IT WEEK • 5 JULY 2004
32 COMMENT High quality data is essential to the
efficiency of even the best supply chain technology
CONTENTS
32 ANALYSIS ISPs fall under
rising pressure to fight spam
32 COMMENT To reap the benefits of
even the best supply chain systems
firms must first ensure that the
fundamentals are of the highest
quality, says Mark Street
37 ANALYSIS ISPs are being urged to
adopt technical measures to fight
spam, but will the cost of doing so
be passed on to customers in the
form of more expensive services?
MANAGEMENTWEEK
WHERE TECHNOLOGY BECOMES BUSINESS REALITY
Editor: Madeline Bennett
IT managers feel the strain
Madeline Bennett
HOW THE HOURS ADD UP
•
Fifty-five percent of IT managers
T managers are overloaded with work
feel overburdened with work and
and many feel exploited by their emmany feel they are exploited.
ployers, according to a new study.
A third say they work 14 hours a
Employment experts said that firms could
week over their contracted hours.
improve matters by offering more flexible
Flexible working would be likely to
working conditions and providing more
ensure staff are more motivated.
encouragement for achievement.
Fifty-five percent of managers in the
with an authoritarian environment, and
IT sector believe they are overburdened,
around a third felt exploited.
according to the Business Energy Survey of
IT managers said that the best way for
1,500 UK managers carried out by the
firms to motivate them would be to ensure
Chartered Management Institute (CMI)
they were given a sense of achievement.
and recruitment specialist Adecco. A third
Flexible working initiatives such as flexiof IT managers said they are effectively
time and home working were identified as
working a seven-day week by puta way of improving conditions by
ting in an extra 14 hours outside
almost half of respondents in the
of their contracted hours.
IT sector. However, very few – only
Managers in the IT sector
three percent – actually believed
seem disproportionately unhapthat they would ever be offered
py – averaged across all sectors
such opportunities.
only 45 percent of managers said
Mary Chapman, the CMI’s
they felt overburdened.
chief executive, said current presMany IT managers were also
sures on managers are caused by
concerned about the culture of
the fast pace of change and a
their organisations. More than a Chapman: fast desire to reduce costs within
quarter said they worked in firms pace drains staff organisations. “[These] take their
I
•
•
Gates takes
stand against
spam charges
toll through longer working hours and a
drained workforce,” she said in a statement.
Chapman argued that companies that
adopt flexible working patterns are more
likely to retain a motivated and enthusiastic workforce.
Tricia Phillips, operations director at
Adecco, said the survey indicated that managers are happy to work required longer
hours if they have a sense of purpose.
“Firms need to ensure their management
staff feel valued and empowered,” she said.
“They should listen to staff and take a more
flexible attitude to the way people work.”
However, it is not just senior IT staff
who are dissatisfied with aspects of their
jobs. According to a separate study from
research consultancy Orc International,
job insecurity and a lack of recognition
and training are concerns for workers at
all levels in the high-tech sector.
Almost half of UK technology workers
feel insecure in their current employment,
the study found. This compares poorly
with the average for all sectors in the UK,
which stands at 36 percent.
www.adecco.co.uk
www.managers.org.uk www.orc.co.uk
Madeline Bennett and Dinah Greek
Matt Hicks
ocument management tools vendor
NextPage has announced an application to help companies keep track of
users’ updates to files, without the need to
store documents centrally.
The application could help firms to
support collaborative working while giving
individuals the freedom to make changes
at will, and could also help companies to
comply with auditing requirements.
NextPage demonstrated what it is calling “document management for the masses” at the Supernova 2004 conference in
California late last month. The system is
codenamed Project Chrome and uses embedded metadata within documents to
keep track of versions and changes.
Chrome is different from other document management systems because it supports a distributed working model rather
D
itweek.co.uk
Only the users with whom a document
originates need the application in order for
Chrome to track versions and changes, said
than requiring documents to be stored in
Cydni Tetro, NextPage vice-president of
a central system, said NextPage’s chief
marketing. Other users receive a signature
executive, Darren Lee. Without this kind of
line with basic versioning data.
system, keeping track of documents could
Additionally, Chrome records who
be particularly difficult at companies
made changes, what changes were made
where employees share versions through
and the next steps in the document creemail and with outside clients and partation and editing process.
ners, he added.
