IT WEEK • 23 AUGUST 2004
32 COMMENT BI can
end costly mistakes
32 INTERVIEW Instant messaging systems could be very
useful business tools – if they are managed properly
MANAGEMENTWEEK
WHERE TECHNOLOGY BECOMES BUSINESS REALITY
Editor: Madeline Bennett
IT graduates left on shelf
James Mortleman
O
ne in eight of last year’s IT graduates has not yet found a job,
according to recent research.
Recruitment experts expressed concern
that the news could deter students from
taking IT courses and so cause skills shortages in future.
IT graduates have fared especially
badly, according to the Higher Education
Statistics Agency. For creative arts and
design graduates, one in 10 has yet to find
work, while just one in 500 of those qualifying in medicine and dentistry are still
unemployed a year after graduating.
However, Carl Gilleard, chief executive
of the Association of Graduate Recruiters,
predicted that employment would pick up.
“I’m very surprised IT comes out bottom of
the league, even taking the lean market into
account,” he said.“Last year we saw the first
signs of recovery and it has continued this
year. I think this will probably start to show
in graduate employment figures next year.”
Gilleard added it would be bad news if
the findings put students off taking com-
IT GRADS SEEK WORK
Unemployment rates for 2003 graduates
Computer science
Creative arts & design
Veterinary science
2.9%
Medicine & dentistry 0.2%
12.4%
10.5%
Source: Hesa
puting courses. “The trend is already
towards fewer people opting for science
and technology degrees, so I’m nervous
that this could discourage even more people,” he said.
One factor affecting levels of unemployment among IT graduates could be
their comparative lack of transferable and
soft skills.
“While computer scientists may be
highly technically competent, their transferable skills might not be as finely tuned
as others’, especially business studies graduates who may be competing for some of
the same positions,” said Gilleard. “No
matter how technically brilliant you are,
even in the IT industry you need good
interpersonal skills.”
Karen Price, chief executive of skills
Governance made easier
Madeline Bennett
mation and so avoid duplicated effort.
Topics covered include health and safety
he London Stock Exchange (LSE) has
issues and supplier relationships.
developed an online disclosure tool
The resource could save firms time and
to make it easier for firms to comply with
money. Research by the LSE indicates that
corporate governance rules. Experts said
in a fifth of listed companies, a senior
IT directors should use the system as an
member of staff spends more than half
example of how technology can help comtheir time gathering data to respond to
pliance programmes.
requests for information on compliance.
The LSE said the tool, which will be
BT Group estimates that firms spend an
released next month, was created in reaverage of £25,000 each year responding
sponse to firms’ complaints that
to such requests. The LSE will
they were finding it hard to recharge firms between £800 and
spond to requests for information
£3,000 per year to use the Corpoabout their corporate governance
rate Responsibility Exchange.
and social responsibility policies.
Mike Davis of analyst firm
The LSE’s new Corporate
Butler Group said that the LSE’s
Responsibility Exchange system
system “adds credibility to the
will prompt firms to provide
argument that compliance should
details concerning a wide range
be taken seriously”. He added that
of policy areas. This will create a
managers should point to the sysunified resource to which compa- Farquhar: data tem as an example of why IT
nies can refer requests for infor- must be pooled
should be central to organisa-
T
itweek.co.uk
body E-Skills UK, said universities should
work more closely with her organisation
and corporates to improve job prospects for
IT graduates. “For example, employers and
universities have worked together with Eskills UK to create a new degree course for
IT that develops the business, technical,
interpersonal and project skills employers
value, preparing graduates for a wide range
of IT professional careers,” she said.
A fall in the number of students
embarking on technology courses could
lead to future skills shortages – especially
as the IT recruitment sector is finally showing signs of a recovery.
According to figures from E-Skills UK,
released in May this year, the number of IT
vacancies rose four percent in the quarter
and unemployment rates in the sector
dropped. Among IT employers, 15 percent
reported skills gaps in their workforce.
These gaps mainly related to softer skills
such as communications or customer handling skills – supporting Gilleard’s emphasis on the importance of good interpersonal skills for IT staff.
www.itweek.co.uk/careers
SERVICE EASES COMPLIANCE
The London Stock Exchange is to
• launch
a service to help firms comply
•
with corporate governance rules.
