 years
after it was established with $250 in capital,
the company was large enough introduce
an employee stock options program and go
public in 1993.
The international expansion continued
throughout the 90s and early 2000s. In 1994,
Infosys moved its corporate headquarters
once again, this time to Electronic City,
Bangalore, and that same year it opened
up a development center in Fremont, Calif.
In 1995, Infosys opened its first European
office in the U.K. and also established a development center in Toronto. A few years
later, in 1997, it would open a full office in
Toronto. Infosys then opened up two more
development centers in the U.S. as well as
offices in Australia, Belgium, Sweden, and

Germany in 1999.
From 2000 to 2003, Infosys opened more
development centers or offices in the U.S.,
U.K., and Canada, as well as in France,
China, Japan, UAE, Argentina, Netherlands,
Singapore, and Switzerland, among other
locations worldwide. This globalization is important to keep in mind because its a big part
of Infosyss identity. The expansion made it
possible for Infosys to reach more customers,
enter more markets, and build more unique
and focused solutions. Along the way, revenues grew as did the number of industries
Infosys was able to serve.
Expertise Leads To
Exponential Growth
One of the major pillars on which Infosys
stands is the idea of harboring a culture of
learning. We have always looked for bright,
curious people who have that quality we call
learnability, and giving them the training,
tools, and opportunities to surprise themselves and their clients with what they can
accomplish, says Sandeep Dadlani, Head
of Americas for Infosys Ltd. We run the
worlds largest corporate university, partner
with many of the worlds leading universities,
and believe the training and education must
be constants in our fast-moving industry.
Its this yearning for education that has
helped Infosys establish an employee base full
of experts in their fields. Of the total workforce, which totals 180,000 employees and
comprises people of more than 98 nationalities, 94% are consultants and engineers. This
diversity and depth of knowledge helps us
to understand technology trends in every
corner of the globe, Dadlani says.
In addition to the employees themselves
being well-educated experts (97% hold university degrees), the company also makes
further education a company-wide initiative
and has multiple programs in place to foster
innovation and creativity. Along with its
93 development centers around the world,
Infosys also invests 2% of its revenues in
research-and-development-focused projects. The company has a culture of innovation focused on developing breakthrough
solutions that will redefine the future for
our clients and us, Dadlani says. Some of
those innovations are already showing up in
A big focus for us is partnering with clients to take

a deeper dive into their business, and look beyond
the initial problem statement to uncover hidden
challenges and release new opportunities.
SANDEEP DADLANI
Head of Americas : Infosys
projects for designing lighter and stronger

passenger jets, creating more fuel-efficient
smart cars, and enabling banks to provide
financial inclusion to the [worlds] most
remote corners, he adds.
For evidence of how all of this learning
and innovation has actually affected Infosys
from a financial point of view, look no further than the companys exponential growth
over the past 16 years. From 1999 to 2004
alone, Infosys went from $100 million in
annual revenue to $1 billion. Two years
later, Infosys doubled its yearly revenue and
hit $2 billion. What makes this leap so significant is that it took Infosys 23 years to
reach $1 billion, but only 23 months more
to hit $2 billion.
Today, Infosys has $8.7 billion in annual
revenue and a market cap of more than $40
billion. However, the company does not rest
on its laurels or sit on its profits. Not only
has the company established its own aforementioned R&D projects, it also announced
the $500 million Infosys Innovation Fund,
to identify and accelerate disruptive innovations that the startup community can bring
to its global client base. Its efforts such as
this one that illustrate how Infosys is focused on more than simply expanding its
own interests, but also on helping the entire
technology industry move forward.
Infosys offers a wide range of products

and services, including banking and finance
solutions; custom service management platforms; and cloud, big data, and analytics
offerings. Unlike companies that offer prebuilt solutions and support them from afar,
Infosys works with its customers to renew
their core operations and enable new solutions that deliver scale and convenience, and
helps its customers disrupt markets they
operate in, says Dadlani. A big focus for
us is partnering with clients to take a deeper
dive into their business, and look beyond the
initial problem statement to uncover hidden
challenges and release new opportunities.
One of the companys goals as it encounters new technologies is to provide its clients with seamless integration between the
physical and digital realms of doing business.
The way Infosys strives to achieve this goal is
to offer extensive suites of products that all
work together (and work together well) and
address specific challenges that enterprises
face on a regular basis. And while the company offers numerous solutions and services,
many of them fall under either the Finacle
or EdgeVerve banners. Lets take a closer
look at each to better understand how each
of Infosyss individual solutions fit into the
bigger picture.
Finacle
What Infosys Does For Its Clients
The ultimate goal of Infosys is to help
its customers peer into the future at what
lies ahead in technology, Dadlani says.
As an intensely global-oriented company,
Infosys can witness worldwide technological trends as they happen and determine
which of those trends are a fit for their clients. Infosyss combination of engineering,
service offerings, and consulting makes it
essentially a one-stop shop for enterprises
looking to improve their operations and
grow in todays digital landscape.
Infosyss Finacle product suite is designed to simplify banking at every possible

level and empower banks to gear up for the
future of banking in the digital age, says
Michael Reh, Senior Vice President and
Head of EdgeVerve and Finacle for Infosys.
As of now, Finacle is used by banks in over
84 countries and helps them serve over 450
million customers. Perhaps the most impressive statistic about how popular Finacle
is throughout the world is that nearly 18%
of the worlds adult banking population relies on Finacle, according to Reh.
Finacle is unique from other banking solutions because it covers nearly every facet of
banking, including core banking, e-banking,
mobile banking, CRM, payments, treasury,
origination, liquidity management, and
wealth management, among others. The ultimate goal of Finacle and its overall suite of
products is to make banks operate more efficiently as well as make them more customer
friendly. In fact, Reh says, Finacle users typically enjoy 50% higher returns on assets, 30%
higher returns on capital, and 8.1% points
less costs-to-income than other banks.
One component of Finacle that helps illustrate just how flexible the platform can
be is the Finacle CRM solution. Not only is
it a modular and Web-based application, it
Businesses that use EdgeVerve are able to

better tap a wider pool of opportunities to drive
higher revenue growth, profitability and
shareholder value.
MICHAEL REH
Senior Vice President & Head of EdgeVerve & Finacle : Infosys
integrates well with existing applications and

scales as needed.
Finacle also places a heavy emphasis on
mobile banking, because Infosys understands
that people increasingly want the ability to
access their accounts from anywhere in the
world and not be tied to a full-sized computer to do so. Regardless of the platform
you use, you can
create a unified
experience for
your customers
thats fast and
easy to use.
With Finacle,
you have the option of taking a
young people to become financially responsible, Reh explains. A first-of-its-kind

mobile-based banking solution specially designed for young customers between the
ages of 12 to 18, it aims to make banking a
fun experience.
EdgeVerve
EdgeVerve consists of six main components that are all cloud-based and operate
on a pay-as-you-use model. As with other
Infosys products, EdgeVerve was created to
help companies serve their customers better
in a digital world, Reh says. The platform
covers a wide range of industries, including
financial services, insurance, retail, life sciences, manufacturing, and telecommunica-
Infosys highly values education and creativity as keys to success for its
employees. In its buildings and campuses, Infosys uses thoughtful designs to
encourage these ideals, as seen in the spherical multiplex theater, part of the
companys Global Education Centre located in Mysore, India, and the meditative
pool area on the Bangalore campus.
is also multilingual to enable organizations

to better manage customer relationships on
a global scale. With Finacle CRM, you get
360-degree views of your customers to revisit past interactions and better understand
their needs. Some benefits companies can
expect from using Finacle CRM include improved customer acquisition through custom
marketing campaigns; higher potential for
cross-sell opportunities; increased operational efficiency with more automation and
fewer manual tasks; and a lower total cost of
ownership compared to what similar Webbased CRM solutions offer because Finacle
10
customized
approach to
your mobile
banking presence or you can choose a preconfigured bank-in-a-box model that will
get your mobile operations up and running
much more quickly and at a lower cost.
In addition to helping organizations improve their banking operations, Infosys is
also taking strides to make sure the youth of
the world has a way to learn important life
skills related to finances and banking. The
recently launched Finacle Youth Banking
solution goes a step further to encourage
tions. And, in a fashion similar to Finacle,

EdgeVerve is intended to cover multiple
bases from one central platform to simplify
the overall management of assets.
EdgeVerve is designed to help our clients
stay relevant in rapidly evolving business
areas such as digital marketing, interactive
commerce, distributive trade, micro-commerce, customer service and experience, and
enterprise buying, says Reh. Businesses that
use EdgeVerve are able to better tap a wider
pool of opportunities to drive higher revenue

growth, profitability and shareholder value.
AssistEdge is a customer experience solution Infosys designed to improve businesscustomer interactions across the board,
whether they occur within or outside of the
call center. With AssistEdge, Infosys aims to
improve the efficiency of agents and reduce
call volumes in order to prevent bottlenecks
in the customer service chain.
BrandEdge is all about digitally marketing
your business with customer campaigns and
brand awareness programs that match your
business goals and your customers needs.
This solution also makes it easier to gather
data and gain actionable insights from your
customers. BrandEdge works well with
AssistEdge as a way to learn more about your
customers and make sure you are adequately
meeting their needs.
InteractEdge is the third solution in the
EdgeVerve family and deals with customer
experience in a different space. It is an interactive and open commerce platform that
enhances customers experience with brands
across every digital touch point. It helps
brands create, manage and prioritize what
content is visible to what target audience so
that customers always have access to the information thats most relevant to them.
CreditFinanceEdge is a robust platform
that helps organizations better manage risk
as well as lower operational costs. It lets
you manage multiple credit types and is, of
course, globally focused with multilingual
and multicurrency functionality. Other capabilities include asset management, loss mitigation, and litigation tracking.
TradeEdge helps organizations succeed
in emerging markets. Today this is especially
important for companies seeking to take advantage of current growth in Asian countries,
especially in China. Those using TradeEdge
gain a better understanding of emerging
markets at every level, and are able to use this
knowledge to inform future marketing campaigns and increase sales.
ProcureEdge gives enterprise companies
the tools they need in order to make smarter
purchasing decisions and track those purchases from beginning to end. Infosys built
ProcureEdge using the best possible industry
practices as a baseline, so you can rest assured
that when you implement the solution its
Dr. Vishal Sikka, CEO and Managing Director of Infosys, interacts with employees at an Infosys innovation fair.
going to identify ways to save money and

track spending right away.
Looking To The Future

Infosys is not entirely alone in its drive to
seek new advancements and new opportunities for growth rather than to simply maintain static product lines. Infosys is notable,
however, in that it has codified its strategy
into something it calls new and renew,
which focuses on how to make existing practices better while also keeping new strategies
in mind.
On the renew side, Infosys is continually
working to find ways to run businesses better
and more efficiently, whether thats relative
to a businesss clients or its own internal business processes. We do this by looking for
ways to do old things betterfor example,
using automation and machine learning
to make core processes simpler, faster, and
less expensive, Dadlani says. This also plays
into how Infosys handles its acquisition
process, as it did recently when it acquired
Panaya and started working on its Infosys
Automation Platform, for instance.
In addition to renewing its existing processes, Infosys finds it integral to its continued success to invest in new innovations.
Our investments in Design Thinking, our
Innovation Fund, new IP, building a powerful ecosystem of startup companies, universities, and other partners, all of these are
designed to help us identify disruptive new

solutions for our clients, says Dadlani. For
example, the Infosys Information Platform
is helping our clients capture, analyze, and
act on data in new ways, all using opensource technologies. In artificial intelligence,
we are working with clients to identify and
build solutions for highly complex business
problems.
Dadlani admits that at the end of the day,
our goal is to amplify our own abilities and
those of our clients, but that doesnt mean
that all of the companys innovation will be
in the pure business space. Beyond business,
we want to amplify the abilities of our society,
whether its creating clean water solutions for
people in the remotest villages or helping to
teach millions of American school children
how to create software, he says.
These goals, specifically the ones about
teaching children to program software,
once again show that while Infosys is a
highly successful company focused on
generating growth and revenue, it hasnt
forgotten its origins. Infosys understands
that sometimes the only thing people
need to create innovative, world-changing
technologies is a small financial push and
the desire to become an expert in a given
field. After all, with only $250 in its pocket
and a client a world away in New York
City, Infosys was able to grow into the
technology leader it is today.
11
Where Marketing & Technology Meet

THE CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT NEXUS
MARKETING IS ONE OF THE MOST

rapidly changing areas of business, as
technology advancements have radically altered how people find and
purchase products. A strong online
presence, including website, social
media, and email messaging channels,
must now likely be complemented by a
mobile campaign. The digital age also
brings with it a lot of data that agencies
can use to target messaging for different consumers segments. We talked
with Jonathan Margulies, managing
director at Winterberry Group, about
how technology is driving impactful
messaging.
Connect With Consumers

Modern marketing plans include
ways to engage customers on multiple
platforms. Margulies says the critical
underlying concepts are not identifying
the methods that are most important,
so much as stitching them together in
a way that addresses the specific adver-
12
tising and marketing use cases that may

face a brand. For those still thinking
conventionally about marketing, this
means shifting focus to recognize key
audiences, rather than key channels,
and building the necessary infrastructure to support the desired levels and
types of recognition and engagement.
As products and services change, so
might your marketing needs. Plans
should allow room for flexibility, modularity, and growth that those same business are likely to have over the years as
those technologies evolve, change, and
maybe collide with one another, says
Margulies. In the end, you and the marketing team need to focus on finding
the right strategy and mix of media to
best engage target consumers, which
may be a changing group as time passes.
Finding Actionable
Information
We often cover big data in the pages
of CyberTrend, and big data analytics is
beginning to emerge as a powerful tool

for improving marketing initiatives.
Theres a need for stand-up tools that
harness information on customers
and prospects to build segments for
WHAT SHOULD YOU ASK

AN AGENCY?
Theres no one-size fits all solution
when marketers are looking for an
agency to support them. As such,
youll need to come in with an idea
about what youre looking to accomplish and how they would build
and execute such a plan. That being
said, agencies that focus solely on
one media or channel should either
let you know that they are specialists in the medium. If not, they
might not be completely aware of
the way marketing is changing.
Plans should allow room for flexibility, modularity, and

growth that those same business are likely to have over
the years as those technologies evolve, change, and
maybe collide with one another.
JONATHAN MARGULIES
Managing Director : Winterberry Group
targeted engagement, says Margulies.

In the digital world, for example, a lot
of focus has been placed on data management platforms, while the more traditional world has seen more of a focus
on taking mores structured databases,
such as CRM systems, and finding
ways to make that information more
addressable in a digital world.
The potential golden goose, when
it comes to marketing, is identifying
target audiences and pairing custom
creative and marketing efforts for
those people. Essentially, its putting the right images, messages, and
content in front of the right audience
members, says Margulies. This type
of customized marketing goes handin-hand with enterprise efforts for
content optimization, website optimization, and other digital elements responsive to data.
If you think all of this sounds complicated, youre right. Margulies explains, I think making all of this work
requires a series of systems that effectively play traffic cop to the ebb and
flow of data, creative, budgetary limitations, and other factors that form the
operation limitations for the way of
doing things in a marketing department. Realistically, your business
probably has many of these resource
management tools already in place,
such as tools that are used for direct
mail marketing, and an agency might
be able to help you reach even more
customer segments.
Big Data Divergence

So we know that big data is changing
the marketing process, but how exactly can it be used for better decision
making? Big data helps upstream, in
terms of how products are developed,

how offers are crafted, and how we
think of customer audiences, says
Margulies. Its also downstream," he
adds, "including how we get those offers in the hands of the right customers
and how we make sure the right creative is tied to the right productand
thus, to the right audience.
How you reach those target audiences depends highly on your organizations products and/or services.
For instance, if most of your revenue
comes from brick-and-mortar locations, you could analyze location data
and utilize mobile advertising, such as
locally targeted real-time campaigns, to
reach nearby customers through digital channels. You could, for example,
place an advertisement on an app
geared toward a certain demographic,
that informs consumers of a deal and
draws more people into the store.
The Key To Effectively

Leveraging Data
The key to utilizing big data is
finding a way to use the information
to drive more effective marketing and
monitor the how those investments are
paying off. Reliable data analytics can
help you reach those logical conclusions. Of course, you may need to add
people who know how to deal with
and incorporate the analytics tools into
your marketing. As more organization align themselves to be data-driven
and recruit the type of people that can
understand how data works and improve performance, analytics will absolutely become more important, says
Margulies.
Typically, a marketer and agency
start by using analytics for a few duties,
and then, over time, come to rely on it

more as the benefits become evident.
Well see more analytics applied to
more types of marketing decisions than
weve seen previously, says Margulies.
Itll take over decisions that were once
reached only at a gut level. This includes things like How do we craft a
brand message? and What creative
tone should we use? Analytics might
even reveal new target audiences, based
on digital demographics, that you
hadnt previously considered.
Say Goodbye To
Wasteful Spending
Margulies tells us that weve come a
long way from throwing money into a
marketing black hole and hoping that
were reaching the right people. He
notes, Today, the promise of data is
that you engineer marketing more precisely and get real-time feedback into
what works and what doesnt. As an
executive, you can use the feedback
to hold the marketing team and agencies accountable for the decisions. Isnt
technology a wonderful thing?
NEW TYPES OF CREATIVE

Theres a bit of an argument that
the coming of big data spells the
end of the creative discipline. I
couldnt disagree more, says
Jonathan Margulies, managing
director at Winterberry Group. He
continues, Thats going to call on
creative professionals who understand the nuances in messaging and
building experiences [for] customers
at that level of granularity. There
are people who know how to handle
the added sophistication that comes
with the more refined audience,
but not all creative types have that
kind of experience. Any in-house
marketing team will want to make
doubly sure that the creative content
is subtly polished for the segmented
audience it wishes to reach.
13
The Philosophy Of As-A-Service

WHY ENTERPRISES ARE INCREASINGLY EMBRACING XaaS-CENTRIC STRATEGIES
KEY POINTS
Companies are taking XaaSfocused approaches to meet infrastructure/service needs to gain agility
and flexibility and reduce infrastructure
responsibilities.
Some experts believe that to be
competitive in their markets, vendors
using traditional licensing models will
need to add as-a-service offerings.
Noteworthy as-a-service offerings, experts say, include business
process, database, desktop, security,
and unified communications.
Adopting an XaaS-centric
strategy can enable internal IT
organizations and businesses to
focus their efforts on whats core to
their business.
14
SOME COMPANIES usage of cloud computing services consists of three letters:

S, P, and I. That is, S for SaaS (software
as a service), P for PaaS (platform as a
service), and I for IaaS (infrastructure as
a service). The alphabet soup of as a service possibilities for other companies,
however, is much broader, including the
likes of BP (business process), C (communications), D (desktop), DB (database), M (monitoring), N (networking),
SEC (security), UC (unified communications), and others.
The list of as a service offerings is
growing so long, in fact, it seems anything
is available as a service today. Thus, the
XaaS acronym stands for anything
or everything as a service under which
all these as-a-service offerings reside. Its
worth noting that for some companies
XaaS is more than an acronym; its a
preferred approach to meeting infrastructure and service needs.
Often whats top of mind among executives when it comes to accessing all
these service types, says Colm Keegan,

Enterprise Strategy Group senior analyst, is determining which of them have
demonstrative value in terms of helping
their companies do things faster and
with greater agility. CEOs are seeing
the market changing so quickly, and
their businesses are entering spaces
theyve never been before, he says.
Their motivation in embracing XaaS is
helping ensure their companies have the
ability to react as opportunities emerge
and compete effectively, he says.
Undoubtedly, embracing an XaaS
mentality has its benefits, including
helping companies reduce capital investments in infrastructure and enabling
quicker times to market, greater flexibility and ease in provisioning, and
easily accessing resources remotely.
Although SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS are the
most familiar as-a-service examples of
XaaS, this article explores several newer
trends concerning XaaS that are making
an impact.
Setting The Scene

