IT WEEK • 4 OCTOBER 2004
36 COMMENT Could
TV make IT cool?
CONTENTS
36 ANALYSIS Firms must review their processes for data
archiving to ensure compliance with new governance rules
36 COMMENT IT professionals should
be portrayed in ads as slick business-enablers, revered by their
colleagues. Maybe then they would
be treated like this in the real
world, writes Madeline Bennett
37 ANALYSIS Document management
and data archiving is a high priority for firms needing to comply
with new governance regulations
MANAGEMENTWEEK
WHERE TECHNOLOGY BECOMES BUSINESS REALITY
Editor: Madeline Bennett
Dell offers recycling service
D
ell has launched an IT recycling
programme for business customers, ahead of forthcoming
recycling legislation. However, the government has yet to clarify the precise details of
the impending law.
Dell said its Asset Recovery Services
(ARS) would enable firms to hand back
old equipment, either for resale or recycling. The scheme covers all computer
products, including peripherals.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic
Equipment (WEEE) directive, which sets
recycling targets to tackle the problem of
electronic waste in Europe, was due to
become law in the UK this August. However, the implementation has been delayed
and the final consultation process will now
not end until 29 October. The WEEE directive is now expected to be written into
the statute books later this year.
Organisations will have to finance recycling schemes from August 2005, but the
exact responsibilities of business users and
manufacturers have yet to be clarified.
Brennan Peyton of Pananecessary certification
REASONS TO RECYCLE
sonic said the area of PC recyand documentation a
will encourage your firm
cling is particularly grey.“PCs What
firm requires to show
to recycle more equipment?
are made up of a lot of differ- Government
they have complied
46%
ent constituent components,
with the directive.”
legislation
so should the company resDell’s recent reEducation
29%
on benefits
ponsible for disposing it be
search found 92 perMore
the firm that brands the
cent of UK staff with
27%
awareness
product or the original eq- Source: Dell
responsibility for disuipment manufacturer?” he
posing of computer
asked. “Then there is the other problem
hardware did not realise WEEE will come
over who claims the peripherals such as
into effect in 2005. And a quarter of busithe mouse, leads and wires.”
nesses that do not recycle said they had no
Dell said that it has decided not to wait
idea where to go if they wanted to do so.
for the finer points of the law to be ham“We were surprised when our research
mered out before implementing its own
showed that British business knows so litrecycling programme. The company added
tle [about WEEE]. We expected [ignothat it wanted to educate firms about comrance] with consumers but not from complying with WEEE and, if possible, explain
panies,” commented Nathan. “We didn’t
how they can profit from the directive by
want to wait [for the legislation], we want
selling on serviceable used kit.
to be doing things now.”
“We pack and test and our partners sell
Previous recycling initiatives, such as the
on the equipment [handed back to us] and
Recycling Electrical Producers Industry
the [original customer] gets a percentage of
Consortium and the European Recycling
the price back,” said Pat Nathan, Dell’s globPlatform, have focused on consumer kit.
Last Word, p38
al sustainable business director. “If equip www.itweek.co.uk/specials/1152928
ment is to be recycled we also produce the
Product demand modelling
John McCright
reduce forecasting error, and automatically takes into account factors such as marAS Institute last week launched a foreketing promotions and seasonal events.
casting application to help companies
Todd Kirk, senior vice-president of
predict demand for products and to speed
product development at market research
up analysis tasks.
firm Ipsos, has been testing HPF. His comThe business intelligence vendor’s new
pany uses the software to forecast the
High-Performance Forecasting (HPF)
results of what-if scenarios for marketing
module for the SAS9 Intelligence Platform
groups for clients in the consumer packis designed to automate forecasting. The
aged goods and pharmaceutical sectors.
new software includes sophisticated math“In our world of causal analysis, people
ematical processing capabilities so that
are doing what-if games that are all retrousers do not need a strong background in
spective,” said Kirk. “What people really
statistics, said the firm.
want to do, which this forecasting tool will
When presented with a set of
enable you to do, is predict if
historical data, HPF determines
you do X, [then] this is what will
which of about 500 statistical
happen, and if you do Y, this is
models are appropriate for forewhat will happen.”
casting future demand. It then
A key benefit of the product
runs the calculations, and flags
is its ability to provide forecasts
outlying or rogue results for an
within designated hierarchies,
HPF can highlight according to Kirk. “Historically,
analyst to monitor, SAS said.