While the product focuses on MicChrome supports documents stored as
rosoft applications such as Word and Excel
email attachments in Microsoft Exchange
in the initial release, the firm is planning to
or Lotus Notes, on users’ hard drives and
support other document types such as
across network servers.
PDFs in future, said Tetro.
“You lose track of verPricing for the application
sions of the document and WHAT CHROME DOES
has not been set, but there
you’re not sure who did
will probably be a yearly
Manages email,Word
what when,” said Lee.“We’re
service fee.
and Excel files
taking document manageChrome is in beta testAudits changes made
ment to the desktop.”
ing at present, and NextPage
and editing process
Chrome includes both a
is planning a full release by
Tracks changes made
desktop client for users and
the end of the year.
by external users
www.nextpage.com
the ability to track docuSource: NextPage
www.eweek.com
ment versions and history.
© eWeek USA 2004
NextPage tracks change
Microsoft has come out against the
notion of ISPs charging users according to the number of emails they
send, in its latest progress report on
anti-spam initiatives. Microsoft added
that more industry cooperation is
required to tackle the spam epidemic.
In the report, emailed to subscribers last week, Bill Gates argued
there had been significant advances
against spam, leading to billions of
junk emails being blocked every day,
making spamming less lucrative.
Gates also argued against the idea
of ISPs charging senders a fee for
email delivery.“We firmly believe that
monetary charges would be inappropriate and contrary to the fundamental purpose of the internet as an
extremely efficient and inexpensive
medium for communications,” he said.
Gates outlined various Microsoftbacked initiatives against spam, including the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance,
an industry group that has recently
endorsed a set of anti-spam best
practices for email service providers.
He also cited the Sender ID
standard, which checks IP addresses
against the DNS directory to authenticate senders.This system is designed
to combat domain spoofing to help
block spam and curb phishing attacks.
George Webb, Microsoft’s antispam strategy manager, said IP-based
authentication is the next logical stop
in the fight against spam.“This is not
the end, but it is the beginning of the
end [for spam],” he said.
He added that other technologies, such as Yahoo’s Domain Keys,
will have a role alongside Sender ID.
“It is critical that the industry works
together and is proactive.There is no
silver bullet,” he said.
ISPs to fight spam, p32
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31
MANAGEMENTWEEK
IT WEEK • 5 JULY 2004
Data must be handled with care
Even firms with the best supply chain technology in the world may see little benefit unless
they have good processes to ensure that their data is of a high quality, says Mark Street
ewer than 10 percent of UK
companies have seen any appreciable benefit from their supply
chain management systems, according to a recent survey. Has this news
come as much of a surprise to the
majority of IT directors, I wonder.
In principle, firms should be
laughing all the way to the bank if
they implement a sophisticated
supply chain management system.
Under the precepts of just-in-time
manufacturing, for instance, businesses with such systems can cut
costs by ensuring suppliers deliver
inventory to the factory only when
it is needed for assembly.
When it works well, efficient
supply chain management enables
companies to avoid the cost of
storing raw materials and of paying up front for stuff that they
do not need yet. This approach
should also help to keep production life cycles short, speeding up
products’ “time to market”.
And as more and more laws
F
dictate the traceability of components – in the pharmaceutical and
aircraft manufacturing industries,
for example – a well-planned system can boost transparency for
auditing purposes.
But as the research from analyst
firm PMP Research indicates, it is
quite possible to set up the best supply chain system in the world and
still have a complete turkey on your
hands if the data is not managed
properly. It’s like buying a Ferrari,
failing to put any oil in it, and then
being upset when its performance
falls far short of the figures that you
saw in a magazine review.
The research shows that one of
the biggest problems is the failure of
companies to manage their data
properly – so systems become bloated with irrelevant, old and useless
information, making it hard to find
the stuff that really matters.
If firms want to avoid such difficulties, they must spend more
time creating business processes to
weed out unnecessary information. At the same time, they need
to ensure that the right taxonomies
are built into their systems to
speed up the retrieval of critical
data. By setting up the right rules,
it should be possible, for example,
for business managers to examine
a problem in increasing detail
until they can pinpoint exactly
what has gone wrong.
It is shocking how many businesses do not seem to understand
the value of sound content and
data management systems. Especially as good supply chain management requires the timely and
accurate exchange of information
between a firm and its suppliers.