In short, XaaS collectively refers to a
growing list of cloud services delivered
over the Internet, typically via a subscription or metered model. To qualify
as cloud, Ed Anderson, Gartner research vice president, believes a service
must possess certain characteristics.
These include it being self-service,
elastic and scalable, shared among consumers, metered, and accessible using
standard Internet technologies. Some
technologies are better suited to as-aservice delivery models than others, he
says. Further, Anderson suspects most
companies will pragmatically choose
technologies or services that best fit
their needs and then build hybrid management and integration around the
broad, disparate collection of stuff
they use.
Dave Bartoletti, Forrester Research
principal analyst views XaaS as a broad
trend away from obtaining fixed, licensed services toward using elastic,
rented services. [XaaS] is affecting
every software category and, increasingly, every hardware category, as well,
he says. Companies are shiftingand
will continue to shiftto more XaaScentric strategies so they can get products to market faster, enter new markets
quicker, reduce up-front capital investments, and lessen their need to build
out internal data centers, he says.
To Bartolettis last point, XaaS
makes IT services consumable.
Compared with having to provision
and configure internal infrastructure
and loading data over the course of
days, weeks, or months, XaaS effectively says, The infrastructure is already here in a model from which you
can specify what you need, when you
need it, for how long, and on a metered
or subscription basis.
Its almost like walking into a fullservice restaurant and youre handed
a menu, Keegan says. You decide if
you just want to have appetizers and
cocktails or want a seven-course meal or
something in between. In short, XaaSs
playing field consists of both niche providers and those more broadly based
And theres no right or wrong way necessarily. Its

about what your individual unique needs are and best
suiting those services to meet those needs.
COLM KEEGAN
Senior Analyst : Enterprise Strategy Group
Traditional software companies must rethink licensing

models. Pay-per-use and self-service access are the
hallmarks of as-a-service, and depending on the age
and penetration of an existing product, it can be quite
difficult for a vendor to make the switch to completely
new licensing models.
DAVE BARTOLETTI
Principal Analyst : Forrester Research
attempting to be a one-stop shop. And

theres no right or wrong way necessarily. Its about what your individual
unique needs are and best suiting those
services to meet those needs, he says.
Exciting Times
A key component driving companies toward meeting their needs in an
XaaS-centric manner is the desire to
focus their efforts on whats core to
their businesses as opposed to infrastructures. Anything not core is often
just as easy to outsource, Keegan says.
Moreover, doing so can enable seeking
out new areas to enter relative, peripheral, or outside the companys own
market. Its kind of a de-cluttering process, he says. There are easier, more
consumable ways of obtaining services
as or arguably more reliably than they
can do themselves, Keegan says.
Interestingly, some XaaS offerings,
such as health care as a service, are extremely industry-specific. Although such
offerings will have a less broad consumption base, this doesnt make them necessarily less valuable. Thats really what it
comes down to, says Keegan. If theres
a service you can consume that will help
you save money and enable you to have
a laser focus on your business, there are
probably some legs to it.
Something to note concerning XaaS,

however, is that just because a provider
dubs its service as cloud, that doesnt
make it so. Anderson says he believes
many vendors brand services cloud as
a marketing attempt to position offerings in a progressive way. XaaS services
that Anderson does deem truly cloud
and finds noteworthy include BPaaS, or
the delivery of a business process as a
cloud service. Essentially, BPaaS entails
elements of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS and
puts a business process (order management, for example) in the service
providers hands to perform and monitor. Anderson also tabs UCaaS, DaaS,
DRaaS (disaster recovery), and ITaaS
(IT as a service) as newer XaaS trends
worth noting.
Bartoletti also cites BPaaS and DaaS
as interesting as-a-service trends as
well as MBaaS (mobile back-end as
a service). Nearly every data center
technology can now be delivered as
a service for at least a subset of use
cases, he says. The most exciting asa-service developments are happening
in the cloud and mobile spaces, where
time to market is critical. MBaaS and
SECaaS are especially attractive to
companies building hyper-scale Web
and mobile applications and that dont
have the time or budget to implement
15
[Many companies] love it when they can consume their

technologies as service. [This makes XaaS offerings] an
important part of the market opportunity.
ED ANDERSON
Research Vice President : Gartner
the back-end technologies themselves,

he says.
SECaaS is a market Gartner predicts
will extend beyond $3 billion this year.
The appeal of SECaaS rests largely in
the ability it provides to offload security
tasks from internal IT while simultaneously providing security features that
are often better than what a company
could implement and manage itself.
Seemingly, any security component an
enterprise could want is available in
cloud form, including SIEM (security
information and event management);
Web application firewalls; advanced
threat management; and abilities addressing email and Web security, virus
scans, Web content and URL blocking,
spam, IAM (identity access management), and application security testing.
Like Bartoletti and Anderson, Keegan
views DaaS as something worth considering. Essentially, DaaS is a form of
VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure)
a cloud provider hosts and offers via
subscription basis. Unlike a traditional
on-premises solution in which internal
IT would manage the VDI, DaaS typically entails a provider managing the
companys storage, backups, data security, upgrades, application support,
etc. Furthermore, DaaS enables users to
easily access data and applications from
anywhere and from any supported device. Overall, Keegan says, ESG still sees
desktops as something largely managed
on-premises. I think theres a market
for DaaS, but its probably going to be
applicable to newer companies that are
walking in without a sunken investment
in that infrastructure, he says.
Another as-a-service trend Keegan
believes has possible staying power is
DBaaS due to the practical uses and
flexibility it offers. For example, depending on the database vendor, he
16
says, youre not locked into either

way. You can consume it anyway you
want, including as a hybrid model. I
think thats what a lot of business are
shooting for. They want a combination
of things they can manage as well as
things they can push into the cloud.
Keegan points to one vendors DBaaS
offering as an example. A company
looking to perform, say, testing and development, could launch an instance of
the vendors database in its cloud space
in conjunction with what the company
has running on-premises. Unlike traditional IaaS, in which a company acquires compute, storage, etc. but must
still load development tools and data
before getting started, the vendor combines IaaS with PaaS and a cloud database instance.
Thus, the vendors developer tools
are pre-integrated in the cloud instance,
so youre pretty much off and running as soon as that infrastructure gets
provisioned, he says. When testing and
development is over, the company can
spin down the instance and stop incurring any more costs. And you can
ingest that data back from the cloud
into your on-premises location once the
development cycles are done and start
running the application from your onpremises instance, Keegan says.
Two additional as-a-service offerings growing in popularity are CaaS and
UCaaS. The former essentially provides
various communication options, such
as VoIP (voice over IP), IM (instant
message), and videoconferencing, that
the provider owns, manages, and delivers via the Internet. The allure for
customers is an ability to easily add and
reduce devices and features as demand
necessitates, all while greatly reducing
capital investments and management
responsibilities.
UCaaS, meanwhile, provides essentially the same unified communications

abilities companies have traditionally
run on-premises but moves them to
a cloud-hosted provider to operate
and manage. Companies typically pay
a monthly, per-user fee that can fluctuate depending on the number of users
and various UC features each uses.
Conveniently, these features can differ
per user. This compares to buying and
managing an internal solution, something which historically only larger enterprises could primarily afford due to
the complexity and costs involved.
Depending on the solution, communication features included in a UCaaS
product can include voice, messaging
(email, voicemail, unified messaging)
desktop video, IM, audio/video/Web
conferencing, presence technology, contact center abilities, and collaboration
features. Some companies decide to deploy only certain point UC components
to the cloud rather than obtain a complete UC solution.
A Change In Tradition
In addition to influencing companies
that are adopting as-a-service strategies,
the XaaS concept is impacting vendors
that have traditionally sold products vs.
individual services. Traditional software companies must rethink licensing
models, says Bartoletti. Pay-per-use
and self-service access are the hallmarks of as-a-service, and depending
on the age and penetration of an existing product, it can be quite difficult
for a vendor to make the switch to completely new licensing models.
Overall, many companies now simply
prefer purchasing a subscription and
love it when they can consume their
technologies as service, says Anderson.
This makes XaaS offerings an important part of the market opportunity, he
explains. In fact, he adds, as-a-service
is growing at rates much faster than the
traditional markets. If you extrapolate
the trends, its unlikely that technology
vendors will be able to compete over the
long term without an as-a-service option for their offerings, he says.
Cognizant Computing
BIG DATA, INTERNET OF THINGS & THE EVOLUTION OF THE PERSONAL CLOUD
COGNIZANT COMPUTING is a fairly new

term thats being applied to a technology
concept thats actually quite old. In its
most basic form, cognizant computing
refers to a series of apps and technologies that are capable of performing tasks,
making decisions, and solving problems
on your behalf, so you can focus more of
your mental and physical energy on more
important things. Because cognizant computing relies so much on a capacity to
predict the products you want to buy,
when to buy them, and ultimately make
those purchases, there is a lot of room for
profit for organizations who are able to
adopt the tech.
The Power Of The Personal Cloud

Gartner, the research firm that coined
the term, calls cognizant computing the
next phase of the personal cloud. Jessica
Ekholm, a Gartner research director who
covers mobile and wireless trends, defines the personal cloud as it exists today
as the individuals collection of digital
content, services, and apps which are

seamlessly accessible across any device.
In some cases, this personal cloud may
be represented as multiple services, such
as a standalone cloud storage service for
photos, videos, and files; your smartphone
app backup and data storage platform;
and a calendar service that syncs your appointments across various Web-enabled
devices. Key features of these personal
cloud services is the ability to store, synchronize, stream, and share content on
a contextual basis, moving from one platform, screen, and location to another.
Closer Than You Think

According to Ekholm, [There are]
four stages of cognizant computing and
they are Sync Me, See Me, Know Me,
and Be Me. These four stages assist in
increasing personal and commercial information about a consumer and there
is a natural progression from the lowest
level, Sync Me to the more complex Be
Me stage.
As the personal cloud evolves, all of

these separate capabilities will begin to
converge or share data with one another.
This aspect is where cognizant computings Sync Me stage gets its name. Here
we are talking about users contextually
storing and syncing apps and content.
The See Me stage gets its name from
these personal cloud services being able to
add location metadata to the mix. Ekholm
says that this stage is important for understanding where consumers are at any
given moment and where they have been
in the past in order to better align services
and promotions for them.
Smartphones and tablets currently have
a number of location tracking services
that can be enabled to record the time,
place, and date that a photo was taken
and display accurate driving directions
and durations given current traffic conditions. There are also a variety of apps
that perform these functions to help you
find nearby businesses, friends, and attractions. According to Gartner, now is the
17
time when this stage really takes off. The

research firm predicts that low-cost, lowenergy Bluetooth beacons will continue
to emerge as an indoor-positioning technology that will help to increase the diversity of cognizant-computing offerings.
Ekholm suggests that the Know Me
stage is all about connecting the dots.
Here we are talking about understanding
the needs and wants of your users in order
to proactively present suitable services and
products to them. Gartner currently sees a
majority of the cognizant computing apps
and services limited to the See Me and
Know Me stages.
The final, and according to Ekholm,
most interesting stage is when apps and
services are able to act on behalf of the
consumer; this is the Be Me stage. The key
to making this stage work is a detailed rule
set that enables the software to determine
when it is and isnt OK to make decisions
for you. Of course, its the consumer who
will need to have control over these rules
if cognizant computing will ultimately become a reality. Although were still a few
years away from realizing this final piece of
the puzzle, Gartner predicts that by 2018,
10% of consumers across the world will
be using intelligent agents in the Be Me
stage of cognizant computing.
Its All Connected

In order for something as complicated
and intelligent as cognizant computing to
come to pass, a number of other industry
buzzwords need to continue to evolve. The
IoT (Internet of Things) is a big one, which
is a term used to describe the "gadgetification" of everyday objects. IoT enables a
[The] four stages of cognizant computing . . . are Sync

Me, See Me, Know Me, and Be Me. These four stages
assist in increasing personal and commercial information
about a consumer . . .
JESSICA EKHOLM
Research Director : Gartner
variety of objects from our home appliances

to utility controls, automobiles and public
transportation, health care devices, personal
fitness devices, foodstuffs, and more can
connect to the Web and share information on your energy consumption, driving
habits, home temperature fluctuations, local
traffic, resting and peak heart rates, expiration dates of perishable goods, and countless
other pieces of information.
This becomes possible through smart
tags, wireless technologies, and a whole
lot of software thats capable of collecting
the data and making sense of it all. Adding
context to all of these bits of information
is the central concern of big data. With
the ability to track so much customer behavior, its not really a question of if, but
when retailers and organizations will begin
using this data to increase sales and retain
customers en masse.
Ekholm also mentioned context as being
an important consideration, and Gartners
IT glossary defines "context-aware computing" as being able to anticipate immediate needs based on situational and
environmental data about people, places,
and objects. Gartners Nexus of Forces concept is another that has bearing on cognizant computing; it involves the symbiotic
relationship between social, mobility, cloud,
and information patterns that come together to enable new business opportunities.
Living In A Cognizant World
Bluetooth beacons consume very little energy and can add

precise location data to almost anything that needs it.
18
When we asked for examples of cognizant computing, Ekholm pointed to a

handful of current apps that are hitting
very close to the mark, and many of them
are from very large organizations, including Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
More than 90% of [Googles] revenues
come from advertising, and they excel at
ad brokering and the algorithms behind
contextualization. Google Now is a great
example of what we can imagine as to the

future of cognizant computing. Google
Now is an app that gives you real-time data
to help you make decisions. It provides
drive time estimates based on traffic data,
weather forecasts, shopping reminders,
nearby businesses, and sports scores.
Tempo AI and Emu are other apps that
perform similar functions. Ekholm also
suggests that Amazons e-commerce, data
hosting, and warehousing expertise could
be used to develop a cognizant computing
service that is capable of pre-package and
readying orders before you purchase them.
Another expert in the field of contextualized advertising, Facebook may also be able
to develop services that leverage the power
of word-of-mouth recommendations that
occur between family and friends.
Ekholm points to Anki Drive as one
of the more innovative cognizant computing applications. It is a slot car-like
racing game in which real physical toy cars
race around a rolled out racetrack using
smartphone-based controls. The interesting part is that the cars drive themselves
with only a little help from you. You can
play one car and another three are all managed by a real-time AI engine.
According to Ekholm, Anki Drive illustrates all four stages of cognizant computing, The game syncs its state, the cars
know their place on the track and adjust
accordingly. The cars carry with them an
identity and they know their user, and finally they act on your behalf by driving
themselves and competing at a level of
sophistication that, to be honest, is pretty
darned amazing.
Although not every organization will be
able to leverage cognizant computing to
the same degree, the concepts it introduces
can tell us a lot about ourselves. The fourth
stage is just on the horizon, but if done
properly, we all stand to benefit.
Modernize Your Mobility Approach

UNDERSTAND TODAYS WORKPLACE MOBILITY TRENDS
JUST AS ONE MOBILITY trend gains trac-
KEY POINTS
The profound impact that the BYOD
(bring your own device) trend has had
on businesses has been accompanied
by various data and security worries.
Many experts believe BYOD will
eventually give way (or is already
giving way) to a model known as
CYOD (choose your own device),
which is said to balance control between employers and employees.
Cloud-based services can be a
boon to worker collaboration, file
syncing/sharing, and productivity, but
such services require careful company
oversight.
In coming years, expect wearables
and various Internet-connected devices to increase mobility demands.
20
tion with organizations, another comes

along offering the promise of even greater
capabilities for bolstering worker productivity, managing devices, securing sensitive data, enabling collaboration, and other
sought-after results.
Take BYOD (bring your own device),
for example. While some enterprises are
just now implementing official BYOD
strategies and policies to allow employees
to connect their personal devices to corporate networks, some experts are recommending a CYOD (choose your own
device) approach, whereby organizations
provide employees with lists of companyapproved devices from which to choose.
The reality is that mobile strategy is a
shifting target, involving numerous trends,
some of which come and go, and some of
which overlap each other. Although this
reality is daunting, it remains vital that
businesses find an appropriate path to keep
pace with competitors leveraging their own
mobility initiatives. This article provides an
overview of several dominant workforce

mobility movements, all of which can be
key to modernizing a mobility strategy.
Understand BYOD
Despite its relative youth, BYOD has had
a monumental impact on organizations.
Not too long ago, it was more common
for companies to deploy, say, a fleet of the
same BlackBerry model to its workers, and
many companies retain this model for various mobility management purposes. By
contrast, BYOD ushered in an era where
employees are hopping on the corporate
networks with whatever personal device
they feel most productive with.
Beyond boosting productivity and employee satisfaction, BYOD is praised for
introducing potential costs-savings for companies because BYOD saves companies the
trouble of buying devices and associated
accessories. Another positive is that todays
increasingly tech-savvy workers are more
likely to troubleshoot their own device
problems or find a co-worker who can.
As BYOD uptake has mushroomed,

however, IT, organizations, and experts
point out theres plenty not to like about
BYOD, including the added demand it can
place on network infrastructures, the difficulties it poses in supporting custom applications, and the complexity it can introduce
in terms of paying device/data plan reimbursements. The biggest challenge BYOD
can pose to organizations, however, is lack
of control. Particularly worrisome is the
possibility of workers accessing and sharing
company data over corporate networks
via cloud-based services and applications,
something that introduces security, compliance, and other issues.
For companies that do embrace BYOD,
experts generally advise establishing
strong policies that spell out responsibilities and expectations. Experts also recommend starting small, using pilot programs
to determine which employees should be
included in the BYOD program, what infrastructure upgrades or updates might be
necessary, and which data and resources
will be made available. While some organizations have decided to simply deny personal devices access to corporate networks,
others have adopted device and application
management solutions to address data and
security concerns.
Research from J. Gold Associates expects
that in the coming years, BYOD will transition into BYOT (bring your own thing,
sometimes referred to as bring your own
technology), which presents a more complex and diverse scenario that will require
infrastructure investments to meet the demand that scores of sensors and peripherals
employees bring into the workplace will
create. Enterprises must focus on longerterm platforms rather than short-term niche
products and build a strategy now to deal
with this emerging phenomenon, J. Gold
Associates stated in a recent paper.
BYOD vs. CYOD

CYOD is an approach that lands somewhere in between the two extremes of
companies mandating the use of specific
devices and employees using whatever
devices they want. Many experts believe
CYOD will eventually supplant BYOD, in
part because it can address many primary
You need application access and data access regardless

of the device youre using at that moment. So companies
will look to manage things like access, policy, and security
across all of these things in a much more consistent way.
CHRISTIAN KANE
Analyst : Forrester Research
organizational concerns over BYOD while

still leaving employees a certain degree of
freedom of choice.
With CYOD, you can provide an employee with a choice of company-approved
devices, operating systems, and platforms.
Whereas BYOD might lead to a large enterprise ending up with hundreds of mobile workers using potentially dozens of
different device models, operating systems,
and application versions, CYOD narrows
this down to a more reasonable number,
one that organizations and their IT departments are prepared to manage and support.
Although certain CYOD policies entail
the company paying for devices, data plans,
accessories, etc., a more typical CYOD
policy involves employees purchasing the
devices and data plans and the company
overseeing support responsibilities. Key to
a successful CYOD program, experts say, is
not being too heavy-handed in the devices
employees can choose. If a CYOD policy is
too draconian, there exists the potential for
employees to bypass it and connect unapproved devices anyway.
Another option is COPE (corporate
owned, personally enabled). Like CYOD,
COPE offers employees a choice of devices,
except the devices are company-owned.
While COPE policies differ from one to
the next, COPE typically allows for employees using devices for personal activities
(calls, email, social media use, and so on).
For companies, COPE provides control and
security measures and enables IT to more
easily update and back up devices, wipe data
remotely, and more. As with CYOD policies, its possible that employees will balk at
overly restrictive COPE policies.
Manage Your Devices

As popular as BYOD is with employees,
its arguably unpopular in equal measure
with executives and IT personnel responsible
for company security, data integrity, compliance issues, and regulatory requirements.
The lack of control enterprises generally have
over personal devices accessing corporate
networks and data has led many to implement MDM (mobile device management),
MAM (mobile application management),
EMM (enterprise mobility management),
and other solutions to regain control.
Increasingly, experts point to EMM as
the future of corporate mobility. Gartner
dubs EMM the future evolution and convergence of several mobile management, security, and support technologies, including
MDM, MAM, application wrapping, containerization, and file sync/sharing. Gartner
says it eventually expects EMM will address
an array of mobility needs spanning various
smartphone, tablet, and PC OSes.
Similarly, Christian Kane, Forrester
Research analyst, believes EMM will eventually be part of workspace management
solutions that address mobile and PC management aspects. You need application access and data access regardless of the device
youre using at that moment, he says. So
companies will look to manage things like
access, policy, and security across all of these
things in a much more consistent way.
Forrester has noted that EMM improves
upon legacy MDM solutions in three main
areas: security, support, and experience.
Where experience is concerned, Forrester
states the ability to make application recommendations to employees, provide automation and self-service abilities, and enable IT
to roll out and integrate services quickly will
make EMM more enticing to companies.
Chris Silva, Gartner research director,
notes that via just one console, EMM suites
enable managing multiple policies and enforcement methods, which is essential to
managing mobility on a large scale. As mobile OSes mature, he says, more control is
being placed natively into the device. This
21
will shift the evolution of EMMs to focusing

more on app- and data-level controls.
J. Gold Associates predicts the EMM
market will consolidate in coming years
to the point two or three pure-play vendors will exist. For most organizations,
this means EMM functions will merge
into corporate systems from major vendors, which they may already possess.
Furthermore, the research firm expects
base EMM systems will extend security
and management abilities to accommodate the array of Internet-connected devices organizations will likely add.
Tap Into The Cloud

To do their jobs, mobile workers need
fast, easy access to data, files, contacts, and
other resources wherever that information
may be located. Increasingly, employees are
turning to cloud-based services (including
free consumer-oriented ones) that provide the productivity, collaboration, sync/
sharing, communication, data access, and
other abilities they covet for real-time decision-making, brainstorming, idea sharing,
project planning, and other functions.
There are online services today that enable users to maintain calendars, schedule
meetings, manage projects and deadlines,
edit and save presentations and documents, manage websites, collaborate with
white boards, engage in videoconferences,
make video calls, and exchange messages,
all from their mobile devices.
Largely, mobile workers now view such
cloud-based services as a necessity. If their
organizations dont offer suitable and accessible corporate equivalents, theyll step
outside the company and acquire tools
themselves. This practice has spawned
BYOD-like trends known as BYOS (bring
your own software/services) and BYOA
(bring your own applications).
Although cloud services can enhance productivity and collaboration,
sometimes because workers are already
familiar with the tools from personal experience, they can introduce additional
concerns. Cloud-based services can, for
example, introduce data, security, and
compliance problems when employees
use them to store and share company
data, leaving the company with no insight
22
. . . while managing mobile devices is already difficult, smart

watches, wearable computing, the IoT (Internet of Things),
and other new technologies will complicate matters.
JIM RAPOZA
Senior Research Analyst : Aberdeen Group
into (or control over) what information is

going where.
In response to these concerns, a growing number of service providers are offering enterprise versions. Additionally,
vendors of traditional enterprise collaboration solutions are adding cloud applications, support, and other features to
their solutions to appeal to mobile professionals. Experts do caution that before
implementing, say, a cloud-based collaboration tool, the enterprise should ensure
that its compatible with the various devices, OSes, and platforms the company
uses. Organizations should also consult
with employees about what tools theyre
already using, what tools they dont want
to use, and what features they would like.
Strategize For The Future

While some companies have ditched
PCs in favor of smartphones, tablets, and
other mobile devices, at least for some
workers, the desktop PC will likely have
a place within enterprises for the foreseeable future, despite predictions of the
PCs demise. That said, there are many
factors involved these days in matching
a particular device to a particular user in
order to maximize productivity. This can
be helpful, but it can also complicate decision-making. Furthermore, managing a
fleet of devices that potentially consists of
various 2-in-1 laptops, ultra-small-form
factor desktops, ultrabooks, all-in-one
desktops, or thin clients on top of smartphones and tablets can be considerably
complex. Managing a diverse array of devices, however, seems to be the future.
In a recent paper detailing the collision
of PC and mobile device management,
Forrester Research noted that while most
workers still rely on mobile devices as secondary computing devices, this will change
as mobile app options continue to surface. Different jobs will require different
tools, meaning employees computing arsenals will expand to include PCs, smartphones, tablets, wearables, and other
devices. A siloed management system that
only works for mobile devices and not PCs
will make it harder to take an employeecentric rather than a device-centric view,
Forrester stated.
Similarly, Jim Rapoza, senior research
analyst at Aberdeen Group, says while
managing mobile devices is already difficult, smart watches, wearable computing,
the IoT (Internet of Things), and other new
technologies will complicate matters. J.
Gold Associates, meanwhile, predicts that
within two years, enterprise users will regularly use three to five personal devices and
eight to 10 business applications. Further,
theyll connect to at least five enterprise
systems. These numbers are expected to
multiply two to three times by 2018-19,
meaning new burdens for enterprises in
terms of access and interaction with corporate systems and infrastructure.
Beyond a changing device landscape,
expect enterprise workspaces to continue
changing in coming years, dramatically so
in some cases. Recently, there has been increasing acceptance of flexible and remote
working practices due largely to affordable
high-speed Internet connectivity and technologies that enable easier collaboration
and communication. Younger workers with
nontraditional workplace expectations and
knowledge workers reluctant to relocate but
who possess skills organizations desire are
also influencing this trend. For companies,
remote working situations can lead to savings in real estate and resources.
Another workplace trend making waves
is open workspace designs that do away
with cubicles and closed offices in favor
of more collaborative environments. Time
and a variety of implementations will tell
whether such efforts affect productivity and
creativity positively, negatively, or both.
Tablet Buying Advice