The product is designed to any unusual results
forecasting is done at the brand
S
itweek.co.uk
Madeline Bennett
PREDICTING THE FUTURE
SAS Institute has launched a new
• forecasting
module for its business
•
•
intelligence software platform.
High-Performance Forecasting is
designed to help firms predict the
likely demand for products.
The software can automate a number of analysis tasks to help nonexperts use the software.
level; now, with this, it is done at the SKU
[stock keeping unit] level.”
Kirk also welcomed the ability to automatically choose the best statistical model,
which allows his analysts to focus on adding
more value to the results of the forecast.
The software’s ability to crunch millions of numbers quickly is also a strong
point, Kirk added. “Maybe that’s overkill
today, but like anything in technology, as
soon as somebody says you can do something, then you are going to find a need
that that fills,” Kirk said.
The HPF module is available now.
www.tinyurl.com/54ee7
www.eweek.com
© eWeek USA 2004
Dinah Greek
Increase in
IT spending
to accelerate
Firms are expected to increase their
IT spending at a greater rate next
year, with much of the money going
towards Windows upgrades, according to new research.
The National Computing Centre
(NCC)’s Benchmark of IT Spending
2004 survey found more than half of
respondents expected their IT spending to increase next year, and the
average increase was predicted to be
almost two percent, up from the estimate of 1.4 percent for this year.
The report indicates a mood of
cautious optimism, according to Ian
Jones, the NCC’s head of publishing.
“We identified some emergent
areas.The health sector has materialised as a real area of IT spending
growth,” Jones said.
Although the finance sector was
identified as the highest spender on
technology, the amount spent was
significantly down on last year –
falling from almost £10,000 per enduser to just over £6,000.“But this
[decline] is probably because they’re
coming to the end of their three-year
cycle,” commented Jones.“We’re
expecting to see some big growth figures in this sector next year.”
Despite some reports of growing
interest in open source alternatives
for corporate desktops, the NCC
found that Windows still dominates.
And compared with last year, fewer
organisations now have plans to
deploy desktop Linux.
The study indicated that within
two years, more than 60 percent of
corporate desktops will be upgraded
to Windows XP, while Windows 2000
will be running on a fifth. Over the
same period, the total number of
Windows desktops is expected to
increase by four percent.
www.ncc.co.uk
35
MANAGEMENTWEEK
IT WEEK • 4 OCTOBER 2004
IT makes prime-time viewing
TV ads should show IT staff not as nerds, but slick business-enablers who are revered by
their colleagues. Maybe then the real world will catch up, writes Madeline Bennett
D
uring a recent evening’s TV
viewing, I noticed that in
one of the many advert breaks,
three of the six slots were filled by
technology companies promoting
their business wares.
One of the ads promoted a digital, networked world of business,
demonstrated by men in suits
floating through the air, and catching big fish before landing at their
desks – yes, it does look as strange
as it sounds. Various other objects
also came floating by, presumably
to show the connections that technology allows between people,
businesses and systems.
In another ad, a young girl is
left waiting in her dad’s office. To
alleviate her boredom she begins
messaging friends on dad’s computer and ends up downloading an
infected attachment. We see her
look of concern when a warning of
“Worm detected” flashes up –
clever girl, to already know at such
an early age what a worm is in IT
terms – and her big grin when a subsequent box pops up stating the
worm has been destroyed.
Now I’m not saying this is the
first time technology companies
have gone on mainstream TV with
their advertising. I remember the
fuss surrounding Microsoft’s substantial fee for using a Madonna
song to back the TV launch of Windows XP. But what was notable in
this recent instance was the proportion of business-focused IT adverts
during a weekend evening’s viewing
– a prime advertising slot.
As the common theme of these
adverts was to promote the use of
technology as a business tool, I was
left wondering who the target audience was. I can’t imagine vendors
would choose to spend their advertising budgets on the off-chance that
a huge number of IT chiefs happened to be watching a specific TV
drama. So they must have been tar-
geting the average business user,
finance director and CEO in a bid to
open up technology to the masses
and stamp out the feeling that all
things IT-related are too complicated for most people.