Managers need to make their
processes for data gathering, information exchange and reporting as
good as possible. Otherwise, even if
their technology is working exceptionally well, the performance of
their systems may be marred by the
poor quality of their data.
Will ISPs turn tide of spam?
Pressure is growing on ISPs to do more to stop spam. But will
this lead to customers having to pay more for their services?
SPAM ANALYSIS BY MADELINE BENNETT
eleting junk emails is taking up a lot
of the working week. According to a
recent survey of 2,500 UK email users, carried out by Yahoo Mail, individuals are
spending an average of more than an hour
each week getting rid of spam – equating
to six working days each year.
And users are not always adept at dealing with spam. Almost a fifth have responded to a spam message, with more than
half of these doing so to unsubscribe – a
worrying fact because in doing so they
confirm their addresses
to spammers.
These new statistics will be alarming
for organisations, and
indicate that staff productivity is being reduced by spam. There is
D
Judge: supporting
the Asta proposals
32
clearly a need for industry to take action to
educate and protect individuals to reduce
the flow of junk email.
One industry initiative is the AntiSpam Technical Alliance (Asta), which is
calling on ISPs to step up their efforts to
combat junk email. The group – whose
members include Microsoft, Earthlink and
Yahoo – released a proposal late last month
for an email authentication system, detailing a series of technical measures for ISPs.
Charles Black, chief executive of business ISP Nasstar, supported Asta’s proposals and said the measures could provide
additional security. Citing the group’s recommendation for ISPs to close open relays,
he said, “If a customer is co-locating a web
server, they might alter the security settings
and make it open again. There’s an obligation on ISPs to insist on an acceptable usage
policy with customers.”
However, Black said that many ISPs are
already taking action to stop spam reaching
their customers’ inboxes – Nasstar itself uses
anti-spam filtering systems from email
security specialist Mirapoint. However,
Black added that the cost of such services
would need to be covered by customers.
“We’ve found businesses are quite happy to
pay a small additional cost for anti-spam
filtering,”he said.“It’s cost-effective as it cuts
down on staff wasting time deleting spam.”
Email security experts agreed it was a
good idea for ISPs to do more to fight spam.
“Spam mostly originates from ISPs via
home users and small businesses victimised
by trojan machines and misconfigured PCs,”
said Paul Judge, chief technology officer at
email security specialist CipherTrust. “It
makes more sense for the energies surrounding preventative measures, such as these
recommended by Asta, to focus on ISPs.”
Judge agreed with Asta’s recommendation that ISPs should implement technical
measures to stop spam, and said email
authentication systems would reduce the
amount of spam reaching inboxes. “[Authentication systems] help identify legitimate
email, which allows anti-spam technologies
to be more aggressive and more effective in
detecting spam,” he added.
Martino Corbelli, marketing director
At the recent Oracle AppsWorld
show in the US, Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison predicted that
data librarians were set to become
some of the most influential members of organisations’ IT teams.
Considering the sheer volume of
critical information required by
most businesses and the importance of getting the data as clean
and as accurate as possible, Ellison
is probably right.
So the lesson is clear: give business data the respect it deserves or
prepare to explain to the board why
the expensive enterprise resource
planning system (ERP) you sanctioned has failed to do the company any good whatsoever. ITW
[email protected]
SUMMARY
email users spend an average
• UK
of six working days each year
deleting spam from their inboxes.
industry body Asta is trying to
• ITencourage
ISPs to adopt technical
measures to combat spam.
cost of defences may be offset
• The
by better productivity for customers.
at filtering tools company SurfControl,
argued that ISPs should do a lot more to
combat spam. “It is apparent that internet
and email providers are not fulfilling their
obligations to consumers and a drastic
change in attitude is needed if this situation is to improve,” he said.
Corbelli said that spammers are using
increasingly sophisticated systems, so it is
essential that defensive technologies keep
pace. He added that there is also a role for
laws to help fight junk email. “Over time,
the spammers will discover new methods
to get around any barriers set by ISPs,” said
Corbelli. “This vicious circle will continue
until legislation is forcefully introduced to
help stop the problem.”
But CipherTrust’s Judge argued that
there has already been some success in the
fight against spam. “The amount actually
reaching inboxes is declining,” he said. ITW
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