CONSIDER YOUR OPTIONS BEFORE MAKING A PURCHASE
TABLETS HAVE A NUMBER OF advantages compared with laptops and desktop

PCs, but without careful consideration,
the tablet you buy may leave you wanting
for something more powerful, smaller
and/or bigger, or more versatile. Here
weve put together a handful of things to
keep in mind when shopping for the perfect tablet.
Things To Get
The right frame of mind. A tablet is
almost universally smaller and lighter
than the average laptop, therefore there
are limits to what it can manage. Using
any application that requires a significant
amount of processing power, memory
bandwidth, or graphics chops, such as
CAD, 3D rendering, gaming (beyond
mobile games), scientific calculations,
media creation and editing, and the like,
will be painfully slow or impossible on
the average tablet. Also, tasks that involve
a lot of typing or the deft use of a mouse
translate poorly to tablets without add-on
accessories, which are less likely to travel

well. As long as you dont expect a tablet
to replace a PC or laptop for a handful
of applications, your head is in the right
place.
High-resolution display. Screens on
tablets tend to be small, generally in the
7- to 10-inch range, but the higher the
resolution, the more readable text will
be. Screens with good color reproduction
and clarity will also be easier on your eyes
for watching video and extended usage.
Screens that discern a high number of
touch points will also generally make
using apps easier and streamline the process of finding the files you need when
you need them.
An operating system youre comfortable using. Todays top tablets differ in their user interfaces. If
you are partial to Android, iOS, or
Windows, look for a tablet that uses
that OS. Generally speaking, all three
use file types that support decent interoperability with traditional laptop
and desktop OSes, so youre really not

shackling yourself to something that
will keep you from being productive by
choosing any one option over another.
The right size. Smaller tablets, or
those that hover around 7 inches, are
easily held in one hand and travel well.
They are ideal for reading and watching
video. With 10- to 12-inch tablets, you
sacrifice some portability and singlehanded handling for a more generous
video image, a larger onscreen keyboard,
and often better battery life.
Must-have accessories. Its true, you
dont need peripherals such as a mouse
or keyboard, to complete work tasks on
a tablet, but depending on how your
plan to use the device, you might want
them. Because youll frequently take
your tablet with you wherever you go, a
protective case is a worthwhile investment. Any tablet you buy will support
Bluetooth, so you have a multitude of
wireless accessories to choose from.
A stylus can be handy to have, as is a
23
of storage is outrageous. However,

you'll wish you had paid the price when
that space fills up. The full-featured
apps can be very large, and having to repeatedly delete apps you still occasionally use just to install something new
can get tedious.
Assuming Wi-Fi will be good
enough. Its true, Wi-Fi is virtually everywhere. However, if you plan to use
your tablet in many of the places you are
accustomed to using your phone while
on the road, you'll find yourself without
Internet access more often than you'd
like. You can get 4G LTE (or other) cellular service for a monthly fee, which
may seem like an unnecessary expense to
some, but it is next to impossible to add
Some tablets, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, have keyboard and stylus accessories, making it an attractive option
cellular service to a Wi-Fi-only tablet.
for people who want to replace their laptops.
Buying a refurbished model. In many
instances, such as with a proper warranty
and from a reputable source, refurbished
possible to get the features you want.
stand or dock for those times when your
models are a good way to save money.
You'll likely want to take your new tablet
tablet needs to take a break from its noBut in far too many other cases, refurwith you wherever you go, but if its
madic lifestyle.
bished units may suffer from hardware
poorly made, youll regret your choice in
A screen protector. Screen protectors
defects, exhibit exshort order.
on smartphones are so common that
cessive wear and
Disregarding
many manufacturers now ship their detear, and fail in uncompany policy.
vices with protectors already in place.
expected ways. It's
Al-though the difTablets, which are just as vulnerable to
usually not posscreen scratches, typically dont. Make
ferences among
sible to know the
sure to research screen protectors just as
tablet OSes are
specifics as to why
thoroughly as you would any other item
mostly cosmetic,
a unit was returned
you purchase for your tablet. Some of
we advise that you
and refurbished,
the better ones weve tested come with a
keep in mind the
so you might find
dust-flushing spray and a plastic card to
other types of moit worth the extra
squeegee any bubbles that might appear
bile devices your
dough to buy new
between the protector and the screen
company uses.
and have some
during application.
For instance, you
peace of mind.
Additional memory. If your tablet
might be allowed to A tablet with an expandable memory slot allows you to
Buying an acof choice has an expandable memory
connect your per- add more storage. The PNY Turbo Performance 64GB
cessory bundle.
slot, take that as a huge plus. Having
sonal iPad to the MicroSD XC card, for example, substantially expands
the ability to purchase an affordable
corporate network storage capacity in tablets and other devices that include W e v e a l l s e e n
a microSD card slot.
them, the everyhigh-capacity microSD card will ensure
provided you use
thing youll ever
you always have plenty of storage space
the security apps
need for your tablet bundles that infor apps and media. In fact, if the tablet
your company currently licenses, but you
clude a screen protector, case, memory
youre eyeing features a microSD slot,
might not be able to do that if you bring
card, wrist strap, tripod etc. Although
you can disregard our later tip that aims
in a tablet with an OS the company does
the bundle is generally reasonably
to dissuade you from skimping on innot support. Check out your companys
priced, in some instances the individual
BYOD (bring your own device) policies;
ternal storage.
components are left wanting in quality.
a particularly strict policy could put the
You may end up spending more by
kibosh on your plans altogether.
Things To Avoid
buying well-researched accessories as
Skimping on storage. Admittedly,
Going cheap. Although many tablets
you need them, but you will be happier
the premium that tablet manufacturers
are more affordable, avoid making the
in the long run.
often charge for an extra 32GB or 64GB
mistake of trying to spend as little as
24
Hosted Communications
THE APPEAL OF CLOUD-BASED VOIP & UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
AS MOBILITY, REMOTE working, and collaboration become more important by the

day, businesses cant make too few communications options available for employees, clients, and customers. Today,
theres an impressive list of options, including those provided in enterprise-level
hosted UC (unified communications) and
VoIP (Voice over IP) solutions. The list
of features within these solutions is also
impressive and growing in number.
Talk The Talk

The breadth of providers offering enterprise-level hosted communications
services that can meet business-specific
needs is fairly vast. North American businesses, says Dan OConnell, Gartner
research director, have 100-plus cloudbased VoIP and UC providers to choose
from. There are so many choices, he
says, it confuses business IT procurement managers. Options include services
from telecoms, cable operators, systems
integrators, and technology providers.
26
Combined, application specialists own the

largest market share, he says.
Numerous enterprises already use a
dedicated hosted or SaaS (software as
a service)-based UC service, says Art
Schoeller, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst. Forrester data
indicates 20% of enterprises surveyed use
a dedicated hosted solution, while 10%
use a SaaS-based one. In the future, however, the dedicated hosted share will remain even while the SaaS share will rise
to 20%. Positively, services are businessclass, not consumer-oriented, and robust
enough for SMBs (small and midsize
businesses) and midsize and larger enterprises, he says.
Until recently, only fairly large-sized
companies could access UC as on-premises solutions, which required significant
up-front investments in infrastructure,
says Tim Banting, principal analyst with
Current Analysis. Today, UC is widely accepted as a way to enhance employee productivity, reduce decision-making time,
and provide better engagement across

the business. Presence, for example, enables workers to quickly see a colleagues
availability and select the most appropriate communication channelvoice,
video, IM (instant messaging), etc.to
get needed information.
Obtaining UCaaS (UC as a service)
typically means getting a wide swath of
communications services while negating
the hardware/software acquisition, management, maintenance, and upgrading
costs associated with on-premises solutions. Cloud-based services are generally
available in an on-demand, pay-as-yougrow model, allowing the flexibility to
expand services as business requirements
change without the up-front investments.
Commonly, hosted services include
VoIP, with IP phones for office workers
and soft clients downloadable to desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones
for mobile workers. Also common is IM,
presence, conferencing (audio, Web, and
video), contact center capability, email,
calendaring, enterprise social networking,

file sync and share, and UM (unified messaging; combining email, voice, fax, etc.
into one interface).
This is where UCaaS makes a lot of sensefor

companies geographically dispersed with multiple
locations and/or home workers.
TIM BANTING
Principal Analyst : Current Analysis
Enterprise-Level Features
OConnell says most enterprise-level
hosted UC and VoIP solution deployments include a high uptake of VoIP,
mobility, UM, and audio conferencing.
The business case is often replacing the
premium-based PBX [private branch exchange; a private phone network used
within a company], as well as integrating
employee smartphones to enable enterprise mobility, he says.
Basically, Schoeller says, hosted UC/
VoIP solutions include the same set of
capabilities as on-premises UC solutions. These features are used for enterprise collaboration, and many look
to connect external users, but in other
cases, they use federation services to
do that. Federation essentially enables
UC-type communications with others
outside the organization.
In terms of telephony, some organizations require an exhaustive list of features,
including those in operator/attendant
consoles, Banting says. Additionally, with
remote working on the rise, mobility is
becoming key. Here, functionality can
range from simple call-forwarding from
a desk phone to a mobile device on up to
fully featured soft-client apps that enable
making voice and video calls over Wi-Fi,
holding conference calls, and IM.
Bantings own firms use of UCaaS
enables its analysts to operate globally.
U.S.-based clients, for example, use a
U.S. number to contact Banting with the
call routed via public Internet to an office-based IP phone near London. This
is where UCaaS makes a lot of sense
for companies geographically dispersed
with multiple locations and/or home
workers, he says.
Elsewhere, audio, video, and Web conferencing is becoming more common for
some organizations. Conferencing enables team members to meet online in a
scheduled or ad-hoc manner to talk, add
video, and share content. While some
solutions may include whiteboarding
functionality, Banting says he hasnt seen

this used extensively due to the difficulty
of using a mouse to draw effectively.
Also more common are contact center
abilities, such as automatic routing of
voice calls to agent groups, historical
and real-time call reports, IVR (interactive voice response) for self-service, and
supervisor dashboards and tools. Some
providers also offer universal queuing
functionality that adds other communication channels to the voice mix, such
as Web chat, email, and social media
(tweets, for example), Banting says.
Features some may be less familiar
with include FMC (fixed mobile convergence), something Gartner defines
as device and infrastructure technology
that enables the transparent use of
voice and data applications across fixed
and mobile access points. Essentially,
FMC is something some telecoms
provide that enables mobile workers
to seamlessly switch between an organizations fixed wired network and
external cellular networks and access
desktop-based voice, data, and video
functionality regardless of the connection. Desktop sharing, meanwhile, is a
facet of conferencing that enables collaborating remotely online in real-time
through sharing files, data, etc., in some
cases with texting, phone, and chat.
There have also been moves to
embed UC functionality into everyday
business applications, Banting says.
Typically, software can recognize
a telephone number in a field within
an application and pop up a dialer to
allow you to click to dial, he says.
Additionally, contact cards appearing
in email or a document program can
provide email, IM, or voice or video
call choices. Schoeller, meanwhile, cites
federation as a less familiar feature that
Forrester sees providing value in terms
of enabling a richer, broader means of

connecting to external parties.
Better Utilization
Currently, many cloud-based VoIP/
UC providers possess limited video
and Web conferencing capabilities,
OConnell says, although some are enhancing their abilities and making them
easier to use. We can expect these integrated solutions to start replacing the
Web conferencing and videoconferencing point solutions, he says.
Forrester, meanwhile, expects good
growth for desktop video, although,
Schoeller says, videoconferencing doesnt
seem a fit for some enterprises culture.
Some organizations will eventually grow
into video as more consumers using
it personally also want it for business,
he says.
Moving forward, Banting says its worth
noting that what was once a complex mix
of distinctly different business tools and
technologies is slowly coming together in
the cloud. UCaaS providers recognize that
multiple tools and multiple communication channels cause unnecessary repetition,
delay, and frustration for organizations,
he says. Likely, he adds, well see a rapid
convergence of real-time communications
(voice, video, conferencing, IM, presence,
and desktop sharing) and asynchronous
collaboration (email, intranet sites, voice
mail, enterprise file sync/share, and enterprise social networking).
Currently, the collaboration and communications market is fragmented into
numerous on-premises and cloud-based
offerings, Banting says. As such, an enterprise will likely compromise some features and functionality if choosing either
an all-cloud or all-on-premises solution.
Many vendors, Banting adds, do support
hybrid models that enable integrating
both deployment choices.
27
The State Of Data Analytics

THE TIME TO ESTABLISH A DATA-DRIVEN COMPANY CULTURE IS NOW
KEY POINTS
Because all companies possess
data, some experts view data analytics solutions as suitable for any
organization.
Increasingly, cloud computing
and the availability of open-source
resources are bringing data analytics programs more within reach
for smaller companies.
Successful data analytics programs largely rely on establishing
a company culture that recognizes
the benefits of making data-driven
decisions.
The Internet of Things and the
data it generates are expected to
become key focus areas for data
analytics in coming years.
28
INCREASINGLY, DATA analytics is becoming a key component of enterprises

operations. Most likely, however, as the
saying goes, we aint seen nothing yet.
While its mostly been large enterprises
applying data analytics in various ways
to date, smaller companies are increasingly entering the fray. Jack Phillips,
CEO of the International Institute for
Analytics, believes that in the near future companies will use data analytics
as a competitive differentiator, in much
the same way they use their products
and pricing.
Theres no question the [data analytics] market is growing, Phillips says.
You can see that in the hardware and
software side, but you can also see it in
the number of companies hiring specialists in this area. The leaders in this
area are setting aside budget to build out
abilities to make essential data-driven
decisions. Few would disagree that the
market is expanding. A slew of statistics indicate that todays organizations,
rather than just dabbling, are making

strong commitments to data analytics
programs. IDC, for example, recently
forecast that spending on big data-related software, hardware, and services
would hit $125 billion this year.
Broadly, companies are using data
analytics to enhance marketing efforts,
improve and streamline manufacturing,
bolster security, target customers, and
more. Theyre also seeking to empower
their end users to make real-time analytics-driven decisions and embrace
advanced analytics, such as machine
learning and predictive analytics. The
following looks at such trends, where
the market is headed, industries benefiting from data analytics, how early
adopters are readjusting their efforts,
and more.
A Growing Market
How big is the data analytics market?
Its massive, says Daniel Ko, Info-Tech
Research Group manager. Essentially,
every organization has data that can

be analyzed to generate information,
insights, and intelligence. In other
words, data analytics is appropriate
for everyone. Factor in upstream and
downstream applicationsdatabases;
appliances; and data-integration, dataquality, and master-data platforms that
data analytics depend onand were
talking about a significant part of the
worlds economy, Ko says.
Ko says the growth of data analytics probably equals the growth of
data itself, and cites the injection of
big data as a significant driver. Big
data, however, is only the most recent
growth sprout of the market, he says.
Databases in the 1980s, CRM (customer relationship management) in the
1990s, and BI (business intelligence)
in the 2000s are others. This current
growth sprout might be bigger, he
says, adding that its a cocktail mix of
data analytics, big data, and some machine learning.
Brad Shimmin, Current Analysis
service director for business technology and software, says his firms
research indicates big data projects are
a top priority within most enterprises.
For vendors and buyers, this has led
to a smarter market than existed a
few years ago when we were caught
up in the fervor of big data itself, he
says, and it has also led to such notions as if you dont have a Hadoop
cluster youre nothing. Today, enterprises are realizing that a successful
data and analytics plan requires approaching it from the line of business
upward or outward, he says. As such,
solutions have a greater tolerance and
understanding for bringing together
many disparate data sources, data sizes,
speeds, etc.
From Shimmins perspective, the
marketplace appears to be one where
vendors and buyers are focusing more
Now the market is becoming more fragmented on

analytics solutions. So you get a lot of analytical-driven
applications where the analytics is sort of hidden below
the surface. Thats a trend I think for sure is here to stay.
JACK PHILLIPS
CEO : International Institute for Analytics
on opportunistic solutions vs. monolithic, one-size fits-all ones. Buyers,

for example, are becoming more mature in terms of knowing what their
expectations are. Rather than looking
to stand up a big data lake and try to
drive insight from one of many lightweight visualization tools, buyers
are understanding the importance of
having strong data governance and security in place, he says. In that regard, its less of a Wild West right now
and more of a measured approach,
he says. Organizations are pinpointing
their business problems, requirements,
and what they hope to accomplish and
then deciding whats needed in a data
platform to analyze and get answers to
those questions, he says.
Increasing Reliance
Right now, larger enterprises in particular are placing a strong emphasis
on data analytics. Some are literally
surviving on it, Ko says. Traditional
industries (financial, consumer goods,
energy, telecommunications, etc.) that
are experiencing slow or flat growth,
for example, are using data analytics
to find diamonds in an almost usedup diamond mine to create next-level
growth, he says. Some large enterprises
that ignored or delayed data analytics
usage are now trying to catch up but
with mixed results. Some will never
catch up and will eventually feel it in
their bottom lines, Ko says.
John Myers, Enterprise Management
Associates managing research director,
IDC PREDICTS SPENDING ON CLOUD-BASED

BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS OVER THE NEXT
FIVE YEARS WILL GROW THREE TIMES FASTER
THAN FOR ON-PREMISES SOLUTIONS.
credits data analytics with enabling

large organizations to manage the
breadth of their products or services,
locations, and customerssomething
that would take too much time and
effort if done in a one-off manner.
Automated enterprise-wide analytics,
for example, helps companies price
products and services consistently,
compare locations beyond simple
store-to-store comparisons, and treat
customers as a segment of one as opposed to just another number. While
many segments of one can be treated
the same, Myers says, understanding
how to properly group them for economies of scale on offers, treatment,
package pricing, and more is key.
Historically, data analytics abilities
for smaller companies have been more
limited. New data sources (big data, for
example), open-source analytical platforms, and an ability to perform analytics via cloud-based implementations
(that is, without needing a physical data
center) are changing this. With such
barriers falling away, having a datadriven culture is becoming more important than company size in determining
appropriate analytics implementations
and investments, Myers says.
Similarly, Phillips says the midmarket is quietly and slowly catching
up on data analytics. The large firms
are making the largest investments,
but as a percentage of size, that investment is probably no different than
what were seeing in the midmarket,
he says. Analytics in the cloud and leveraging storage and processing technologies is definitely a trend thats
enhancing the overall adoption of analytics and data, he says. (IDC predicts
spending on cloud-based big data and
analytics over the next five years will
29
grow three times faster than for onpremises solutions.)