The Corporate Responsibility
Exchange system aims to make it
easier for firms to aggregate data
relating to governance.
tions’ corporate governance efforts.
Davis argued that IT directors should
have a key role in corporate governance and
regulatory compliance. “The risk for [IT
managers] not taking it up is that it will be
taken up by the financial director, who won’t
have the full scope of their organisation’s
information systems,” he warned.
Ed Farquhar of business intelligence
tools vendor Microstrategy said good data
management is essential for governance
efforts. “Companies have islands of data
across departments and systems,” he said.
“They need to aggregate this data to turn
it into a single view that can help them
with compliance efforts.”
www.tinyurl.com/3wnxu
CONTENTS
32 COMMENT Mistakes made by senior
managers can cost companies dear,
but skillful implementation of business intelligence systems could
help firms to minimise such errors,
writes Madeline Bennett
37 INTERVIEW Roger Dean of e-business body Eema explains how
companies can realise the benefits
of IM while avoiding the pitfalls
Firms want
centralised
security kit
Madeline Bennett
Four out of five IT managers want to
centralise security management, new
research has found.This means that
many firms are looking for integrated
security offerings, said experts.
Of 1,200 IT managers questioned
by Computer Associates (CA) worldwide, 82 percent said a centralised
management facility would be the
ideal way to control their organisations’ security. However, more than
half face difficulties in achieving this
ideal because they have a number of
separate security management tools.
Simon Perry, CA’s vice-president
for security strategy, said that firms
are looking for integrated solutions
to make management easier.“Among
larger enterprises, there’s a trend of
convergence to reduce the amount
of suppliers,” he said.“They’re looking
to reduce the 15 or 16 suppliers they
have today to half that number.”
The current trend for mergers
and acquisitions among security vendors is also reducing the number of
suppliers, and Perry predicted this
trend would continue for a while.
CA itself acquired anti-spyware
specialist PestPatrol last week. But
Perry played down the idea of further
acquisitions, and said CA now has
most of the capabilities it needs.
Andrew Braunberg, senior analyst
at research firm Current Analysis,
agreed that IT professionals want to
centralise security management.
“What we hear often is,‘Please, not
another console,’” he said.
But Braunberg was not convinced
that firms would move towards integrated security tools.“I believe firms
will try to retain their point solutions
as long as possible,” he said. But he
added that some would add an extra
layer of controls for these tools to
make management easier.
31
MANAGEMENTWEEK
IT WEEK • 23 AUGUST 2004
Decision time for IT systems
Research shows that poor decisions by senior managers are costing firms a lot of cash.
Investment in better IT systems could lead to wiser choices, argues Madeline Bennett
new report from consultancy
Capgemini warns that
almost a quarter of the decisions
made by senior UK executives are
wrong. A worrying figure, and
one that’s even more troubling
given the source of this data – the
executives themselves. They openly admit their failures, which
cause losses of over £800,000 a
year for each large company.
This is particularly depressing
news for IT chiefs, many of whom
are still having to operate under
very tight financial constraints.
Recent research by analyst company Quocirca found that firms that
increased their IT budgets mostly
did so to handle pressing projects
and upgrades. But once such projects were completed the budgets
would again be reined in.
Quocirca found an uncertain
outlook for IT spending. Some
firms said that a recovery has yet
to come, but many had no idea
when it would happen; while oth-
A
ers insisted the recovery had already
come and gone – and spending was
being adjusted accordingly.
The picture for IT vendors is
also uneven. IBM recently announced plans to hire 18,000 new
staff by the end of this year, up
from the 10,000 it had previously
anticipated. This increase was due
to strong demand for its professional services, it said.
But things are looking less rosy
for rival HP, which has replaced
three senior executives on the back
of disappointing results.
BEA has also seen changes at the
top recently, with the departures of
its chief technology officer, chief
architect and founder. As a result,
there have been mutterings that it
could be an acquisition target, and
analyst Gartner has warned firms
to delay signing any major contracts with the software company
until its prospects become clearer.
Meanwhile, the judgement of
managers in the financial services
sector seems especially poor. Here
almost a third of decisions are bad,
according to recent research. IT
directors are likely to feel the brunt
of these mistakes because technology tends to be the foundation of
finance companies’ operations and
compliance efforts.