This is a rather different
approach to a previous advert that
sticks in my mind. Here we saw a
bemused finance manager being
bombarded by the lowly IT guy with
complex, technical details about the
latest development project. The IT
guy eventually and amusingly
explains that the system makes millions in cost savings, leaving everyone with big smiles on their faces.
This scenario reinforces the
stereotypes of the IT guy as techy
nerd and the business guy as clueless
yet money-mad, and highlights the
perceived and unwanted divide
between the IT department and the
rest of the business. It all rather goes
against the message that many vendors want to promote – that technol-
Archiving demands attention
New corporate governance regulations are pushing data
archiving to the top of the agenda for many IT managers
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS BY MARK STREET
D
ocument management and email
archiving have come under the business spotlight to an unprecedented degree,
following the arrival of tough new corporate governance laws.
Currently, many firms are ignorant of
their legal responsibilities in this area.
According to a recent survey by software
vendor Macro 4, only 65 percent of firms
are fully aware of their obligations.
Under the new governance rules, firms
must archive crucial data or risk severe
penalties. This pressing need has been
noticed by IT vendors, who are ramping up
their archiving offerings. For example, last
month Veritas Software
bought archiving vendor
KVS in a $225m deal.
A quarter of IT departments worldwide are
bent on upgrading their
Peyton: firms must
consider paper trails
36
messaging servers for better archiving ; and
another third are already completing
upgrades, according to analyst firm Radicati Group.
To deal with the new laws, some
enlightened companies have appointed a
dedicated compliance officer to shoulder
the burden, but the majority have dumped
all the responsibility on the IT director.
Firms that deal in global markets also
have to take account of laws in other countries. The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, for
example, affects UK firms listed in the US.
Under the act, companies have to implement strict document management policies.
Anyone who knowingly alters or destroys a
record or document with the intent to
obstruct an investigation is liable to fines, or
prison sentences of up to 20 years.
At some firms, instant messaging (IM)
could create a stumbling block on the road
to compliance. In many cases, messages are
not stored on in-house servers, backup
tapes or even on PCs’ hard drives.
For local authorities, the arrival of the
Freedom of Information Act in January
2005 will pose a big headache. Information silos, poorly integrated systems and
inconsistent record-keeping methods could
all open the floodgates to legal action by
disgruntled customers.
Some companies will need to improve
their management systems to ensure that
the necessary information is archived. “It is
crucial to confirm who decides which document to keep,” commented Mike Woodgate, business development consultant at
Tower Technology.“Organisations will have
to decide whether it is better to keep them all
or whether that will put too much pressure
on storage resources.”
There are also questions over what
constitutes a complete document for legal
purposes. “It is unclear whether it is the
first draft, the revised electronic draft, the
paper version with written annotations or
the final version,” said Woodgate.
Some experts predict that responsibility for archiving hard-copy data will fall
on the shoulders of the IT director. “Most
organisations have neglected to look at the
impact of paper-based documents,” said
Brennan Peyton of Panasonic. “More and
more firms are now looking at creating
ogy shouldn’t be seen as a standalone
department, and that IT investments
should be made with overall business objectives in mind. And it goes
against the trend of IT staff striving
for higher management positions
and working hard to promote the
importance of technology for business, whether as IT directors, CIOs,
board members or even CEOs.
If we start seeing images of IT
staff as business-minded; and CEOs
and CFOs as technology-savvy, perhaps this message will be taken up by
more firms and we will eventually
get to a situation where an IT chief
has as good a chance as a finance
head of becoming the next CEO. ITW
[email protected]
SUMMARY
corporate governance laws
• New
have made document management
•
•
and email archiving a higher priority
for organisations.
To help companies meet their
compliance obligations, IT vendors
such as Veritas are extending their
archiving and storage ranges.
Experts point out that firms may
also need to archive instant messages and paper documents such as
faxes – and that this task is likely
to fall on the IT department.
paper trails that cover documents such as
faxes because of Sarbanes-Oxley.”
Peyton said many companies had no
record of received faxes, although the latest digital fax machines can automatically
generate an email so that a digital copy of
each message is automatically stored.
The latest printers can also convert
important documents into PDFs for electronic archiving, and the latest fax machines can respond to key words through
optical character recognition to help firms
store key documents, Peyton noted.
The burden of archiving crucial information looks set to increase for some time
yet, so IT directors must ensure they work
with senior managers or compliance officers now to develop clear policies on what
and what not to store. ITW
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