Ko believes smaller organizations
actually have more agility in adopting
data analytics due to having fewer
data sets to consolidate, fewer departments to promote data analytics
in, and simpler corporate structures.
Furthermore, by starting later in data
analytics theyre acquiring mature analytics solutions and can learn from
early adopters missteps.
These missteps included companies going too deep too fast vs. approaching data analytics as a journey
marked by milestones dependent on
previous milestones, Ko says. Reaching
milestones too quickly can lead to
not spending enough time making
sense of them before planning for the
next stage. Data analytics is a cultural change that requires the whole
organization to be more data-driven
led by senior management, Ko says.
Some companies, for example, adopt
a world-class tool believing it will
quickly improve data analytics capabilities but finding end users may use
but not adopt it. Ultimately, the data
analytics program sees an initial boost
before leveling off, if not declining.
Phillips says some companies invest too much in technology and not
enough in culture change and getting
users to adapt how they work to integrate data and data-driven decisionmaking. Successful companies artfully
balance infrastructure maneuvers with
enhancements in user behavior to emphasize how an analytics and datadriven culture can generate outcomes
and performance. On that note, a
survey conducted by A.T. Kearney
and Carnegie Mellon University found
that enterprise leaders focused on producing an active analytics atmosphere
got more out of BI and analytics than
those only focused on technology.)
Data analytics is a cultural change that requires the

whole organization to be more data-drivenled by
senior management.
DANIEL KO
Manager : Info-Tech Research Group
Myers says if organizations have had

unmet expectations to date, those have
had to do with how some look at advanced analytics. I dont think that
many management teams are prepared
to understand the results of advanced
analytical modelspredictive analytics
in particularpresented to them, and
they make assumptions, he says. Thus,
he recommends data science/analytical
teams and management teams communicate about what different models
predict and how management teams
should read those results.
The Best Candidates

Historically, data-hungry industries (retail, insurance, financial, health
care, etc.) have been top candidates for
using data analytics, essentially because
theres considerable analytical activity
already happening in those industries.
Other good candidates include digital-born companies whose business
is basically analytics (social networks,
streaming services, etc.). Cloudborne companies that locate all their
data in or near the cloud, meanwhile,
are well-suited for implementing analytics and advanced analytics because
their information is easy to get to, as
opposed to organizations that lack data
overall or have it locked in silos, Myers
says. Elsewhere, the addition and retrofitting of sensors on manufacturing
equipment is leading to more verticals
delving deeper into analytics.
Shimmin cites some softer markets, or businesses that align their
production and distribution to those
consuming their products or services,

as candidates. The hospitality industry
and industries in which customers buy
something online or in person are examples. In-person markets can be
tricky but also hold some of the biggest opportunities for failure or success with analytics, Shimmin says. He
notes that the maturing infrastructure
around the IoT (Internet of Things)
is enabling brick-and-mortars to use
data analytics to better understand
customers in their stores and generate
potentially tremendous opportunities.
IDC predicts IoT will be the next critical focus for data/analytics services,
forecasting a 30% CAGR for the next
five years.
Elsewhere, governments and industries that deal with massive population
bases or that generate considerable
data are benefiting from data analytics.
Social networks, for example, can use
analytics on their massive populations
to uncover interactions and associated
data to better understand society and
the general public as a whole and eventually find applications pertaining to
the insights generated, Ko says.
Airlines, telecommunications,
and other companies that generate considerable amounts of data,
meanwhile, can mine their data to
innovate on products and/or operations. Governments can use the vast
data they acquire concerning citizens,
events, and records to shape policies.
Broadly, Ko says, data is the new glue
that can bring departments and silos
together to share the same customer,
COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE MARKET,

IDC PREDICTS VISUAL DATA DISCOVERY TOOLS WILL GROW 2.5 TIMES
FASTER IN 2015, AND BY 2018 INVESTMENTS IN THIS AREA
WILL BE A REQUIREMENT OF ALL ENTERPRISES.
30
product, and location data to perform

different tasks.
Phillips points to higher education as a practical example of how
data analytics can benefit an organization. Here, a forward-looking dean
or university president could use analytics in terms of admissions, development, and fundraising to forecast
a particular students lifetime giving
value or to view internal institution
operationseverything from athletic
ticket sales to cost-control measures
for food servicesin a more efficient,
analytical way. Shimmin points to
hospitality companies using data analytics in sports stadiums to look at why
some kiosks underperform. By instrumenting fans, for example, a company
could better understand fans movement around the park, the most advantageous positions for kiosks, how and
when to sell, etc.
Initially, Ko recommends CEOs and
executives focus efforts on marketing
intelligence by performing data analytics on internal and market data with
the aid of automation abilities in marketing intelligence tools. Currently,
organizations typically set up a marketing intelligence team with a few
marketing analysts who continually
monitor and consolidate news feeds to
then recommend actions. That model
doesnt scale, he says. Newer tools can
help automate listening, consolidating,
and flagging information about the
external market to increase effectiveness and efficiency, he says. You can
now monitor more marketing sources
with less time and with increased objectivity, he says.
In coming years, Ko expects new
companies will emerge that specialize
in connecting supply and demand.
With the advance in data analytics,
the technology can analyze internal
data sets and industry-scale data sets
and historical data for those data sets.
Those companies can figure out market
trends, consumer psychology, and can
build customer profiles like never before, he says. Theyll use those profiles to dominate an industry. The
For real-time data, youre seeing time series

analytical tools being developedscrolling datavisualization elements with time as the X-axis and
connections for real-time streaming data sources.
JOHN MYERS
Managing Research Director : Enterprise Management Associates
more data that companies collect and

analyze, Ko says, the closer they will
be to the end goal of maximizing their
market share.
Get Creative
To meet enterprises changing demands for data analytics, particularly
ones concerning advanced analytical
models, data visualization, and realtime data capabilities, vendors are focusing on providing improved user
experiences. Myers says some are
taking a data flow-based approach to
advanced analytical models. For realtime data, youre seeing time series
analytical tools being developed
scrolling data-visualization elements
with time as the X-axis and connections for real-time streaming data
sources, he says. Although such tools
have been available for some time, now
visualizations are being tuned for this
type of analysis, he says.
Ko says data visualization is key to a
movement occurring in which BI, analytics, and predictive analytics tools are
empowering business users. End users
are empowered because they can data
visualize on their own, he says. Theres
also a demand from IT departments to
offload content creation to end users
instead of relying on overloaded IT departments to develop analytics content.
Compared to the rest of the BI market,
IDC predicts visual data discovery tools
will grow 2.5 times faster in 2015, and
by 2018 investments in this area will be a
requirement of all enterprises.
Phillips says the IAA definitely sees
a trend toward analytics being embedded in business processes or applications in which users dont even
notice analytics and data activity is
being undertaken. He foresees companies moving away from large, monolithic software to data visualization
tools in which vendors essentially decouple analytics from the visual layer.
Its kind of analytics light, he says.
Now the market is becoming more
fragmented on analytics solutions. So
you get a lot of analytical-driven applications where the analytics is sort
of hidden below the surface. Thats a
trend I think for sure is here to stay.
Although many vendors are focusing
on putting the power and knowledge
of data analytics into end users hands,
there are issues to consider, including
data governance and democratization,
Shimmin explains. For example, while
giving a director of sales a tool to ask
unanticipated, important questions in
real-time would be an absolute coup,
he says, a sales director likely doesnt
have the expertise for that power and
knowledge.
To bridge this gap, some organizations are moving to build tools into
their systems that work from the data
acquisition to data discovery point so
that at each step the end user is guided
toward the correct usage of data, the
correct way to ask questions, and the
correct way to interpret answers. You
can imagine from just that little statement thats a pretty big mountain to
climb, Shimmin says.
Vendors have come a long way in
enabling this, but really making the
kind of democratization of data needed
means companies must spend significant time curating and training data sets
ahead of time, Shimmin adds. There
has to be a lot of time invested in the
system itself to erase that knowledge
gap at the point of decision, he says.
31
Keep An Eye On Apache Spark

HOW SPARK COMPLEMENTS HADOOP & HAS POTENTIAL AS A STANDALONE ANALYTICS ENGINE
KEY POINTS
Apache Spark improves on a
few aspects of Hadoop, especially
MapReduce because it can handle
business processing tasks much
faster both in memory and on disk.
Spark can be used with Hadoop,
but it can also be used with other
Apache and non-Apache data
frameworks as long as it has a resource manager and file system.
Spark can be used for streaming,
SQL, machine learning, and graphbased analytics, although the last
two arent as common as the first.
Spark may someday replace
Hadoop, but its a relatively new
technology thats still evolving and
currently has a complementary role.
32
APACHE SPARK, in the simplest terms,

is a data-processing engine designed to
help improve the overall data analytics
process for enterprises. The entire solution was built from the ground up with
the intention that it would be easier to
use and give companies the ability to
analyze streaming data and better recognize patterns in that datain addition to
more traditional batch-oriented analytics
that primarily focused on historical data.
In other words, Spark allows you to live
in the here and now and take advantage
of data streams as they go rather than
mining them after the fact.
But perhaps the biggest benefit
of Spark is how well it integrates with
Hadoop and how it can replace or complement certain functions within Hadoop
that developers have been working to improve on for years. Because Hadoop and
its MapReduce function are commonly
used by enterprises for data management
and analytics, it only makes sense to start
by comparing Hadoop and Spark to un-
derstand areas of crossover and areas

where Spark stands on its own.
Comparing Apache Hadoop

& Spark
One of Hadoops most popular functions is MapReduce, which allows you
to take a large data set, break it up into
pieces, and then distribute it across
nodes in a cluster, says Carl Olofson,
research vice president at IDC. What
makes MapReduce a bit slower when
compared to Spark is that it has to iteratively go through data files again and
again in order to answer queries and give
data analysts the information they need.
The map part of MapReduce is where
Hadoop actually creates a list of data
elements and the reduce part is where
it filters those lists, according to Olofson.
Olofson says that solutions such as
MapReduce are interesting tools for
boil-the-ocean type processes where
you have a huge collection of data and
youre looking to ferret out some data
to do a calculation, but you have no

idea where the information you need is
located in the collection itself. You have
to actually sift through the entire thing,
which is where MapReduce works efficiently. When you get into situations
where the data is more structured and
well-ordered, then MapReduce is less
efficient when compared to Spark. In
fact, Spark can be up to 100 times faster
than MapReduce in-memory (that is,
processed while stored in memory as opposed to on drives) and 10 times faster
than MapReduce on disk.
The fact that both of these technologies work well together or improve
upon one another shouldnt be a surprise as both of them are from Apache,
but its also important to remember that
The Apache Software Foundation isnt
one vendor that holds power over all
of its solutions. Instead, its a community-driven organization designed to
constantly improve upon previous iterations of its technology. For that reason,
Spark is being designed to improve on
certain aspects of Hadoop but not replace it entirely. Its this communitydriven ideal that led to the discovery
that Spark could greatly improve processing over MapReduce.
Spark has only really become wellknown and popular in the last year
or two, and for a lot of people theyre
just hearing about it now, even if
theyve heard about Hadoop, says Nik
Rouda, senior analyst with Enterprise
Strategy Group. Spark doesnt necessarily compete with Hadoop and its
not necessarily a replacement. Back to
that community-driven ecosystem idea,
people saw that there were aspects of
Hadoop that could be improved on.
I havent talked to many people that are using Spark on

its own yet and I think were going to have to wait until we
see more cases and experience out there doing that before
people feel comfortable in a pure Spark environment.
CARL OLOFSON
Research Vice President : IDC
One of the major functions of Hadoop

is MapReduce, [which is] the way it
divides up jobs across many different
servers. Its not always the highest performance because you have to delegate
all of these tasks, manage where the
question is going, and then reassemble
the answer afterward.
Spark With Hadoop & Spark

On Its Own
Something to keep in mind with
Spark is that even though it can be
used with Hadoop, there are other options to consider if Hadoop isnt your
primary data framework. And, in fact,
the Apache community is focused on
making Spark much easier to use for
more people. Another key value of
Spark is trying to make it very easy to
use, says Rouda. Not a lot of people
have spent many years developing for
Hadoop, MapReduce, or Yarn. Spark was
really designed to work in programing
languages that more people know and
are comfortable with, like Java, Python,
or Scala. That makes it easier to develop
apps for it.
Nick Heudecker, research director at
Gartner, agrees that Spark can be used
with Hadoop and works well with components of that framework, but he also
points out that Spark can be used with a
wide variety of other platforms and file
One of the reasons Spark was invented was to replace

some of that processing and management to be able to
handle analytics activities faster in that same ecosystem.
Youre not throwing away everything from Hadoop. Youre
replacing some of the analytics processing engines.
NIK ROUDA
systems. For example, theres a memory-centric file system called Tachyon

from the UC Berkeley AMPLab that
is compatible with MapReduce and
Spark. And there are other platforms
and frameworks from Apache itself and
from other organizations that can give
Spark the resource manager and file
system it needs to perform tasks outside
of Hadoop.
However, its important to remember
that even though it may be possible to
use Spark on its own or on another data
stack or framework, it doesnt mean
that you necessarily should. Spark is
still relatively new and so its best to
stick with what you know. It really depends on where the data lives, says
Heudecker. If you have a bunch of
data in Hadoop already, it doesnt make
sense to move that to a new location to
do analysis with Spark. The same goes
for Cassandra, MemSQL, or your traditional DBMS [database management
systems]. There are a variety of ways to
integrate those with Spark. Once again,
its a complementary strategy and not a
replacement or disruptive strategy.
Popular Use Cases For Spark

Regardless of where you decide to use
Spark and on what platform, the real
key to the technology is taking advantage of its unique features for use cases
that make the most sense. Rouda points
out that Spark itself has a few different
flavors, and one of the most common
versions is called Spark Streaming. This
use case for Spark allows you to perform
streaming analytics against data that is
continuously flowing so you can get
answers in real-time, Rouda says. Spark
Streaming stands out because it can be
used to analyze things such as Twitter
feeds or taxi traffic patterns in New
33
York City, Rouda explains. Traditional

Hadoop and MapReduce were much
more batch-oriented to look at things
that happened in the past. One of the
reasons people like Spark is that it makes
it easier to look at things that are happening right now in real-time, he says.
Another aspect of Spark, called Spark
SQL, works with existing SQL server
implementations and uses the very
common database language SQL as
well, Rouda says. This makes it easier,
even for analysts outside of an application, to write some lines of code and get
an answer to an analytics-related query.
The nice thing is that there are so many
people who know how to work with SQL
and its a very familiar language, so its
good for live interactive querying, says
Rouda. How are sales this quarter? How
are sales this quarter in Europe? How
are sales of this product this quarter in
Europe? If you want to iterate on your
data and asking questions, its very easy
for people to do so.
In addition to streaming analytics and
SQL, there are two additional uses for
Spark that are less commonly used but
remain popular in some circles. One has
to do with machine learning, which is
a way to better detect patterns and find
correlations between different data sets.
The key here is that there is so much data
out there now that its nearly impossible
for a human to actually sift through it all
to find those correlations. Whats more,
personal bias is sometimes introduced
because a person may only look for the
data that fits a certain theory or expectation. Because Spark removes the human
factor, it provides a more balanced view
of the available data.
Other less-common use cases for
Spark have to do with graph-based analytics. Its being able to plot things
out geographically, visualize them, and
look at them based on where they are
in space, says Rouda. Thats another
Spark is a memory-centric data processing framework. It

keep as much of the data its working on memory as possible, and it occasionally spills over to disk. . . . Compared
to more disk-based data processing frameworks like
MapReduce, Spark is typically faster at most tasks.
NICK HEUDECKER
function, but those last two are not quite

as popular yet. But Spark is growing
very rapidly. A lot of people have been
thinking about Hadoop and its various
flavors for a number of years now, but
Spark, in the last two years, has grown
tremendously. People are, again, taking
it in a lot of different directions.
Will Spark Replace Hadoop?

One question you might be asking
yourself about Spark is whether or not it
can replace Hadoop entirely, but the answer is cloudy. While it is possible to replace certain components of Hadoop with
Spark, Hadoop is such a large framework
with so many different tools that it would
be difficult to make Spark into the be-all
and end-all data processing engine for
a given enterprise. And because its difficult to even guess where Hadoop may be
going in the future (as it too has changed
so much in a short time), its even more
difficult to predict where Spark may go in
the future.
You have to look at what youre
doing with Hadoop now and try to figure
out if it makes sense, says Olofson. For
some use cases, it wouldnt make sense
to want to do that, especially if you have
large collections of unstructured data.
You may want to leave that in a Hadoop,
MapReduce environment. If youre
wanting to use it as an aggregation point
or analytic data thats working in conjunction with a data warehouse or other
real-time oriented analytic transaction
SPARK ALLOWS YOU TO LIVE IN THE HERE

AND NOW AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF DATA
STREAMS AS THEY GO RATHER THAN MINING
THEM AFTER THE FACT.
34
environment, then it may make sense to

move to Spark. Youre going to have to
convert the data and write a program to
take data from where its living in HTFS
to a pure Spark environment.
Heudecker agrees that there may be
some situations where Spark will stand
on its own in the future, but that right
now its much more complementary
than disruptive. He also points out that
Spark will certainly not be the last step
on the ladder because there are always
other technologies on the way. Theres
even something else coming down the
street already, and thats Apache Flink,
which is yet another memory-centric
data processing engine, he says. Theres
always something new and thatll be the
next thing that gather some interest.
Hadoop was not the first data platform
and Spark wont be the last.
In the end, the key is to find the solution that best fits your company and
its needs. Rather than focusing on what
technology will replace Hadoop or what
might replace Spark in the future, you
just need to utilize the functions that
make most sense to your analytics projects and go from there. At a certain
point, you shouldnt care what technology is underneath it, says Rouda.
Its just the functionality and how hard
it is it for my team to do what I want
them to do. The fact that [these technologies are] out there, there are a lot
of people working on them, and theyre
not strictly owned by any one vendor is
all good news for business. It means its
going to get better. Theyre not going to
get locked in, theyre going to get more
functionality, and its going to become
more powerful and easier for them to use
and adopt.
Who Should Be In Charge Of Analytics?

CDOS, CDSOS & OTHER EXECUTIVES WILL PLAY KEY ROLES
ENTERPRISES ARE EMBRACING analytics

solutions now more than ever before due
to the sheer volume of data available and
the relative ease of integrating analytics into
the organization. Still, from the initial decision-making process to the ongoing management of the platform, its important to
define who is in charge of analytics. Some
companies monitor analytics at the C-level,
for example, while others distribute control
among department managers. Others designate a CDSOs (chief data science officers)
to oversee analytics initiatives. Regardless of
the method of oversight your organization
chooses, whats vital is that specific individuals are tasked with that oversight.
The Selection Process

If your company is new to the analytics
space, the first step is to determine what
person or group within your organization should lead the vendor and solution
selection process. This doesnt necessarily
have to be the same person or group who
will oversee analytics usage in the future.
For many companies, the initial decisionmaking comes from a joint effort between
business and IT. Whats key is that the
person or group understand how the organization will use the chosen analytics solution.
If the analytics solution is going to be
deployed on-premises, then it will be implemented and managed by IT, so [in this case]
usually IT will make the vendor selection and
own that process, says Jim Hare, research
director at Gartner. If the analytics solution is going to be an application thats cloud
or SaaS [software as a service]-based and
supporting a specific business function, like
sales or marketing, then business will drive
and own the vendor process. This scenario
doesnt leave IT out of the picture, however.
IT will be involved from the standpoint of
making sure whatever solution they choose
meets the organizations standard, such as
security, privacy, or integration, Hare adds.
In general, both the business and IT segments of an organization must work together
to get the most out of an analytics solution.
Brian McDonough, IDC research manager,
says that IT often gets more involved to

avoid information silos from cropping up
across the organization, and the business
gets more involved when it comes down to
choosing a solution based on business needs,
such as fraud management, budgeting and
planning, or predictive maintenance. In the
end, McDonough says, each segment will
have its own distinct role and focus.
Implementation
Implementation has two parts: implement the data analytics platform and develop analytics content, says Daniel Ko,
manager at Info-Tech Research Group.
Many organizations plan for the first part
but underestimate the importance of the
second part. If you are a first-timer, you
should definitely consider using professional services. Professional services do not
only get the job done, they can also bring
best practices to your analytics program. It
is also like a mini-training, especially if your
own employees are working with the professional services.
35
Appoint A CDO
After an analytics solution and strategy
are in place, someone must run the program.
The emerging role of CDO (chief data officer) is one that many organizations are
adopting, says Hare. CDOs not only handle
analytics, but they also manage and govern
the data and anything else thats going to be
related to how that data gets used, he says.
In other words, the CDO needs to have visibility into every aspect of analytics, including
data governance.
The CDO typically reports to the business
side of an organization. The CDO is responsible for looking at trends and really bringing
together the disparate individuals and business groups that are in silos, and looking at
everything through his own specific lenses,
Hare says. CDOs are different from CIOs,
who are responsible for systems that contain
the data, but they dont own the data, Hare
says. The CDO needs to have a separate role
dedicated to analytics and understanding
how it impacts the entire business.
Whether a company needs a CDO depends entirely on the depth of its analytics
investment. If its dabbling and only uses
analytics for certain projects, then it may not
be viable for a company to have a full-time
CDO. However, if information is important
to the overall business model, then its more
likely to need a CDO. In fact, Hare says, 30%
of organizations will have appointed a CDO
by 2018, which illustrates just how important
analytics will be going forward.
Do You Need A CDSO?

Another role that is growing in popularity
is the CDSO. The CDSO usually possesses a
background steeped in data science and often
started out in the field of advanced analytics.
The CDSO therefore has a firm grasp on the
potential benefits of data. [CDSOs] may be
managing a team of data scientists, but they
are also able to articulate and understand the
value of analyzing all of this big data and how
it could help the organization, Hare says.
CDSOs are also often deeper in the
trenches than CDOs. Hare thinks of them
as people who can make discoveries while
swimming in data. They can wrestle that
data, since theres so much of it, and figure
out if it can be used to really drive some new
insights. A lot of it is driven by the fact that
36
Chief data scientists, in my mind, are really uber

data scientists that understand what data science and
advanced analytics can do, but theyre also evangelists,
so they also have the interpersonal skills to understand
how to talk to the business side to articulate how
advanced analytics and data can be used to solve the
most challenging business problems.
JIM HARE
In the beginning you will see the data analytics solution

provides intelligence and insights to the core business
processes. . . . As time goes by, data analytics will be
used to understand and innovate. HR analytics will be
used to understand the employee dynamics to improve
engagement. Product development may use analytics to
generate product ideas with data.
DANIEL KO
Manager : Info-Tech Research Group
many organizations realize that data analytics

can be a competitive weapon.
CDSOs, like CDOs, are also quite different from CIOs. Rather than focusing
on everything related to IT infrastructure,
CDSOs only focus on things that are analytics- or data science-related, Ko says. He
also points out that CDSOs are often found
in two types of organizations: Fortune 500
companies and businesses that simply collect a massive amount of data. The first
group has the economy of scale to get a
CDSO in-house to handle things that touch
analytics, says Ko. The second group has
a massive data problem and [those companies] want to have a dedicated person to
focus on making sense of the sea of data.
The commonality of those two is that they
have a clear data-driven vision, mandate,
and analytics strategy.
McDonough adds that the CDSO is in a
management role and will make many of the
decisions regarding advanced analytics tools.
The CDSO, he adds, will also hire people
with strong math backgrounds such as
statisticians and theoretical physicists, who
can work on model development for various functions, including targeted marketing
campaigns or econometric models for determining lending practices. This group, led by
the CDSO, will typically support other key
business functions that need these advanced
analytical models to improve results.
Additional Support
For an analytics program to be truly successful, it has to have the support of the entire organization, so in addition to the CDO,
CDSO, CIO, and IT team, you need others
to help along the way. We are thinking
about a Moses in the long data analytics
journey, says Ko. Your CEO should be
that Moses figure. Better still, other key figures like the CMO and the CFO should be
on board to build a Holy Trinity leadership
triangle. With that triangle, the analytics
program has the strongest support. Dont
forget the strategists. Your internal and external strategists can help you to make sense
of data analytics program and execute the
program strategically to harvest low-hanging
fruit and to avoid the turbulence.
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Greenovations
ENERGY-CONSCIOUS TECH
The technologies
that make our
lives easier also
produce some
unwanted side
effects on the
environment.
Fortunately, many
researchers,
manufacturers,
and businesses
are working to
create solutions
that will keep us
productive while
reducing energy
demands to lessen our impact on
the environment.
Here, we examine some of the
newest green
initiatives.
Five hundred New York City vendors are set to receive state-of-the-art solar-powered food vending carts. Move
Systems says its food cart pilot program will be paid for via sponsorships and private partnerships.
New York City Food Vendors Get Ready To Join The 21st Century
Thanks To Pilot Program Involving Free Solar-Powered Carts
Move Systems, a company that develops environmentally friendly mobile food
vending units, has launched a program to provide 500 free solar-powered vending
carts to street vendors in New York City. The carts are attractively designed and feature a hybrid natural gas and electric power system that incorporates batteries charged
by solar panels on the roof. The hybrid power system provides the power needed to
run the refrigeration and cooking units inside the carts. New York is home to thousands of street food vendors, many of whom rely on smelly or noisy gas-fed power
generators or use carts that lack proper refrigeration to safely store foods. Move says
the costs of the pilot program will be covered by private partners and paid sponsors,
and the company has already started gathering applications online from vendors who
wish to participate and receive a new cart.
Bladeless Wind Turbines May Make Wind Power Less Expensive