Compliance with corporate governance laws and other rules is currently a high priority for finance
firms. Recently I’ve noticed a number of job adverts from big financial
institutions for newly-created posts
for compliance officers.
The job of implementing,
enhancing, and managing compliance programmes clearly carries a
lot of responsibility. A breach of
even one of the many regulations
could land a firm in hot water, with
the possibility of angry shareholders, fines and public embarrassment. Compliance officers cannot
afford to make mistakes.
To make better choices, executives clearly need access to the right
Firms must bring IM to heel
Roger Dean of e-business body Eema says instant messaging
will be a boon for firms – but only if it is managed properly
INSTANT MESSAGING INTERVIEW BY MADELINE BENNETT
IT Week: As head of special projects at
independent e-business body Eema, can
you explain how the organisation works?
Roger Dean:We look at all aspects of e-business, particularly security and productivity
issues. We have set up focus groups to develop best practice on identity management,
web services and more recently instant messaging [IM]. Eema is made up of large firms
from both the user and vendor side, such as
Unilever, Cargill, Microsoft and IBM.
Why the recent focus on IM?
IM will overtake email; it
has the added advantage
of allowing you to see
who is there. It’s something everyone will get
hit with, but its use is
pretty much out of con Dean: IM poses
a security threat
32
trol in companies at present. We think IM
can be a really useful tool if it is managed
properly. There are services available that
can help with this by tracking who’s using
IM and which clients are being used.
How is Eema working to help companies
manage the use of IM systems?
We had an informal meeting of our IM
focus group in June, and a more structured
meeting followed at the end of July. The
outcome of this was to agree to publish a
white paper in October that will offer best
practice guidance on messaging, and writing a corporate policy. It will also cover
security, putting a business case together to
justify IM usage, and liability issues.
What are the risks for companies that let
IM use go uncontrolled?
The same rules and laws that apply to
email apply to IM, and firms put their
employees at risk if they fail to control its
use. One example is the employee of a large
US healthcare company, whose IM logs
were exposed after a spim [spam via IM]
sender entered the network. One of these
logged messages was talking about another employee in not a very nice way, resulting in the first employee being fired.
And on the security side?
Security is a big issue with IM, as it’s an
open pipe to the outside world. Unwanted
visitors can come in and suck out information from your company or push in a
virus and it’s hard to verify the identity of
users. Unilever is one firm that has taken
steps to reduce these risks. The manufacturer lets its employees use IM, but according to its own rules. They’re restricted to an
internal client and can’t transfer files.
Should IM use be audited?
Companies should be keeping track of
conversations taking place over IM. This is
particularly important in the financial sector, where most traders buy and sell over
IM. Mail and email is not as immediate,
and as IM is less formal it’s also popular for
negotiations. Firms should implement filtering technology and usage policies across
information – and IT systems have
a central role in providing it.
IT directors must ensure that
data relating to all parts of the
business is accurate and up to date,
and that senior executives can
readily access and understand the
information available. At firms
where supporting systems such as
business intelligence tools are not
in place, now is the time to explain
their value to the board.
With good systems, executives
in all departments – including IT –
will have the resources to identify
requirements and carry out proper
risk assessments during the decision-making process, and so avoid
costly mistakes. ITW
[email protected]
ABOUT ROGER DEAN
Dean is head of special proj• Roger
ects at e-business body Eema,
which he helped to launch in 1987.
responsibilities include project
• His
management of working groups.
Dean had a lead role in
• Previously,
the launch of the first commercial
email service in the UK.
has also chaired various UN
• He
and EU initiatives.
all communication channels. But most
haven’t tackled IM in their policies yet.
What should firms do to tackle spam?
End-user training and policies are the key.
Staff need to be trained in good practice,
such as not using the out-of-office automated email response setting, which just
verifies addresses. Anti-spam filtering technology is also needed, and sender authentication schemes will prove useful for
tackling the issue of spoofing.
Does legislation have a role to play in supporting these efforts?
Legislation has to be there, but it’s ineffective really. As long as you’ve got spam
havens like Belize and North Korea, you’ll
always have spammers. ITW
www.eema.org
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