& Also More Palatable For People Who Are Worried About Birds
Vortex Bladeless, the company behind a new type of wind turbine that captures energy from the wind without the use of spinning propeller blades, is using IndieGoGo
to crowdfund the commercial pilot of its first product, the Vortex Atlantis. The new
wind turbines rely on an aerodynamic principle known as vorticity to generate energy. Wind that breaks against a solid object creates vortices that can cause vibrations
or oscillations in the object. In this case, wind causes the tower to oscillate, and that
oscillation can be converted into electricity. The company says its turbines will be less
expensive and easier to maintain than the bladed kind, will be silent (because they oscillate at such low frequencies), and will be better for birds and other wildlife.
38
The U.S. DOE is sponsoring a contest

with more than $2 million in prize money in
an effort to advance the current state of technology in capturing wave energy. The Wave
Energy Prize contest will judge the efforts of
teams to design, build, and test devices that
harness wave energy. The contest will award
prizes of $1.5 million, $500,000 and $250,000
to the top three entries. The government
hopes the contest attracts new talent into
this area of energy research, and that creative
minds might make breakthroughs that lower
the cost of wave energy production and
make it more competitive with other energy
sources. For more information and contest
rules, visit www.waveenergyprize.org.
PHOTO COURTESY: YEI HWAN JUNG, WISCONSIN NANO ENGINEERING

DEVICE LABORATORY
U.S. Department Of Energy

Sponsors Wave Energy
Innovators Contest
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created an environmentally friendly, biodegradable

computer chip that is made mostly of wood.
University Researchers Create Chip That Won't Pollute Landfills

When You Toss Your Old Electronics Devices
Win the U.S. Department of Energy's Wave Energy Prize

contest and you could walk away with more than
$1 million in prizes.
Computer chips are proliferating in consumer goods, which isn't good news for
the environment. Some of the materials used to make computer chips are toxic, and
while the amount of hazardous materials in any one chip may not be that significant,
there is a cumulative effect resulting from billions and billions of chips being made and
disposed of annually. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered a way to make the substrate (the main part of the chip which acts as a support
to hold the other elements) out of a material derived from wood. Led by electrical and
computer engineering professor Zhengiang (Jack) Ma, the research team took wood
fiber and broke it down to the nanoparticle level, and then were able to create a material called cellulose nanofibril that is strong as well as transparent. Coating the material
with epoxy seals out atmospheric moisture and makes the surface smooth and suitable
as a support material for manufacturing computer chips.
Mercedes Benz Follows Tesla,

Reveals Plans To Sell Batteries
Tesla Automotive made big news recently when it announced that it was going
to create a Tesla Energy division to sell batteries. Now Daimler AG, the company that
owns the manufacturer Mercedes Benz,
has said that it, too, is going to sell lithiumion battery storage units to homes and
industries. The company says its Deutsch
ACCUmotive subsidiary, which makes
batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles,
already has an industrial-sized installation on the grid, and that it has 96 battery modules with a total capacity of more
than 500kWh installed. The company sells
2.5kWh packs for home use.
New LED Lamps From Azuri Technologies Make Electric Light

Available & Affordable In Developing Countries
A company headquartered in the United Kingdom is creating products that meet
the daily needs of people around the world who live off the electrical grid. Azuri
Technologies sells commercial PayGo solar power systems that give people access
to solar power on a pay-as-you-go basis. The company recently unveiled new LED
lamps that are meant to be part of the PayGo ecosystem. The lamps, constructed
of heavy-duty yellow ABS plastic, run off batteries that can be recharged with the
solar power from the PayGo systems. The LEDs in the lamps provide steady light to
people who live off the grid and who previously had no access to artificial lighting
systems. Available in two lighting capacities (roughly equivalent to 60 lumens and
120 lumens), the lamps were designed to run for more than six years (based on 2,500
days at up to 6 hours per day). Azuri Technologies says its new lighting products and
PayGo solar power system make it possible for people living in remote off-grid areas
to have access to the same quality of lighting as people living in urban areas.
39
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Do You Need DCIM?

DCIM SOLUTIONS CAN IMPROVE DATA CENTER EFFICIENCY, REDUCE ENERGY COSTS & MORE
DATA CENTERS ARE clearly vital to enterprise operations. Theyre also a source
of considerable power consumption,
hardware requirements, and related costs.
DCIM (data center infrastructure management) solutions offer the potential to deliver greater insight into and control over
data center equipment, components, space,
and resources. Gartnerwhich defines
the DCIM market as including tools that
monitor, measure, manage, and/or control energy usage of all data center and ITrelated equipment and facility infrastructure
componentsestimates more than 60%
of larger North American data centers will
deploy DCIM tools by 2017.
Essentially, DCIM solutions pull data
from various monitored equipment into a
unified system to provide valuable information to data center and facility teams. The
alternative typically involves IT staff manually tracking each piece of equipment and
monitoring performance separately, which
can be time-consuming, expensive, and limited in terms of how information is dissemi-
nated and used. DCIM, by contrast, can

provide a holistic, real-time view of cooling,
power, and space utilization that can lead
to improved efficiency and performance,
predictive analysis, improved resource and
capacity management, energy savings, and
risk reduction.
DCIM's Appeal
Initially, DCIM surfaced as something
more for facilities teams than for IT. Today,
says Steve Brasen, research director at
Enterprise Management Associates, DCIM
solutions at a minimum must provide abilities for asset, power, and space management; analytical reporting and alarming;
and modeling infrastructure performance.
More comprehensive solutions also support thermal management and hypothetical
modeling, or what-if scenarios, and may
include the ability to display a visual model
of a data center, which administrators can
drill into to view individual racks and more
granular details such as cable locations and
status lights.
Beyond supporting cable management

abilities, DCIM solutions that are truly
differentiated from the competition can
integrate into ITSM (IT service management) systems to track, record, and manage
changes and problems, says Roy Illsley,
principal analyst at Ovum. Among companies hes seen adopt DCIM, the major
benefit has been improved efficiency in data
center operations through better cooling
usage, something achieved by consolidating
workloads, shutting down other infrastructure, and matching cooling to heat and
power maps to reduce overall energy use.
Another key benefit is the ability to attribute
a services cost. Without DCIM this is only
an approximation. With DCIM you can see
much more granular details, Illsley says.
Based on numerous companies he has
worked with, Brasen says the most important lesson learned has been that no two
DCIM adoptions were identical and no two
achieved value in the same way. A media
company, for example, used DCIM to
achieve substantial data center consolidation,
41
which led to a 45% reduction in related energy costs, equating to more than $500,000 in
savings in annual energy expenses. A financial institution reduced the manual branch
circuit replacements in its infrastructure by
proactively monitoring energy performance,
thereby reducing annual costs by about
$110,000, including $90,000 in manual monitoring and maintenance labor and $20,000
in hardware costs for unnecessary circuit
replacements. Thats just two examples, but
there are many others, and they all reflect
different value achievements from DCIM,
Brasen says.
Get Proactive
Often DCIM addresses an area that a
current management solution can't. For example, DCIM can provide more detailed
data, which a company can analyze and
combine with other data sources to get a
better view into the cost and risks of delivering IT services. This may not sound
important, Illsley says, but considering how
much energy a data center consumes, in
the order of a couple of megawatts, saving
10% isnt insignificant. If you operate at
hyper-scale, then the savings on just 1% efficiency are immense.
Brasen notes that DCIMs holistic nature provides visibility across an entire IT
ecosystem. If a specific servers performance
declines at the same time each day, for example, DCIM can pinpoint the true cause
possibly a faulty fan in a neighboring
system causing temperatures to rise in the
rack when backups run. Correlating these
events would be close to impossible with
nonintegrated point solutions, he says.
Similarly, DCIM takes the guesswork out
of planning for equipment additions and reconfigurations by providing accurate intelligence on optimal deployment approaches.
Brasen categorizes potential benefits
from DCIM into 10 general areas, including
hardware upgrades. While upgrading to
more energy-efficient hard drives, chipsets,
PSUs (power supply units), and cooling systems alone can improve efficiency, the challenge is identifying the power hogs that
are good candidates for upgrade/replacement. Monitoring power consumption on
each device and comparing results against
system utilization via DCIM can help.
42
. . . DCIM takes the guesswork out of planning for equipment additions and reconfigurations by providing accurate
intelligence on optimal deployment approaches.
STEVE BRASEN
Research Director : Enterprise Management Associates
Thermal management is another area.

Here, an unbalanced distribution of servers
might create hotspots that reduce performance of nearby systems. To compensate,
organizations often increase cooling systems. Thermal monitoring and modeling,
however, can help more effectively distribute IT systems and increase ambient
temperatures reliably to reduce related
power consumption while still ensuring
optimal temperatures for IT system performance.
By monitoring and evaluating system
utilization, DCIM can identify unused systems to shut down and thereby save on
power. Similarly, DCIM can identify lowuse systems to retire as part of consolidation or workload migration projects. Other
power-related areas Brasen cites include
power chain management (monitoring
can spot underused PDUs and UPSs [universal power supplies] for reallocation to
support more efficient zones or elimination if not needed); power capping (alarms
can alert IT when power consumption is
nearing power cap limits); and power state
management (which can involve creating
schedules to automatically shut down systems not in use or put them in sleep or
hibernation states).
In terms of data center security, remotely
monitoring and managing data center resources via DCIM can greatly decrease the
need for administrators to physically access
IT facilities, meaning the fewer people in
the data center, the more secure the environment, Brasen says. Where space
management is concerned, infrastructure
modeling can help distribute existing, new,
and planned resources to maximize available space and meet facility requirements.
Benefits Per Solution

Notably, the benefits DCIM makes
possible depend on the specific tools or
solutions selected and how theyre used.
DCIM is like a monster, Illsley says. If

you create it, you have to feed it. A monster DCIM implementation could make
lights outs computing via automatic
managing of the UPS, cooling, and workloads possible, for example. Or an enterprise could use DCIM only for reporting,
and improve efficiency by changing how
its uses energy, Illsley says. Thats the
beauty of DCIM, he adds. The possibilities are endless, and its up to you on how
deep or shallow you use it.
Brasen says its key to recognize that
DCIM is a holistic solution that looks at
the relationship of all data center elements
(space, temperature, power, cooling, etc.)
rather than just, say, power management.
True DCIM solutions differentiate themselves by the extent and types of data they
collect, their integration across monitoring
and management productions, their level
of analytical reporting and alarming on
collected data, modeling capabilities, hypothetical modeling features, and ease of
deployment and use.
Brasen dubs point solutions as extremely short-sighted as they may solve
an immediate problem but make the absurd assumption that further problems
wont occur. When one does occur, another point solution is needed, leading to
point solution sprawl, in which management solutions arent integrated and administrators have to correlate data across
different interfaces.
Furthermore, nonintegrated point
products can quickly become ineffective
because they inhibit holistic visibility, he
says. Lacking this visibility, problems are
often patched without understanding their
true cause, almost guaranteeing theyll occur
again and resulting in systemic reactive fire
fighting, Brasen says. DCIM provides
the key intelligence to enable proactive and
even dynamic IT management across the
entire IT infrastructure.
Mitigate Virtualization Issues

POOR VIRTUALIZATION CAN NEGATIVELY IMPACT STORAGE, NETWORKING & PERFORMANCE
WHILE ITS TRUE that virtualization

can offer companies numerous benefits, ranging from improved efficiency
to potential infrastructure consolidation and beyond, problems can occur
from time to time that may minimize
those benefits or erase them altogether.
For that reason, its crucial to make
sure your IT team has a firm grasp on
your virtualized environment from a
monitoring perspective, and have the
tools necessary to spot these potential
issues and quickly address them.
From One-To-One To
One-To-Many
Virtualization in and of itself can
be disruptive to existing infrastructure within an organization because
it essentially changes the way servers
operate. Colm Keegan, senior analyst
with the Enterprise Strategy Group,
says virtualization does a great job
of extracting the server compute layer
so that you can pack a bunch more
44
applications onto a server than you

previously could. But the ability to
have 10, 15, or even more VMs (virtual machines) on one server can cause
issues as well. What youve done is
introduce an advanced technology, but
then the other resources sitting behind
it are kind of configured for that traditional one-to-one model and that starts
to cause some problems, Keegan says.
Avoid Creating An I/O Blender

One of the biggest problems that
can occur with virtualization, according to Keegan, is with IT inadvertently creating an I/O (input and
output) blender. In other words, because you can fit 10, 15, or even more
virtual machines onto one server, there
is going to be a mix of applications that
are read-intensive, write-intensive, or
a combination of the two. All of the
applications on that one server are
competing for the same resources and,
Keegan says, its really hard to predict
what the read-write ratio is going to be

and how to tune the underlying storage
to perform in that environment. With
all of these different requirements, your
back-end storage system may have a
hard time keeping up and allocating the
necessary resources to every VM.
One way that IT teams can overcome this issue is to introduce SSDs
(solid-state drives) into the equation. These drives are much faster
than their hard disk counterparts because they are flash-based and dont
have mechanical moving parts to deal
with. Keegan says that SSDs can be
used to handle the heavy I/O lifting,
or the hot data, whereas traditional
hard drives can be used to handle the
cooler data, or the data that isnt
used as often. This makes it so your
resource-intensive applications can access the resources they need right away
from the solid-state layer rather than
be forced to deal with the mechanical
hard drive layer.
Virtual Machines Can Be

Resource Hogs
The I/O requirement of a given
virtual machine is only one part of
the equation, because VMs can also
cause issues by being what Keegan refers to as a noisy neighbor. He uses
the example of living in an apartment
building where youre a quiet person
who just wants to relax for a few hours
after work before going to bed, but
then you have a neighbor who listens
to heavy metal music into the early
morning hours. Such an environment
will surely make it more difficult for
you to sleep, wake up in the morning,
and perform at the highest level.
The same idea applies to a virtual
environment where multiple VMs and
applications are all vying for the same
network bandwidth or storage I/O resources. A noisy neighbor VM will
essentially monopolize all of the resources to the determinant of the other
VMs its living alongside on the server,
Keegan says. The way to overcome this
problem is to institute policies that
segregate resources and place resource
limitations on specific VMs. You can
set a policy that says this is the absolute
limit that I want any given VM to have
in terms of storage I/O or networking
resources, and it just keeps them from
going over the line, says Keegan.
VM Sprawl Is A Possibility
A big benefit of virtualization is that
people can quickly spin up virtual machines as needed to work on projects
and then spin them back down after
the fact. But in some situations, those
VMs dont get turned off. Therefore,
they continue to consume resources
even though no one is actively using
them for a project. This phenomenon, which is commonly referred
to as VM sprawl, is a situation where
there are quite a few VMs running in
an environment that are all eating up
resources that can be better used elsewhere. This can often happen during
application development projects,
which are often short-term projects
that require a lot of VMs at once.
You want to put a plan together so that you can start

layering in some enhancements to the virtualized environment not long after you start deploying it.
COLM KEEGAN
VM sprawl is where monitoring tools

really come into play because you have
to be able to pinpoint where those virtual machines are in your environment
and what resources theyre using. This
is more of an awareness thing, says
Keegan. When youre managing that
environment, youre going to want to
have the tools that give you visibility into
VMs. Maybe its a report that you run
every week or couple of weeks that shows
you activity. If you see that you have
VMs assigned out there that have little
or no activity, at that point you want to
start asking questions. Are you using this
anymore? If not, Im going to reclaim it
and take those resources back.
This planning process also helps you

avoid the problem of having a more
advanced technology such as virtualization running on antiquated or outdated infrastructure. Keegan says that
if a companys storage systems are approaching the end of their life cycle,
for example, the company should use
that opportunity to find equipment
that will properly support virtualization with embedded SSD or a specific
management console that offers a view
of virtualization from the storage perspective. All of this information will
help you prevent certain problems and
put you in the best position to succeed.
Put A Solid Plan In Place
Get Outside Help From

Professionals
The three issues mentioned above

along with all of the other potential
problems that may crop up with virtualization can all be prevented or at
least prepared for during the pre-planning process. As with any technology
roll-out, you need to understand how
virtualization will impact your environment before you implement it,
otherwise youll constantly be in reactionary mode and wont be able to
properly address issues as they arise.
Keegan recommends taking a tiered
approach to rolling out virtualization that starts with the low-hanging
fruit, like test and development, because those arent production applications. Once you get your feet wet
with those types of applications and get
your management systems in place, you
can start to move on to other, low-risk
workloads, like some user-based application thats not necessarily revenuebased, he says. And from there, you
can keep expanding as you get increasingly comfortable with the process.
In the end, even after weeks or

months of preparation, there are going
to be situations where your IT team
is simply out of its depth and cant
quite get a grasp on certain aspects
of virtualization. In those situations,
Keegan urges companies to reach out
to professional service organizations
that have experience with virtualization and also with the applications
used to run and manage it. [Experts]
can keep them from hitting the same
pitfalls theyve seen other customers
fall into, says Keegan.
Using a professional service organization offers benefits from a variety
of perspectives, Keegan adds. Some
of it is just leveraging the experience
of other professional service organizations that have developed a practice
around this and know how to develop
and implement not only the technology, he says, but also the tools
to better manage it as well as use best
practices to get the most out of the investment.
45
Help I.T. stay on pace with the
SPEED OF CHANGE
You use CyberTrend
to keep tabs on the latest
business technology trends.

IT and data center leaders turn
to Processor to learn more about
the products and technologies
that impact organizations
at their core.
Processor is a leading trade publication
.COM
Get the latest issue right now
online at www.processor.com
or on your iPad via the iTunes Store.
that provides the news, product information,

and technology advice that IT leaders and
data center employees can trust.
Advanced Threat Detection

IS YOUR SECURITY SOLUTION CATCHING EVERYTHING IT SHOULD?
KEY POINTS
Theres an argument that applying multiple security solutions in
layers can aid in combating threats,
although integration is key.
Determining that a security
solution isnt catching all of the
threats it should can be difficult, in
part because it involves unknown
unknowns.
Sometimes the processes and
resources surrounding a companys
security operations are more problematic than the solutions in place.
Sharing threat intelligence with
one another is one of the ways vendors are working to combat threats
and attackers.
ENTERPRISE SECURITY often gets painted

in somber, defeatist terms simply because
attackers are continually developing new
threats and seem to always stay a step
ahead of security measures. Furthermore,
attackers have numerous weapons (rootkits, phishing, malware, keystroke loggers,
etc.) constantly growing in sophistication
to draw upon. Most enterprises, meanwhile, only have so many resources they
can devote to combatting the attacks.
According to James McCloskey, InfoTech Research Group director of advisory services, security and risk, the real
challenge is threefold: the volume of new
threats is on the rise, the velocity at which
theyre appearing is increasing, and the
degree to which theyre able to exploit systems is improving. How can a company
know if its security solution is failing to detect new threats at an acceptable level and
that it might be time to switch to a new solution? The answer isnt cut and dried, but
this article explores the topic and provides
some guidance.
Know Your Enemy

In a sense, attackers greatest advantage
is that the odds are stacked in their favor.
McCloskey explains that hackers need only
to succeed once in getting past defenses
to win, but companies must succeed in
myriad protection areas. Whats more,
attackers continually develop new threat
variations to guard against.
Currently, attackers are using polymorphic techniques to avoid signature-based
detectionthat is, detection by comparing
suspicious occurrences to an existing database of known threats. These viruses, says
Michela Menting, ABI Research practice
director, have been particularly difficult to
tackle. Antivirus signatures work against
one specific and defined strained. A slight
alteration in the code therefore unbinds
it from that signature, she says. Menting
says malware mimics legitimate code and
behavior to avoid detection. Such obfuscation has legitimate uses (helping thwart
reverse-engineering, for example) but is
popular with malware writers, she says.
47
Zero-day attacks are another threat

type that Bob Tarzey, Quocirca analyst
and director, characterizes as rare but
difficult to know about in advance and
potentially highly valuable to attackers.
Menting says of zero-day attacks, what
better way to bypass detection than by
using an unknown vulnerability?
Overall, Menting says, attackers
advantage is they focus exclusively on
bypassing security systems, while organizations focus primarily on running daily
operations and then security protection
after. Generally speaking, these threat
actors are almost always a step ahead,
she says.
Fight Back
One problem some organizations share
is they have fractured security systems
or multiple security solutions that dont
communicate well. Some security companies are working to address this, Tarzey
says. He notes theres a good argument
that using multiple vendors products
provides better protection in terms of
detecting a wider range of threats, but
theres also evidence that using too many
can cause coordination breakdown.
Similarly, Menting says a movement
toward integration is happening within
the security market, which is crowded
with many vendors offering different solutions. The result for security companies, she says, is that retaining clients is
just as important as gaining new ones.
Businesses, meanwhile, want to move
away from juggling numerous solutions
in favor of streamlined, efficient interfaces
that work well and interact seamlessly.
Integration has therefore become a key
strategy for security vendors, Menting
says. For businesses, integration enables
one solution to pick up where another
lacks capabilities and vice versa.
Some vendors are also enabling integration between endpoint security and
traditional perimeter security tools,
[Attackers access data but leave] the original stuff

behind, so effectively they leave the integrity and
availability intact but breach the confidentiality.
JAMES MCCLOSKEY
Director Of Advisory Services, Security & Risk
Info-Tech Research Group
McCloskey says. As a result, if malware

is detected on a smartphone, information can be sent to a network control to
stop it from moving forward. Conversely,
endpoints can receive information about
potential threats detected on the network.
Another positive development is that
vendors are increasingly sharing threat
intelligence. A challenge, however, is that
each vendor has unique threat intelligence
abilities in terms of how it detects where
bad activity is coming from, what reputations to assign to malware files, and how
it anonymizes and shares threat intelligence with its customers, McCloskey says.
Theres also the challenge of how to share
information without compromising competitive advantage. Ultimately, McCloskey
says, intelligence sharing isnt so much
about detecting new threats but about
getting in front of them. For example, if
an organization is under attack from a
botnet with certain IP (Internet Protocol)
addresses, sharing that information can
help others block the bad traffic before it
gets inside.
Elsewhere, compared with past security solutions, many solutions now have a
managed service or cloud-based component to them, which among other things
enables organizations to place more of the
security burden in the hands of those with
experience and knowledge concerning
security matters.
Take A Long, Hard Look

Determining if a security solution is
still adequately detecting new threats
is anything but easy. Tarzey says you
can never know for sure, in part because youre dealing with unknown unknowns. The best thing to shoot for is
minimizing vulnerability, maximizing
insight, and trying to stay ahead in the
online arms race.
McCloskey agrees that making such
assessments are difficult. I tend to
land on the side that you dont know
until your stuff shows up somewhere
you didnt expect it to be, and thats
really cold comfort, he says. He cites
physical protection, in which a company can use physical security controls
(cameras, badges, door locks, etc.) and
associated detective controls as an example. In this case, determining whether
a physical breach has or hasnt occurred
comes down to whether assets are intact
or missing. We dont have that luxury
in the digital world, he says, often because attackers access data but leave the
original stuff behind, so effectively they
leave the integrity and availability intact
but breach the confidentiality.
It can help a great deal to stay aware
of the security market and the latest vulnerabilities, and to know when patches
are available. Its also helpful to use stress
or penetration testing and perform security audits. Pen testing involves placing
security professionals in front of the organizations defensesfirewall, IPS (intrusion prevention system), antivirus
protection, etc.so they can try to find
their way. This helps them determine
how effective existing security controls
are when confronted with real-world
testing. Still, while such tests can provide
THERES A GOOD ARGUMENT THAT USING MULTIPLE VENDORS

PRODUCTS PROVIDES BETTER PROTECTION IN TERMS OF DETECTING A
WIDER RANGE OF THREATS, BUT THERES ALSO EVIDENCE USING TOO
MANY CAN CAUSE COORDINATION TO BREAK DOWN.
48
Certainly, some solutions will be more difficult to learn

and require a specialist to operate, but the market is
increasingly offering solutions that can streamline learning
and usage.
MICHELA MENTING
Practice Director : ABI Research
a certain level of confidence, McCloskey

says, they arent perfect and shouldnt
be viewed as providing an I can defend
against anything mentality.
Ultimately, assessing a solutions
threat-detection prowess can involve numerous patchwork approaches. Testers
may, for example, employ independent
or subscription-based evaluations and
assessments to determine the effectiveness of a security system. McCloskey says
these assessments can be beneficial in
terms of helping companies understand
that while they may have purchased a
best-of-breed product a few short years
ago, that product may not be performing
against the most recent threats.
Another patchwork approach, says
McCloskey, stems from not expecting
perimeter and endpoint security to catch
99.9% of bad stuff, but accepting the reality that these security measures will
catch a lot of bad stuff but not everything. With this in mind, organizations
can apply additional security layers so
that if an attack passes, say, the firewall,
theres an IPS to detect the assault. In
addition to providing good security coverage, this approach offers valuable insights into how effective certain security
solutions truly are. A firewall, for example, might be less effective than historically believed.
Although understanding what gets
past each defense layer is a good start,
McCloskey says its an imperfect proxy
when it comes to attacks that are capable of getting past all layers of security.
In this case, he says, now were in the
world of unknown unknowns, which is a
tough world to be in.
Arguably the best approach for companies, according to McCloskey, is implementing solid log management and
SEM (security and event management)
solutions. Even if an organization lacks

key signatures or behavioral analytics to
identify that something happened at a
specific time, having centrally aggregated
logs can enable after-the-fact forensic
analysis. In other words, McCloskey
says, a company can say, It appears we
didnt catch this, but there are indicators
of compromise to give us pause. Do we
have the right defense to protect against
that use case?
Determine Whether
Its Time For A Change
Realistically, few companies abandon
an entire layer of security because legacy
protection continues to play a role,
Tarzey says. Host-based antivirus, for
example, still detects random malware,
while an IPS still blocks intruders to private networks. However, he adds, its
not enough to rely on this. So, a nextgeneration firewall sits in line with older
firewalls to provide application-level
protection, advanced threat detection
supplements antivirus, and so on.
Menting says some organizations do
consider changing solutions when they
become aware that major vulnerabilities
exist and could severely affect or compromise their systems. A good example is
Heartbleed, she says. Zero-day [attacks]
can be particularly damaging, but as soon
as information about one is revealed, security experts should consider how best
to remedy themfind a patch ASAP or if
none yet exists, switch solutions.
For companies considering a change,
McCloskey says, they should understand
that technology alone isnt the answer.
A company may decide product X is
not optimal and switch to product Y,
for example, but the root problem may
reside within its own processes and the
resources associated with its security
operations and management. In Targets

recent breach, for example, it didnt lack
information that attacks/breaches were
underway, McCloskey says. That information was available in its SEM logs, he
says. The problem appears there was a
breakdown in its processes for dealing
with its logs and alerts and responding
to them effectively and comprehensively
in a timely fashion.
On a related note, smaller companies,
which typically lack security expertise
to manage and monitor disparate security systems, may find that vendors
consolidation or integration efforts can
help, but this doesnt address the fundamental resource constraints these companies have, McCloskey says. Thats
where the MSP [managed service provider] comes into the picture, he says.
Though not a panacea, contracting an
MSPs security services can help overcome resource limitations. Key is understanding what security services do
and dont entail, he says.
Be Prepared
If you decide to change security solutions, expect some challenges, including
learning a new solution. Its encouraging that vendors are working to make
solutions more user-friendly via intuitive user interfaces that dont require
special training, Menting says. For more
complex solutions, using a managed
service to adapt to the new solution may
pay off. Certainly, some solutions will
be more difficult to learn and [will] require a specialist to operate, but the
market is increasingly offering solutions
that can streamline learning and usage,
she says.
Notably, McCloskey says switching
solutions isnt a matter of saying well
get rid of this one and replace it with
that. Its about adding additional technologies in layers so the new solution
overlaps whats already in place but also
addresses new problems that past solutions couldnt. Id encourage for the
time being not consolidating and reducing but looking at adding to your
security protection portfolio in a way
you can still manage, he says.
49
Security In The Cloud

THE PROMISE OF SECURITY AS A SERVICE
KEY POINTS
Among SecaaS offerings, organizations have most widely adopted
email and Web protection services,
but offerings run the gamut.
Reducing internal security infrastructure and administration burdens while acquiring cutting-edge
security are top reasons organizations adopt SecaaS.
SecaaS can translate into cost
savings for organizations, but that
isnt guaranteed and shouldnt be
the driving factor for adoption.
A potential drawback to using
SecaaS offerings for some organizations can be a providers inability
to meet various customization
requirements for security that an
organization may have.
50
WHAT TYPE OF ORGANIZATION is a

good candidate for using cloud-based
security services today? Virtually any,
says Kevin Fielder, co-chair of the Cloud
Security Alliance Working Group.
Further, nearly every aspect of security
is available from SecaaS (security as a
service) providers now, and the benefits from using them can be numerous
and significant.
Research firm Gartner predicts that
by the end of this year the cloud-based
security service market will reach $3.1
billion, up from $2.1 billion in 2013.
Globally, companies large and small
are using the cloud in general to access
services of all types, including security,
says Jonas Hellgren, member of CSAs
SecaaS Working Group. The model has
evolved to a point where any service you
can think of can be delivered via the
cloud, and adoption rates back that up.
Any security service traditionally delivered on-premises can now be delivered
via the cloud, he says.
For organizations considering using

cloud-based security, the following details services and features available, the
positives of using them, and considerations to weight before signing on.
Whats Available
To date, email and Web security services that help weed out bad URLs and
Web content, provide secure (typically
encrypted) email, reduce spam, perform
virus scans, and combat phishing attacks,
among other capabilities, have seen
the greatest adoption among organizations, says Lawrence Pingree, Gartner
research director.
SecaaS offerings, however, pretty
much cover the entire security spectrum. Service types available include
IAM (identity and access management),
website protection (anti-fraud, anti-DoS
[denial of service], anti-DDoS [distributed DoS]), application security testing,
vulnerability scanning and assessment,
penetration testing, security intelligence
engines, tokenization/encryption, and

SIEM (security information and event
management; log collection, correlation,
and alerting). Often, Fielder says, organizations use SIEM in conjunction with
a broader cloud-based MSSP-SOC (managed security services provider-security
operations center). More advanced
SecaaS offerings include Web application
firewalls, Fielder says.
Bob Tarzey, Quocirca director and
analyst, says recent research his firm
compiled based on European figures indicated that among organizations surveyed, advanced threat intelligence was
a top service (about 40%). This covers
a broad sweep, from vulnerability scanning and intelligence to signatures for
known bad stuff (files, links, etc.), he
says. To some extent, this is an extension of old-style virus definitions that
were some of the first things to be provided as cloud updates.
Another highly used service was emergency DDoS protection (also about 40%),
Quocirca found. Here, organizations with
a DDoS problem divert network traffic
to a service provider that cleans up the
traffic. Elsewhere, Quocircas research
found SIEM (about 35%) and DNS (domain name system) protection (about
35%) as often-used services.
Pingree says for any service provided
externally, ease of use and customer
service are the most common adoption
criteria for organizations and crucial
aspects overall. When the organization
doesnt own a security component, he
says, it relies on the external provider
to be focused on ensuring stability and
availability of the service the customer
is using.
The Benefits
Among the more notable enticements
for organizations to adopt SecaaS is
the ability to bolster current security
measures, achieve better positioning
in terms of compliance (government
Instead [of looking solely at cost savings], look at the

increase in quality, depth of knowledge provided, the likely
availability of more features, and business benefits. If
there are cost savings, they should be seen as an added
benefit.
KEVIN FIELDER
Co-Chair : Cloud Security Alliance Working Group
and industry regulations, industry standards and best practices, audits, etc.),
acquiring better reliability, and the
potential for cost-savings. Some companies also look to SecaaS to help avoid
the negative publicity and business
disruptions that can stem from security incidents.
As with other cloud computing services, adopting SecaaS offerings enables organizations to reduce their
on-premises technology infrastructures,
streamline processes, and achieve economies of scale previously not possible.
Specifically, Fielder cites speed of implementation, scale and elasticity of a
service, the depth of expertise available
from a security provider vs. whats typically available internally to most companies, the flexible and global nature of
a service, and reliability and resilience
as primary SecaaS benefits.
For Pingree, the greatest benefit of
adopting SecaaS is its ability to reduce
administrative burdens. Most larger enterprises want their IT security teams
focused on reducing threats and risks, as
well as the incident-response process,
he says. The biggest weakness most organizations have is that they dont properly resource their incident-response
processes. So redirecting resources is
essentiala factor that SecaaS offerings
help deliver.
In short, some organizations couldnt
or wouldnt deploy security architectures
and functionality without the benefit
of SecaaS, Fielder says. Any company,
however, can deploy leading-edge security solutions via the cloud and take
advantage of providers expertise with
SecaaS, he says. Additionally, SecaaS offerings provide the ability to easily integrate multiple sites into the service
regardless of location, as well as the
flexibility to rapidly scale up and down
a service to pay only for those services
the organization actually consumes.
DDoS protection is a good example of
the latter, Tarzey says. Why pay if you
arent under attack? he says.
Yet other SecaaS benefits include obtaining security thats more up-to-date
and part of a large-scale security operation. The latter means organizations
benefit from protection the provider
has developed based on issues other
customers have experienced. Broadly,
Tarzey says, SecaaS gives organizations
the freedom to focus on delivering value
to their business and leave the security
to experts.
From a budgetary standpoint,
SecaaS offerings are available in a wide
array of service contract options, including monthly, annual, and biennial contracts that make budgeting
easier, Pingree says. While theres a
notion among some that using cloudbased services automatically translates
into costs savings, this isnt necessarily true. Pingree says over the long
haul, using SecaaS offerings may cost
more than covering security internally. The tradeoff, however, is that
SecaaS offerings are much easier to
IN GENERAL, TARZEY SAYS, NO ORGANIZATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY

SHOULD NOT BE LOOKING AT ON-DEMAND SERVICE AS AN ALTERNATIVE
TO ON-PREMISES DEPLOYMENT.
51
adopt and digest and can lead to other

improvements from a security perspective, he says. For example, crosscustomer intelligence sharing and
threat-detection analytics can be enhanced, Pingree says.
Similarly, Fielder says that although
cost savings may be possible in terms of
not having to purchase infrastructure
and paying only for whats used vs. permanently paying for capacity to cope
with peak requirements, the impetus for
using SecaaS shouldnt be to save money.
Doing so is entirely the wrong viewpoint, he says. Instead, look at the increase in quality, depth of knowledge
provided, the likely availability of more
features, and business benefits. If there
are cost savings, they should be seen as
an added benefit.
The Drawbacks
Although the list of benefits associated
with using SecaaS is long and attractive,
there are potential risks and drawbacks
to consider before adopting such services, including those related to a providers reliability, policies and control,
quality and quantity of customer support, and ability to protect data moving
between the provider and the organization. Additionally, while many providers
offer geographic hosting, organizations
with requirements about where data is
hosted should ensure this.
For some organizations, the level of
customization required vs. the level of customization the provider can deliver can be
a drawback. Some providers, for example,
focus on serving the needs of many by delivering common capabilities as opposed
to providing highly customized services.
Some services may be more commoditized in order to create economies of
scale and provide a very standardized service, which is likely to be very good but
may not be capable of much tailoring to
meet specific needs or working practices,
Fielder says. Thus, organizations may need
The model has evolved to a point where any service you

can think of can be delivered via the cloud, and adoption
rates back that up. Any security service traditionally delivered on-premises can now be delivered via the cloud.
JONAS HELLGREN
Member : CSA SecaaS Working Group
to flex slightly to meet the providers way

of working, he says.
Elsewhere, because SecaaS providers
store, access, and administer key security
technologies, they are targets for hackers
and a centralized risk across a multitude of customers, Pingree says. Tarzey,
meanwhile, says vendor viability is the
main issue for organizations, though this
is true of any purchase. Although its
less of an issue with security providers,
another concern is if a SecaaS provider
goes bust and how the organization
will access its data and transfer services
afterward, Tarzey says.
In general, Fielder recommends organizations give consideration to the contractual and SLA side of using a SecaaS
offerings. Moving to any cloud-based
service means less infrastructure and direct support costs, but it also means a
very strong reliance on contractual and
SLA components to ensure the service
meets requirements, he says. He also
recommends paying attention to integration and that the service will likely
rely on Internet connectivity, meaning
the possibility for added costs related to
increased bandwidth and ensuring the
resilience of links.
Viable Candidates
In terms of using SecaaS and all
cloud-based services in general, Tarzey
says no organization in the 21st century should not be looking at on-demand
service as an alternative to on-premises
deployment. Increasingly, he says, oldstyle IT and vendors that fail to adapt are
AMONG ORGANIZATIONS SURVEYED,

ADVANCED THREAT INTELLIGENCE WAS A TOP
SERVICE (ABOUT 40%).
52
dying. In terms of SecaaS adoption specifically, Pingree says that surprisingly

its large and low-end large enterprise
segments where Gartner sees the most
adoption, despite the fact that the midmarket is the primary target for SecaaS.
In general, government, health care, and
banking verticals spend the most on security, he says.
Although large organizations are most
likely to have extensive security services
internally, especially if they fall within
government and heavily regulated environments, even these organizations can
use cloud services to fill gaps in their expertise or technical stack, Fielder says.
Large organizations may also look to
cloud-based security offerings when they
have particular needs globally and deploying security themselves would be too
complex or cost prohibitive.
Small and midsize enterprises often
appreciate how using SecaaS reduces
the need to maintain large and expensive security teams and infrastructure.
That said, Fielder still recommends that
organizations maintain some internal
security expertise where possible, even
if outsourcing most services.
Also enticing to small and midsize
organizations is the ability to leverage
cutting-edge services and expertise and
deploy solutions that might otherwise not
be possible. For example, installing and
maintaining a SIEM internally and running a security operations center is complex and expensive, Fielder says, to a
point where these capabilities are often
completely overlooked. Taking advantage of a cloud-based SIEM and SOC,
however, lets a small and midsize enterprises benefit from 24/7 log correlation
and alert features that are backed up by a
significant degree of security expertise.
Should You Hire A Hacker?

WHY ENTERPRISES PAY HACKERS TO ATTACK THEIR SYSTEMS
CONSIDERING THE SCADS of news

accounts, books, and movies that
have depicted the undertakings of
hackers in a nefarious light over the
years, it would seem ludicrous that
any enterprise would even entertain
the idea of hiring a hacker to penetrate its systems. Still, while hacker
and hacking can certainly equate
to someone engaging in criminal or
unethical behavior, the terms dont
necessarily have to mean something
unsavory. Today, many people, including security experts, see that act of
hiring a hacker as potentially extremely
beneficial to an organization. For executives wondering why, this article
explains the rationale.
A New Day
Any discussion about hacking must
begin by establishing ground rules
about what hacker and hacking
mean, largely because the words' meanings have been twisted and reshaped
repeatedly over the years to a point

where there can be considerable confusion. Attaching such designators
as white hat, black hat, grey, or
ethical only add to the confusion.
Years ago, a company that wanted to
hire security talent did have to consider
hiring people with questionable backgrounds and ethics, says Eric Ahlm,
Gartner research director. Today, Ahlm
describes the word hacker as one that
describes someone who is good with
any technology.
James McCloskey, director, advisory services, security and risk info,
at Info-Tech Research Group, simply
sums up a hacker as someone who
possesses a certain set of skills, namely
an ability to penetrate computer systems. Important to note, however, is
that these skills can be used for good
or bad. Similarly, Ed Skoudis, SANS
Institute curriculum lead for penetration testing, says traditionally, a
hacker was someone who applied a
novel solution to a technical problem,

often making the technology behave
in a way its designers, builders, and
operators didn't anticipate or expect.
Ultimately, hackers can build amazing
things that help people or cause calamities, he says.
Compared to criminal hackers who
operate under few if any rules, ethical
and white hat hackers generally act
with responsible disclosure by taking
part in bug bounty programs that encourage hackers to find flaws/vulnerabilities in products or as part of their
jobs, such as penetration testing, says
Michela Menting, ABI Research practice director. Conversely, grey and
black hat hackers may not disclose the
vulnerabilities they find, or they may
do so only after publishing their findings. Still, says Menting, this doesnt
mean theyre criminals, either if they're
not hacking for monetary purposes.
Generally, she says, grey and black hat
hackers can be thought of as security
53
Penetration testing is a highly skilled and highly valued

job, which is intrinsically linked with hacking. Hiring
hackers is a good way to ensure your security posture is
(or remains) strong.
researchers that work unilaterally, disclosing what they find as they see fit.
Who Hires A Hacker

Based on experience working with
large enterprise security teams, Ahlm
says the days of hiring underground
hackers are long over. Today, theres
a rich pool of talented security professionals to choose from, as well as formal
hacking certifications. Furthermore,
there are hackers for hire who declare
their ethical status but that do have
criminal backgrounds. Such a distinction is definitely a red flag, McCloskey
says, but not necessarily a black flag if
the hacker can truly be verified as having
progressed into the ethical hacking
world or is employed by a bona fide
organization. The reality is that the very
best hackers did start from a much less
ethical position at a much younger age,
when they didnt have the opportunity
yet to form their ethical perspective,
McCloskey says.
Companies need hackers, Menting
says, because, among other reasons, cybercriminal enterprise is huge, lucrative, competitive, and ever growing.
Generally speaking, white, grey, and even
black hat hackers are security researchers
trying to find the same vulnerabilities,
Menting says. Like computer bug bounty
programs and other reward systems
aimed at finding these vulnerabilities
before criminals do, hiring a hacker is
another option, she says. Penetration
testing is a highly skilled and highly
valued job, which is intrinsically linked
with hacking, she says. Hiring hackers
is a good way to ensure your security
posture is (or remains) strong.
Hiring ethical hackers enables organizations to understand specifically
where business risks reside, Skoudis says.
Ultimately, information security is really
about risk management, prioritizing resources, and making business decisions,
he says. The value ethical hackers offer
an enterprise is helping it understand its
current risk posture and how well it can
withstand attacks the hacker throws at it
in order to prioritize resources and address the most pressing risks.
54
MICHELA MENTING
[The alternative to doing network penetration testing]

is keeping your head in the sand and not knowing what
your risks really are.
JAMES MCCLOSKEY
Director, Advisory Services, Security & Risk Info
Info-Tech Research Group
High-security industries are among

those that often use ethical hackers,
McCloskey says. The practice is also
becoming more prevalent in situations
where organizations are obligated to run
penetration testing in regard to PCI DSS
(Payment Card Industry Data Security
Standard) and other regulatory requirements. Fundamentally, that obligation
on many organizations is increasing,
he says, including in the sense of having
a moral obligation to do more than
check items off a security list. Hardening
operating systems, securing the firewall,
and other measures are good, McCloskey
says, but you still want to test out those
controls, and thats where penetration
testing comes in, and thats where hackers skills come in.
Risk vs. Reward

The most obvious risk of hiring a
hacker, including one certified as ethical,
is that hell act maliciously. Menting sees
this as less of an issue now, including
because penetration testers are generally very highly paid, meaning less
incentive to sell information to criminals. I think pen testing is very important, and certainly in the long run, is
worth the cost and the various risks,
she says. Skoudis cautions to carefully
inspect the background and reputation of any hacker, ensuring hes bona
fide and possesses required technical
abilities, certification status, and ability
to communicate technical risks in business terms.

Another fear tied to ethical hacking
is that the process will crash production
environments and expose sensitive data.
In this area, says Skoudis, a professional
ethical hacker should use a well-defined
methodology, exercise due diligence,
and use carefully vetted tools. To avoid
impacting the availability of systems,
the hacker should configure monitoring tools and work closely with the
organizations operations team during
testing, Skoudis says. Furthermore, the
hacker should never download large
amounts of sensitive data (health care
data, for example) from target machines. Instead, they should measure
their access to this information to help
understand business risk, without actually grabbing it, he says. It's a delicate
balance, but its crucial for a successful,
safe ethical hacking project.
Ultimately, the alternative to doing
network penetration testing is keeping
your head in the sand and not knowing
what your risks really are, McCloskey
says. Further, he adds, what level of
trust can you have in your systems?
For Menting, hiring a hacker comes
down to paying for a service thats
reliant on the person delivering it.
Certifications help, but theyre not the
ultimate assurance that the person can
do the job better than someone who
isnt certified, she says.
You May Need A New Website

DESIGN A SITE THAT MEETS YOUR ENTERPRISE'S OBJECTIVES
THE QUESTION OF what makes a

quality website experience can be hard
to answer, especially if your organization caters to a range of customers
and visitors. Further complicating matters is the fact that theres no one perfect website template that will work
for every enterprise. For instance, a UI
(user interface) that prioritizes your
product or service offerings, company
history or related news, or support for
existing customers will each end up underserving visitors seeking something
else the moment they land on your
site. Whether youre looking to drive
traffic, increase sales, or just make a
good impression with new and existing customers, theres no better time
than the present to give your website a
once over to determine if its meeting
your objectives.
Site Essentials
When it comes to the information
your website should convey, Magnus
56
Revang, research director at Gartner,

suggests organizations follow one simple
rule: make it all about your customers.
A good enterprise website is made according to the users needs, not what the
enterprise wants the user to care about.
By way of example, Revang cites large
portions of home pages that are set aside
for company news, [News] is completely irrelevant for the vast majority of
users that are there to do a task.
Revang refers to the tendency of
many enterprises to use their sites as
pillars of the firms marketing efforts as
a sickness. The reason this behavior is
so egregious? No user visits a website
without a task in mind, so any marketing
message encountered before the original
task is completed is a hurdle standing in
the users way. When users encounter
hurdles on websites, more often than
not, instead of persisting in their task,
theyll simply abandon your website.
A poorly designed website will actively
work against your company, killing sales,
tarnishing your company's reputation,

and frustrating customers.
Perfecting The Home Page

Much of building the perfect Web
page starts with focusing on the first thing
people see when they visit. Nail the home
page and much of the hard work is done.
There are pitfalls and risks in trying to pack
as much information as possible into the
home page just as there are in leaving it too
sparse. Some experts suggest using larger
fonts on the home page or to label items
you want to draw attention to. Making the
prose brief and concise is imperative. If you
wouldnt bat an eye at hiring a Web designer, then hiring a copywriter to tighten
your text should be just as compulsory.
Revang cautions that oftentimes a confused Web design is the result of interdepartment friction. A lot of enterprise
sites look like a battlefield, perfectly mirroring the divisional fights that took place
to get to a compromise nobody is happy
with, least of all the user.
Mobile In Mind
Visitors will view your company's website
on a variety of devices with different aspect
ratios and resolutions, so it should be designed to remain cogent and easy to read regardless of the screen size. If simply resizing
the browser window turns your layout into
a chaotic mess, you'll want to return to the
drawing board to reconfigure your design.
Furthermore, considering much of the traffic
to your site will come from mobile devices,
you have more incentive to ensure the home
page loads quickly, which means preventing
video and audio feeds from auto-playing.
Better Than A Trail Of

Bread Crumbs
Make getting from point A to point
Band back againquick and easy.
Navigation is usually based on how the
company is organized and not the mental
model of the user, Revang explains. Ensure
theres always a clear path for a visitor to return to the previous page. For example, you
could add a series of hyperlinks at the top
of the page that represent the users current
path. If you need to use long scrolling pages,
make sure theres a hyperlink at the bottom
that jumps up to the top of the page. A sitewide search engine and a list of important
pages (such as About Us and Contact pages)
at the bottom of every page can also help
unfamiliar users get where they need to go
quickly. The browser navigation buttons can
serve many of these functions, but if you give
Features are included based on assumptionsnever

validated against real behavior and needsand if they
are not used they are never removed. Most enterprise
websites would be a lot better if you removed 50% of
the content and spent the freed energy to improve the
quality instead.
MAGNUS REVANG
people multiple ways to get around, they will

be less likely to get lost.
When adding buttons, lists, menus, submenus, and other UI elements, make sure
people who move the mouse quickly or
slowly have just as much success navigating
the site. Skilled Web designers should be
able to create a layout that prevents visitors
from accidentally clicking the wrong thing.
This also goes for advertisements on your
site; make them visible, but dont let them
get in the way.
What Works & What Doesnt?

Feedback and analytics are two components of building a website that companies
often overlook. Simply watching people as
they navigate a website can be informative,
and analytics services enable you to view
a multitude of enlightening statistics that
reveal the effectiveness of your site. Revang
decries the pervasive feature-bloat present
in many enterprise websites. Features are
E-COMMERCE ESSENTIALS
Websites that have an
e-commerce component
can take an active role
in boosting a companys
revenues. That is, unless
the website is missing
one or more of these
features:
Site-wide security and
SSL certificates are prerequisites for any website that hopes to earn
the customers trust.
Have a clear return

policy that mirrors the
de facto policies of other
sites that sell similar
products or services.
Sites should have an
easy-to-use shopping
cart system, accountor guest-based
checkout process,
automated order acknowledgements, and
email receipts.
The support portion of

the site should offer
answers to frequently
asked questions, easyto-find contact information, and an email
form for submitting
questions and getting
quick responses.
Pricing, in the users
currency of choice, with
shipping, should be
easy to see up front.
included based on assumptionsnever validated against real behavior and needsand

if they are not used they are never removed,
he says. Most enterprise websites would be
a lot better if you removed 50% of the content and spent the freed energy to improve
the quality instead.
Knowing how and when to use social
media is also important. Facebook and
Twitter can be ideal for getting the word
out about something new or exciting, but
always direct traffic back to your website to
maximize these tools utility. Dont use social
media sites as a stand-in for your website.
Easier Broken Than Fixed

Its easy to list things to keep in mind
when designing a website, but once your
site is live, there are often complicated barriers to implementing even the most obvious and necessary fixes down the road.
Revang suggests that one of the biggest
problems an enterprise faces is the lack of a
clear purpose for its website, which makes
determining whether the site is successful
next to impossible.
Another problem, according to Revang,
is that enterprises think of the website as
an ongoing project instead of a standalone
product. When you treat something as a
project, it is measured on project metrics.
How much did we deliver, in what time
frame, at what cost? A product, on the other
hand, is measured on the performance of the
product. It creates ownership and direction.
Lastly, Revang explains that Web design
by committee, particularly a committee of
people who dont design Web pages professionally, as a poor way to build a website.
But just like being sick doesnt make me a
doctor, you need experts to design a good
website, he says.
57
THE LATEST PREMIUM ELECTRONICS
Voice, Web & Style, All At The Same Time

WWW.VERIZONWIRELESS.COM
When comparing smartphones for battery life, what's better than a phone that lasts up to 48 hours on a charge? How about a smartphone that gives you eight hours of battery power after plugging it in for a mere 15-minute charge? Thats one of the stand-out features
of the Verizon Wireless Droid Turbo by Motorola, which uses Turbo Charge technology to leave its competitors in the dust. And at 5.2
inches, the Droid Turbo's screen is larger than most smartphones. The Droid Turbo also makes use of Verizons Advanced Calling feature, so you can use the smartphone to make high-definition voice and video calls to other phones with Advanced Calling, and you can
use data during a phone callno more waiting to look something up on the Web during a call. The Droid Turbo runs Android 4.4.4 (aka
KitKat) and includes a 2.7 Quad Core processor (for incredibly fast app and app-switching performance), 32GB storage (no SD card slot),
a 21MP camera (thats more megapixels than most phones, including some top competitors), a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 display (durable
and scratch-resistant), and a water-repellent coating (no fear of rain). The Droid Turbo is now available in a new color, Sapphire Blue
Ballistic Nylon, and there are bargains to be found; contact Verizon Wireless for details about current discounts, plans, and trade-in deals.
58
Portable
Lightning For
Your iPhone
WWW.PNY.COM
Although it's true that the Apple
iPhone 5 and 6 pack more of
a charge than their predecessors, there's no guarantee
your battery won't run low just
when you need it most. PNY
Technologies' PowerPack L300
($49.99 retail, but often available for significantly less online
from PNY) features a retractable
Apple Lightning connector and
holds enough juice to deliver up
to two full charges, depending
on the iPhone model receiving
the charge. Because the device
uses the Lightning interface,
you'll enjoy speedy charges. The
L3000's own lithium polymer
battery is charged using a
Micro-USB cable (included)
and the device sports an LED
battery level indicator so you
always know where you stand
with your charge. The device
uses the same 5-volt, 1-amp
flow for both input and output,
and charges one iPhone at a
time. The PowerPack L3000 is
lightweight and pocket-sized for
easy carrying and comes with
a three-year warranty. What's
more, as long as Apple continues
using the Lightning connector,
the L3000 will work with future
iPhone models.
59
Images, clockwise from top left, courtesy of Apple (1), Samsung (2), Sony (3), Microsoft (4, 5), and BlackBerry (6)
Smartphone Tips
A GRAB BAG OF HANDY ADVICE
BLACKBERRY
60
Supported Document Types
Automatic Contact Merging
Your BlackBerrys built-in Attachment

Viewer lets you open a variety of documents as though they were native on your
BlackBerry. Keep this list of file types in
mind so you can confidently forward attachments to your BlackBerry. Note that
the Attachment Viewer is part of the BES
(BlackBerry Enterprise Server), which automatically reformats the files for viewing
on your phone, and that non-native file
types will not be editable. Viewable file types
include Adobe PDF (.PDF), Corel Word
Perfect (.WPD), HTML (.HTML or .HTM),
Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX, .DOT),
Microsoft Excel (.XLS, .XLSX), Microsoft
PowerPoint (.PPT), OpenDocument (.ODT,
.OTT, .ODS, .ODP), Plain Text (.TXT),
vCard Contact (.VCF), and ZIP Archives
(.ZIP), as well as multiple image types (.BMP,
.GIF, .JPG, .TIFF, .WMF).
The BlackBerry Contacts app is typically good at finding duplicate contacts

and merging them. When such elements as a contacts full name and phone
number, for example, are found to match those of another contact, the two
contacts are merged. Sometimes BlackBerry misses a similar pair of contacts, however, but there is a way you can fix this situation manually. Open
the Contacts app, scroll through the list to find one of the contacts you want
to merge, and tap the check box to select it. Then find a contact you wish to
merge with the first and tap the Merge icon (a contact icon with a link at the
bottom of it). Thats all there is to it; as soon as you click Merge, the two contacts are merged.
Watch A Video Without Sound

For those times when you need to watch a video file on your BlackBerry but
youre not alone and dont have a pair of headphones, you have a few options.
Two optionswatching without sound or turning the sound down low and
holding your smartphone to your earusually arent all that helpful. There is a
third option, however. Access Settings, select Accessibility, and flip the Closed
Captions switch to the On position. Now youll be able to turn the volume all the
way down, watch the video, and read the text captions.
ANDROID
Your Contacts, Google-Fied
Get Wireless Internet For Your PC In A Pinch
With Android 4.4, your contacts are

prioritized so that the people you
interact with most (on your Android
smartphone, anyway) are bumped
toward the top of the list. As with
previous versions of the operating systems built-in People app, youll notice
photos for contacts who have uploaded
them to their Google accounts. The
People app also displays how long it
has been since you last spoke with recent contacts. To edit a contact, open
the People app, touch the contact, tap
the Menu icon (three square dots), and
tap Edit to get started. From here you
can update information, change the
photo associated with the contact, or
set a ringtone specific to the contact.
To create a contact, open the People
app, touch the Add Contact icon (a
person with a plus sign), and add the
appropriate information. To delete a
contact, open the People app, touch
the contact, tap the Menu icon, tap
Delete, and confirm the operation.
Unfortunately, especially if youre
doing some major housekeeping on
your contacts list, you can only delete
one contact at a time unless you install a third-party app for the purpose.
If you often have conversation with
groups of two or more contacts, open
the People app, tap the Menu, tap the
Group icon (three people), and select
contacts to form a contact group.
You can use your Android smartphone as a wireless modem to connect a PC

to the Internet if you have three things: a smartphone model that supports it,
the appropriate USB data cable (almost always sold separately from phones),
and login information (ID and password) from your wireless service provider).
Keep in mind that the connection will be slower than youre used to on the PC
and that using your smartphone as a modem will drain the phones battery life
more rapidly than ordinary use, but this procedure can come in handy when
you need it most.
On the phone, access applications and tap Settings, About Phone, USB
Settings, and PC Internet. Press the Home key, use the cable to connect the
smartphone to the PC, and wait for the installation instructions to appear.
Follow the instructions provided to establish an Internet connection for
the PC (this will vary depending on the smartphone and the PCs operating
system). Enter the required ID and password and wait for the connection to
complete. Simply unplug the phone and return its settings to normal when
youre done.
Delete Browsing History

Deleting the browsing history in
your mobile Chrome browser can
eliminate some potential privacy issues
and help to keep your Android device
clutter-free and running quickly. In
Chrome, tap the menu icon, Settings,
(Advanced) Privacy, and Clear
Browsing Data to remove browsing
history, site data, and related information such as form data.
Download Maps For Offline Use

Sometimes you have data access, and sometimes you dont. Because it can
be a pain to suddenly lose access to live maps on your Android smartphone
while traveling, its wise to search for the maps you might need ahead of time
and download them
for offline use later
on. That way, whether
you encounter a cellular dead zone, have
no access to a Wi-Fi
network, or both,
youll still have access to the maps you
need. To download a
map, open the Google
Maps app, find the
area youre looking
for, tap Menu, and
tap Make Available
Offline. You can then
view the estimated
size of the available map section and Need to be sure a map will be handy later on? Google Maps makes it easy to
pinch and zoom to se- save maps for offline viewing.
lect the map area you
prefer. Keep in mind
that there are some limitations: you can download up to six apps (if you try to
download a seventh, youll have to delete a previously downloaded map) and
there must be enough storage capacity available on your device to accommodate the maps.
61
iOS
Understand Widgets
& How To Use Them
With iOS 8, Apple introduced the
ability to add widgets to your iPhone
screen. Although widgets arent new,
your ability to add them is. So whats a
widget? Well, lets provide some background first. Swipe down from the very
top of any app screen on your iPhone
and you should see calendar items
listed under Today and alerts and
notices listed under Notifications.
(If you swipe down and see a Spotlight
Search bar and a bunch of app icons,
this means you didnt swipe down from
the very top of the screen, but from
somewhere near the top of the screen,
which is an easy mistake to make, so
tap Cancel.)
So far, what youre seeing is nothing
new. Tap the Edit button, however,
and you should see a new set of
choices underneath the items that reside in this area by default. (Default
choices include Today Summary,
Calendar, Reminders, and Tomorrow
Summary.) Heres the catch, however: the only other choices you will
see will be for installed apps that have
been updated for iOS 8 and that support widgets, so unless you have apps
that fall into those two categories, you
will only see Apples Stocks app here.
If you see any apps in this area you
think you might be interested in
adding to the Today screen, tap the
green plus sign icon. You can then
press and move the editing bars on the
right to reposition the order of widgets. Tap Done to view your customized Today screen.
If you dont like the manner in
which a particular widget displays information, tap the Edit button, tap the
red minus sign icon next to the widget,
and tap Remove to remove it from the
list. Many apps, such as The Weather
Channel app, currently support widgets, but over time many more are
likely to add widget support.
62
Get Insights Into Apps

Beginning with iOS 8, Apple has made it possible to view details about the
toll individual apps take on your iPhones battery life and storage. Access
Settings, tap General, and tap Usage. The main Usage screen provides a useful
overview of your on-device and iCloud storage: how much is used and how
much remains.
Under Storage, tap Manage Storage to see precisely how much storage space
each installed app is using. While youre here, you can perform some cleanup
tasks as well. To delete an app, for example, tap the app, tap Delete App, and
then confirm the
deletion. In some
cases you can
also remove data
within an app; for
instance, if you
tap the Podcasts
app and then tap
Edit, you can remove specific
podcasts.
Return to the
Usage screen
and tap Battery
Usage. In addition to displaying
the amount of
time you have
used apps and
kept your iPhone
in standby since
the last complete
charge, you can
see how much
battery life recently used apps
have consumed.
The percentages
displayed for
each app are esWith iOS 8, you can view more details about app usage than was possible with
sentially pieces
previous versions of iOS.
of a pie totaling
roughly 100%,
and that 100% is the full amount of battery life that was consumed in the past
24 hours. Tap Usage to return to the Usage screen.
One other thing you can do on the Usage screen is set the battery percentage indicator to appear on your iPhones lock screen. Slide the toggle
next to Battery Percentage to the on (green) position, then tap General, tap
Settings, and press the Home button to exit. Turn your iPhone off and then
back on to see the percentage charge. This tip also works for the iPad and
other devices running iOS 8.
WINDOWS PHONE
Check Your Roaming Options For
International Travel
Depending on your smartphone model
and wireless carrier, your phone may automatically switch on a global roaming
mode and connect to various 3G and 4G
cellular networks when you travel to a
different country. If you want to take direct control over your cellular connection when traveling, the Windows Phone
operating system provides numerous
relevant options, all of which are accessible by accessing Settings, swiping
to access System, and tapping Cellular.
Activate Network controls which network your smartphone connects to, and
Mode Selection lets you choose a specific network mode. Data Connection allows you to switch data service on or off;
switching it off lets you turn the smartphone into a voice-and-text-only device.
Data Roaming Options enables you to
choose whether your smartphone will use
data when roaming, and Voice Roaming
Options enables you to do the same thing
for voice calls. In this area you can also
tap For Limited Wi-Fi Connectivity and
then tap Dont Use Cellular Data so that
your smartphone wont dip into your cellular data pool when it cant hold a good
Wi-Fi connection.
Locate & Pin Your Apps

If youve just acquired a new smartphone running Windows Phone 8.1, you
can find your installed apps by swiping
to the left on the Start screen. Scroll down
through the list, which is in alphabetical
order by default, or tap the Search icon
and start typing the name of an app to
narrow down your search. If theres an
app you plan to use a lot, you can pin it
to the Start menu by pressing and holing
the app tile (Microsofts name for an app
icon) within the Apps list and then tapping Pin To Start. On your Start screen,
you can press and hold an app tile and
then press Unpin.
Limited Data? Know Your Usage

If youre using a Windows smartphone with a limited data plan, you can use
Microsofts Data Sense feature (as long as its supported by your wireless carrier) to
determine your current usage and set limits. This can help you avoid exceeding maximum usage and incurring unexpected charges. To start using Data Sense, access the
Apps list and tap Data Sense. Tap Limit Type and choose the desired setting for limiting data usage based on a given time period or amount of data, and then tap Done.
You can also take control over how much data your Windows smartphone is consuming in the background. While using the Data Sense app, tap Settings and then
switch on Restrict Background Data. You can then choose to restrict background data
usage by tapping either When Im Near My Limit or Always. There is also a switch
called Restrict Background Data When Roaming, which does what its name implies:
curtails data usage when your phone is in roaming mode, but not at any other time.
Share Your Internet

Connection
If your Windows smartphone has an Internet connection and you have another
device, such as a laptop, that
doesnt have Internet access, you can transform your
smartphone into a hotspot for
the other device to use. To do
this, access your phones set- Internet Sharing is usually turned off in Windows Phone, but you
tings and tap Internet Sharing, can turn it on and transform your smartphone into a wireless
Share Over, and Wi-Fi. Move hotspot for other devices using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
the Sharing switch to the On
position and then tap Setup.
Change the Broadcast Name if desired (this is the name of the wireless connection that
other devices can see), set a password if you want to limit access to the connection,
and exit Settings. Your other device should now be able to view the phone as a Wi-Fi
hotspot. Alternatively, you can pair the devices using Bluetooth and share Internet access in that way.
Manage Your Interests

The Cortana digital assistant within Windows Phone learns what some of
your interests are and adds them to its Notebook. If you wish, however, you can
exercise greater control over this area of your phone. It all starts by accessing
Cortanas Notebook: tap Search, go to Cortana, and then tap on the icon comprising three horizontal bars at the top right corner of the screen. To add an
interest on your own, tap the Add (plus sign) icon and then select one of the available subjects or use the search function to find what youre looking for. To remove
an interest, tap the interest and then tap the Delete (trash can) icon. If theres an
interest in Cortanas Notebook that you especially like, you can pin it to the Start
screen by tapping the interest and then tapping the Pin icon.
63
Laptop-Projector Setup Problems

TROUBLESHOOT COMMON ISSUES WITH THESE HANDY TIPS
YOURE READY TO give your presentation, but until that first slide appears on
the big screen, you can never be sure
that your equipment has got your back.
We cant tell you not to worry, but these
handy tips should help bail you out if
your presentation goes south.
Hardware & Cable

Connections
It can be difficult to track down the
source of problems that occur when
you are connecting a notebook and
projector. Following are some things to
watch for.
Video. Turn off all equipment and
connect your notebooks video out port
to the projector. The usual connection
choices for a notebook are VGA (Video
Graphics Array), DVI (Digital Visual Interface), HDMI (HD Multimedia Interface), and DisplayPort. Many projectors
have VGA and one or more digital connections. If possible, use a digital connection for high quality.
64
Sound. Some HDMI and DisplayPort digital video connections can carry
audio through the same port, but both
notebook and projector must support
audio over the digital video connection.
Traditionally, audio is connected using
the notebooks audio out jacks and the
projectors audio in ports; both of these
are often RCA or 3.5mm. If youre not
using the projectors built-in speakers,
make sure you connect your notebooks
audio out to the sound system you intend to use and turn the volume down
on the projectors speakers.
Mouse. If you are using a mouse, or a

remote mouse controller, make sure the
controller/mouse is connected, usually
through the notebooks USB port. If you
are using a wireless device, make sure the
notebook has the appropriate wireless
connection enabled. This is typically Bluetooth or a USB port wireless dongle.
Network Connection
Many venues supply network projectors, which are made available as a
shared resource. Making a connection to
a network projector is as easy as plugging
MANY VENUES SUPPLY NETWORK

PROJECTORS, WHICH ARE MADE AVAILABLE
AS A SHARED RESOURCE. MAKING A
CONNECTION TO A NETWORK PROJECTOR
IS AS EASY AS PLUGGING YOUR NOTEBOOK
INTO THE CORPORATE NETWORK VIA WIRED
OR WIRELESS ETHERNET.
your notebook into the corporate network via wired or wireless Ethernet.
Check with the companys IT staff for
specifics. Once connected, use the network connection wizard in Windows 7 to
find the projector you wish to use:
Click Start (the Windows button
in the bottom-left corner of the
screen).
Click All Programs.
Click Accessories.
Click Connect To A Network
Projector.
The network connection wizard
may inform you that your notebooks firewall is blocking the
ability to connect with the projector. Click to establish the network connection.
Either have the wizard search for
available network projectors or
enter the projectors address manually if it is available.
Once the device is connected, a
Network Presentation window will minimize to your Taskbar. When youre ready
to make your presentation, open the
Network Presentation window and select
Resume. Your notebook will treat the network projector like an external monitor.
menu. Your Desktop background

should now appear on the projector.
Win7 also has a pop-up display for
selecting the content that is sent to the
projector. Press the Windows-P keys
to bring up the four possible selections:
Disconnect Projector (turns the
projector display off)
Duplicate (mirrors your computers
Desktop on the projector)
Extend (uses the projector as an extension of your Desktop)
Projector Only (turns off your
notebooks display and uses the
projector as the main display)
NOTEBOOK-PROJECTOR
TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS
Turn off all equipment before
connecting the notebook to the
projector.
If possible, use a digital
connection to ensure a highquality presentation.
If youre not using the projectors built-in speakers, turn
them down and connect the
notebooks audio out to the
sound system.
Video Is Out Of Range

When the projector cant reconcile a
video signal from a notebook with its
preset resolution, it displays an out-ofrange message. To solve this in Win7:
Right-click a blank area on the
Desktop.
Select Screen Resolution.
Select the display associated with the
projector.
Use the resolution drop-down menu
to adjust the resolution to the correct value. Try 800 x 600 or 1,024
x 768 as these are resolutions that
many projectors can handle.
If youre using a wireless

mouse or controller, make
sure you can establish the
wireless connection.
Display Turns Off
Adjusting the screen resolution can resolve out-of-range

messages.
Use the straightforward network connection feature in

Windows 7 to connect to a
network projector.
If there is no video, check
all the ports and then check
Windows Screen Resolution
settings.
No Video
In many cases, your notebook will
detect that you have a projector plugged
into one of its video outputs and will
automatically turn on the port. Not all
notebooks do this, however; and even
those that can still have missing video
if the notebook isnt set to duplicate the
Desktop or extend it to the secondary
monitor (the projector). Many notebooks use a function key combination
to toggle the projector port on or off
and set how you can use the display. We
recommend using the control panels
in Win7:
Right-click a blank area on the
Desktop.
Select Screen Resolution.
Select the second display from the
drop-down menu.
Select Extend These Displays from
the Multiple Displays drop-down
If the projectors display turns off

during your presentation, you'll want
to check your notebooks power management feature, especially if youre
running the notebook off of its battery. Whenever possible, use your AC
adapter to run your notebook.
Video Wont Display Or

Is Choppy
Your slide presentation works fine,
but when you try to show a video, all
you see is a blank window or a choppy
rendition of the video. Trying to display a video on two monitors can be too
much for a video card that has marginal
graphics capabilities. If video isnt displaying correctly, change the Display
settings to make the projector the primary display.
When a projected image isnt

proportionally correct, try repositioning the projector and/
or changing the projectors
keystone setting.
If a display turns off during a
presentation, check the notebooks power management
settings.
If video isnt displaying correctly, change the Display settings to make the projector the
primary display.
65
Social Media Privacy Tips

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR ONLINE PRIVACY
SOCIAL MEDIA IS ALL about sharing our

lives with friends and family, and vice
versa. From daily musings about life, such
as a friend thats excited about an upcoming vacation, to important events,
like the birth of a new grandchild. And
although it might not seem like the news,
photos, personal achievements, failures,
and of course, cute animal videos, you
post would be of much interest to people
you dont know, the information could
be useful to cybercriminals trying to steal
your identity. The default privacy settings
on many social media websites make it
so your posts, tweets, and photos are visible to the public. Fortunately, its easy to
adjust the privacy settings, so that only
the people you know will see the updates.
Here, well guide you to alter the privacy
settings on Facebook, Twitter, Google+,
and LinkedIn.
Facebook
When setting up your Facebook profile,
the service will ask for a lot of personal
66
informationincluding education history, workplace, and phone numberthat

you might not want visible to everyone.
To complicate matters, Facebook hasnt
exactly been known for consistency when
it comes to users' privacy settings, as past
interface changes have reset settings and
forced users to continually ensure their
posts and personal information remain
private. To correct some of these issues,
Facebook has made changes in the last
year to simplify its privacy controls.
Click Privacy and youll see a list of
configurable options. For example, in the
Who Can See My Stuff? section, you can
manage who can see your future posts by
selecting Public, Friends, Friends Except
Acquaintances, Only Me, or Custom.
This way, you can make certain that your
posts won't be viewable to the public at
large if you forget to change the privacy
settings when you post an update. You
can also review the posts youve been
tagged in, as well as change the audience
for updates youve previously posted.
This way, you can control whether any

old updates are available to the public.
There are also Who Can Contact Me?
and Who Can Look Me Up? settings
where you can filter access to non-friends.
Because these options are the only settings
in the Privacy tab, you might think thats
all youll need to change. Its not.
One of the easiest ways to assess the
entirety of your Facebook privacy is to
use Facebooks Privacy Checkup. You
can access this tool by selecting the
Privacy Shortcuts button (Lock icon) in
the top-right corner of Facebook. Select
Privacy Checkup and in the resulting
pop-up window, Facebook shows you
the controls for who can see your posts.
If youre following our steps, youve already addressed this step. Click Next
Step and youll see what apps youve
logged into with Facebook. Delete the
apps you no longer use. When you're
done, click Next Step.
Finally, Facebook will bring up the information shared on your profile. Here,
youll see options to add a phone number,

email, birthday, hometown, and other
information. Click Finish Up to finalize
your new privacy settings. All of the information in the last step can be found in
the About section of your profile, which
also contains several other pieces of information you might want to make private.
To do so, click your personal timeline and
select About. Under the tabs for Work
And Education, Place Youve Lived, and
Contact And Basic Info, you can adjust
the privacy settings for details that werent
part of the Privacy Checkup.
Facebooks primary privacy settings can be found in the

Privacy window.
Twitter
By default, Twitters account settings
make your tweets available for all to
see. The alternative is a protected mode,
where your tweets are only visible to your
approved Twitter followers. Protected
tweets are also not retweetable, so even
approved users cant share your tweets.
You also cannot share permanent links
to your tweets with anyone but approved
followers. If you want to use Twitter to
drive Web traffic, the restrictions in the
protected mode might undermine why
you joined Twitter in the first place.
If you want to adjust your tweet privacy level, or the other privacy controls
on Twitter, start by signing into Twitter
and bringing up your account settings.
Next, click Security And Privacy and
scroll down to Privacy. If you only want
approved followers to see your tweets,
click the Protect My Tweets checkbox.
You can also control who can tag you in
photos, whether your tweets include a location, and how others can find you, such
as by email address or phone number.

After making your privacy selections,
click the Save Changes button.
Google+
For Google+, privacy has been a key
consideration from the very beginning. For
example, youve always been able to assign
a privacy level for each post you share. And
based on the Circles (friend groups) youve
set up, its easy to share content with only
a specific crowd. Google+ also offers detailed privacy settings where you can control most every aspect of your profile. Visit
your Google+ page, click your name, select
the drop-down menu under the Google+
logo, and choose Settings.
In the Settings window, you can customize who can send you notifications,
comment on your public posts, and
manage subscriptions. If you want to
configure the audience settings for your
posts, photos, and profile updates, scroll
down to the Your Circles section and click
Customize. By default, Google+ pushes
updates to the people in your Friends,
Family, and Acquaintances groups. To
block a particular group, remove the check
from the checkbox. If you want to reach a
larger group of people, you might want to
add a check to the Following checkbox, so
followers of your Google+ profile will be
added to Your Circles list.
Next, scroll down to the Profile section. Here, you can configure how people
are able to find your profile and control
what content is displayed in your profile. A setting of interest for businesses
is Allow People To Send You A Message
From Your Profile, as this setting offers a
way for consumers to reach out to you. If
the setting is limited to Your Circles or
Extended Circles, customers might not
be able to contact you.
If you use Google+ on your mobile
device, youll also want to examine the
Location Settings section. These settings let you enable or disable location reporting via your smartphone
and tablet. If enabled, you can control
who can see your current city and/or
exact location. The precise location
is ideal for those who wish to share their
location with friends and family. If thats
Google+ offers a wide variety of privacy controls.
something you dont plan to do, then it

might be best to disable location settings.
LinkedIn
The business-focused nature of
LinkedIn ensures that privacy is a priority. To examine your settings, log in to
LinkedIn, hover your pointer over your
profile photo in the right-hand corner,
and select Manage next to the Privacy &
Settings option. Scroll down to Privacy
Controls and youll find a host of options
to control what others can see on your
profile and activity feed. For example,
you can turn off activity updates that
let other connections know when you
make a change to your profile or follow
another company.
If you use LinkedIn to search for
new clients and key connections within
an organization, you can opt to remain
anonymous, so people wont know that
you looked at their profile. To do so, click
Select What Others See When Youve
Viewed Their Profile. There are two anonymous options, one where others will see
an industry and title, or you can opt to
be completely anonymous. You can also
manage who can follow your updates, edit
blocked connections, and shut down users'
ability to view your connections.
Manage All Your Online Accounts

Now that we've explored the basic steps
of managing your privacy settings, it would
be wise to at least check up on your privacy settings with other social networks you
might use, such as Instagram, Foursquare,
and YouTube. This way, you can have a
measure of control of your publicly available
online data.
67
Isolate Malware
HOW TO COMBAT ATTACKS
AN UNFORTUNATE FACT about using

an Internet-connected computer these
days, whether it is a personal or company-issued notebook, is the constant
threat of malware infection. Even when
taking preemptive action to combat
malware attacks, theres a fair chance
one will eventually hit your notebook
anyway, if for no other reason than
the sheer volume of malware that attackers introduce daily. Frighteningly,
a leading security software maker reportedly gathered 15 million new malware samples between April and June
2014 alone. Of this number, Trojan
horses accounted for 58.2% of all newly
detected malware threats and were responsible for 62.8% of all global computer infections.
Whats startling is that these attacks
included zero-day threats in which, as
the name suggests, zero days expire
between when a given vulnerability is
discovered and when attackers release
malware targeting the vulnerability.
68
With malware being so prevalent and

persistent, a large part of combatting
it is being able to recognize signs that
a system may be infected and then
knowing how to troubleshoot the
problem. Also important is what security tools are available to detect, protect
against, and remove malware. The following details these issues and others
for notebook business users.
The Warning Signs

Although new malware variants are
constantly being developed and released, malware is generally categorized into several common groups,
including viruses, worms, rootkits,
spyware, Trojans, keyloggers, adware,
and ransomware. What these groups
have in common is an aim to infect
a users notebook to steal personal
or company information, hijack the
system outright, or cause other types
of damage. Malware infections can
transpire in numerous ways, including
when you visit an infected website, install software or an app with malware
hiding inside, click links or open attachments in email, or insert an infected USB thumb drive.
Though warning signs that malware
may be present can differ depending
on the malware type, there are some
primary indicators to look for. Michela
Menting, ABI Research practice director, says the most common include
applications and programs running noticeably more slowly, slower Internet
performance, and data or files that
are unexpectedly deleted or altered.
A notebook running more slowly, for
example, could indicate malware is
stealing computing resources to fuel
whatever activity the malware was designed to execute, such as hijacking
the system to help generate and spread
spam to other systems.
Some specific examples of changes
in notebook performance to watch out
for include programs, files, and folders
that take longer to open or that dont

open at all and the notebook taking
exceedingly long to shut down or not
shut down at all. Menting says an easy
way to check for system performance
issues on Windows notebooks is to
look at the processes running in the
Task Manager and pay particular attention to memory or CPU resources.
If users regularly check the Task
Manager, they may be able to more
easily spot when something looks different from normal, she says.
Other odd or strange system-related
occurrences that can signal possible
malware activity include the notebooks battery draining more quickly
than normal, beeps or alarms sounding
unexpectedly, and internal fans
speeding up for no obvious reason.
Elsewhere, the sudden and constant
appearance of error messages can be
a clue that malware is present, as can
a Web browsers home page changing
or new toolbars appearing in the
browser without the users involvement. Additionally, an inability to access various system tools; messages
that report that administrator rights
Most malware will use the Internet connection to send

information back or infect other computers on a network.
Isolate the laptop and then run an antivirus scan.
MICHELA MENTING
fake). Another indicator to watch for

includes phony social network posts
that the user appears to initiate and
share with his contacts.
Immediate Response
When you suspect malware has
infected your notebook, Menting
advises turning off its Internet connection. Most malware will use the
Internet connection to send information back or infect other computers
on a network, she says. Isolate the
laptop and then run an antivirus scan.
Additionally, ensure that antivirus
software on the notebook is up-to-date
with the latest malware signatures.
If not, then copy a free AV program
onto a USB thumb drive and use it to
install [the software] on the disconnected infected PC, she says. More
WITH MALWARE BEING SO PREVALENT AND

PERSISTENT, A LARGE PART OF COMBATTING
IT IS BEING ABLE TO RECOGNIZE SIGNS THAT
A SYSTEM MAY BE INFECTED AND KNOWING
HOW TO TROUBLESHOOT THE PROBLEM.
have been denied; and a sudden disappearance or appearance of unfamiliar
icons, shortcuts, folders, photos, and
file types are all other possible malware
warning signs.
Pop-up messages, including those
that appear out of the blue when a
Web browser isnt even open, are another indication that malware (particularly adware and Trojans) may
be present. An especially cruel type
of malware-related pop-up is one that
warns a user of security vulnerabilities on his notebook and recommends
that he download or buy the suggested
security software (which happen to be
sophisticated malware, Menting says,

may be able to obfuscate its presence,
and others, such as zero-days, have
simply not yet been uncovered by security firms and, therefore, an antivirus
[program] will not help. In such cases,
Menting says the best option may be to
wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall
the operating system.
Means Of Prevention
As a means of prevention, Menting
says, at the least, you should ensure
that a firewall is running and working
properly. Generally, she says, most operating systems have built-in security
features that users should activate.

Additionally, numerous programs
(including PDF and document-creation
programs) provide options to password-protect files. These are really
useful for protecting sensitive documents, she says. On browsers, there
are a number of security features that
can also be activated or increased.
Malware Removal Tools

Beyond built-in tools, numerous
malware-removal tools are free for
download and use, as are numerous
useful and easy-to-use program-based,
on-the-fly encryption tools and antitheft products. Menting says, Users
should definitely consider protecting
their data as well as their devices. She
says specific features and abilities to
seek out in such tools included antivirus, antispam, antiphishing, and
antispyware; firewall and intrusion
prevention systems; email, browser,
chat/instant messaging, and application protection; privacy, ID, and
online transaction protection; encryption and password management;
antitheft and remote locate/lock/
wipe; and cloud-based services and
backup platforms.
Usage-wise, routinely run antivirus
scans and avoid opening email and
attachments or clicking links within
messages from senders you dont recognize; dont reply to suspicious email;
avoid visiting suspicious or unknown
websites; dont click pop-ups that appear suspicious and consider using a
pop-up blocker; and dont download
and install software from suspect
sources. Additionally, keep software,
including Web browsers and security
programs, updated; back up data regularly; and report suspicious activity to
your companys IT department.
69
PC Problems On The Road?

HERE ARE SOME QUICK FIXES
IF YOU HAVE USED a computer for any

amount of time, then you know that PC
problems can often occur with little
warning. Maybe you are having trouble
connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot, or you
cant get your mouse to work. We explore how to troubleshoot these and other
common PC problems so you can get back
to work quickly.
Hotspot Troubleshooting
Ordinarily, when you carry your
laptop into an airline lounge, it will automatically connect to the available Wi-Fi
hotspot. But what if that doesnt happen?
First, check that your notebooks Wi-Fi
adapter is turned on. Often, youll see a
backlit Wi-Fi icon near the keyboard. If
the icon isnt illuminated, look for a
physical switch that you can flip to enable the adapter. Sometimes, the state of
your network connection is easily determined by an icon in the notification area
of the Taskbar. For instance, a red X on
the network icon indicates the adapter
70
is disabled while an asterisk means the

adapter is in the process of detecting the
available networks. You can right-click
the network icon in Windows 7 or Win8
and select Troubleshoot Problems. When
the Windows Network Diagnostics utility
opens, it will reset your connection, disable
the wireless adapter, and then enable the
adapter again.
The utility will display descriptions
of the problems it detects along with
some recommended solutions. In most
instances the utility will repair the connection and report the issue as Fixed.
To enable a disabled adapter, right-click
the Network Connections icon, click
Open Network And Sharing Center, select Change Adapter Settings, and then
right-click the name of the wireless
adapter. In the resulting menu, you can

choose to disable or enable the adapter,
connect to or disconnect a network, and
diagnose problems, among other options. Click Properties to access detailed
options that may help you troubleshoot
the problem.
When your adapter is working properly, Windows may display a message indicating there are several available wireless
networks. Select the message and choose
a network SSID (service set identifier, or
name) from the list. (You may need to
input a security password.) To display a list
of available networks in Win 8, go to the
Settings option in the charm bar and click
the Available Networks icon. If the adapter
is working and your system appears to be
connected, but you still cant access the
THE WINDOWS NETWORK DIAGNOSTICS

UTILITY . . . WILL RESET YOUR CONNECTION,
DISABLE THE WIRELESS ADAPTER, AND THEN
ENABLE THE ADAPTER AGAIN.
Internet check for a browser-based splash

screen and/or a Terms Of Use statement
to agree to. Launch a fresh browser session
and click the Home icon to redirect.
Fix Broken Outlook

PST & OST Files
The PST (personal storage table) file
and the offline OST (Outlook Data File) is
where Outlook stores messages, calendar
events, and notes specific to your email account. If this file becomes corrupted, you
may find yourself ousted from Outlook.
There are a few things, however, that you
can do to get a foot in the door.
Scanpst.exe (Outlook 97-2003, 2007,
2010, and 2013), Microsofts Inbox Repair tool, lets you solve busted PST/OST
problems quickly. To access the tool, close
Outlook and navigate to C:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12. (This
last folder may have a different number;
for instance, our version of Office 2013
stores the utility in the \OFFICE15 folder.)
Double-click Scanpst.exe. By default,
the address for our OST file was already
listed, but if the field is blank, look in the
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local
\Microsoft\Outlook\ folder. Click the
Options button to access Replace, Append, or No Log functions and click OK.
Click Start to begin the scanning process.
Windows will inform you of any errors
and prompt you to perform a repair when
the scan is complete. Before clicking the
Repair button, make note of the scanned
The Microsoft Outlook Inbox

Repair Tool (Scanpst.exe) lets
you quickly recover corrupted
Outlook PST and OST files.
Outlook folders list, if it appears, will contain all the data that is recovered. You can
then drag the data to your new PST file and
delete the Recovered Personal Folders item
from Outlook.
A Touchy Touchpad
If you use your laptop on a dock (and
use an external mouse and keyboard),
you can go weeks or months with a deactivated touchpad and never realize it
until you hit the road. If you find yourself in this situation, you can activate
the touchpad by pressing the Fn (function) key simultaneously with the F
number key associated with the laptops
touchpad (often labeled with an image
of a touchpad). Using this key combination will either automatically activate
THE PST FILE AND THE OFFLINE OST IS

WHERE OUTLOOK STORES MESSAGES,
CALENDAR EVENTS, AND NOTES SPECIFIC
TO YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT. IF THIS FILE
BECOMES CORRUPTED, YOU MAY FIND
YOURSELF OUSTED FROM OUTLOOK.
files backup location. Click Repair and
OK when you see the Repair Complete
message. Launch Outlook to see if this
fixes the problem.
If the file structure was corrupted beyond repair, Scanpst.exe resets your file
structure and rebuilds the headers. The
Recovered Personal Folders item in your
the touchpad or display a device settings

dialog box that gives you the option to
enable your touchpad. Alternatively,
you can check the notification area in
the lower-right corner of the screen for
a touchpad icon. Click the icon and the
touchpad control panel appears where
you can enable or disable an input device.
An Unresponsive Keyboard
Or Mouse
If your programs and applications
dont respond to keyboard commands,
use your mouse to shut down the computer by clicking Start, then Shut Down
(in Win7) or tap the Power Button and
tap Shut Down (in Win8). Unplug the
keyboard from your PC and then reconnect it. Restart your PC to determine whether this process corrected the
problem. (If both input devices are unresponsive, you can press and hold the
Power Button on the tower to manually
shut down your system.)
If your mouse isnt responding, but
your keyboard is, press the Windows key
in Win7 to open the Start menu, use the
Right-Arrow key to select Shut Down,
and then press ENTER. In Win8, press
CTRL-ALT-DELETE, press the Tab key
until the power icon is highlighted, and
then press ENTER. Unplug your mouse
and then reconnect it. (If necessary, you
can press and hold the Power button to
shut down the PC.) Then restart your
computer to see if these instructions fix
your problem.
If youre using a wireless keyboard and
mouse, ensure that the peripherals are
synced and in range of the wireless receiver. You may also need to install new
batteries. If these steps dont enable peripheral communication with the PC, try
reinstalling device drivers. You can often
download these from the mouse and keyboard manufacturer websites.
71

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JULY 2015 VOL. 13 ISS.

& THE TRUE

Volume 13 : Issue 7 : July 2015

HOW INFOSYS REDEFINED

Advertising: (800) 247-4880

Revenues To Climb Through 2017

Service providers will adopt

IoT services will place growing

North American Business Drives

PC Prices To Rise According

How The Worlds Largest

The LAN SDN (local-area network

Currency devaluation will cause device

The largest IT spenders are truly taking

July 2015 / www.cybertrend.com

Business Sector Boosts VoIP

Company Websites Still Serve As Primary Connection Point

Stay The Same

Social Media Sites

Online Display Advertising

Paid Search Advertising

SEO/Organic Search Visibility

Companies To Spend More

IaaS Spending Predicted To See

IDC: Consider These Scenarios

New research from IT industry association CompTIA indicates that almost a

Gartner says that cloud IaaS (infrastructure as a service) is in a state of upheaval

CyberTrend / July 2015

How The Business World Intends To Use Wearables

Piloting/Planning To Use In Next Two Years

Tracking Workplace Productivity

Wireless Consumption Grows,

Fewer PC Owners Buying

According to a recent survey conducted

A combination of factors is creating what

July 2015 / www.cybertrend.com

Pure Storage Gets Into The Hardware Business With An

In the software development world,

Startup Offers Faster Big Data

Pipedrive Wants To Inject More

Visual Analytics Startup Aims To

Campbell, Calif.,-based startup Saama

Only the luckiest salesperson closes

Having picked up $11.5 million in a

CyberTrend / July 2015

How Infosys Redened Global Scale

July 2015 / www.cybertrend.com

A LOT OF COMPANIES start off with a

International From The Start

group of friends or colleagues asking themselves, Wouldnt it be cool if . . . ? But

Although Infosys started off small, its

offices in Australia, Belgium, Sweden, and

A big focus for us is partnering with clients to take

projects for designing lighter and stronger

Infosys offers a wide range of products

Infosyss Finacle product suite is designed to simplify banking at every possible

CyberTrend / July 2015

Businesses that use EdgeVerve are able to

integrates well with existing applications and

young people to become financially responsible, Reh explains. A first-of-its-kind

is also multilingual to enable organizations

July 2015 / www.cybertrend.com

tions. And, in a fashion similar to Finacle,

pool of opportunities to drive higher revenue