Office of the CTO

In times when cost becomes an issue there is a new focus on the cost of providing basic infrastructure type services, and one of these is archiving. Enterprises are being forced by various circumstances mostly driven by compliance legislation to archive increasing amounts of data, at the same time some of their existing digital archives are frequently on out of date fragile technology, and relatively inaccessible. The storage industry has been working since 2003 on addressing these issues and now has released a new standard and new products that allow interoperability between their previous proprietary products and a method to update old obsolete formats. This, along with the usual roundup of industry announcements, can be found in the December Monthly Technology Brief.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: December 2008

Agile Development is not new, but it seems to have been in the news a lot recently as part of the move towards developing smaller apps, or services, much faster and with frequent changes in the requirements. This month the Technology Brief traces the path of Agile Development and describes in more detail one of the popular forms called Scrum. That, along with the usual roundup of announcements across the industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: November 2008

Currently we are all faced with a collection of new terms and a feeling that 'change' is occurring in some way. Some even suggest a new phase in the technology market moving beyond IT is occurring. This month the Monthly Technology Brief focuses on providing a briefing on some of the major terms: Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Agile Enterprise, and Business Technology and the linkage between them. That, along with the usual roundup of announcements within the technology industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: October 2008

Building new types of business solutions that make full use of ‘The Web’ as a delivery mechanism, or technology platform, will mean entirely new approaches with REST – Representational State Transfer – often touted as one of the key new capabilities to use. This month the Technology Brief introduces REST, and its capabilities, as well as covering a surprising large number of announcements across the technology industry during the month of August.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: September 2008

IBM, HP, Sun, Intel, and some other less obvious companies such as Google and Amazon all think that 'Cloud Computing' is the basis for the delivery of Web 2.0 business services. This month the brief takes a closer look at what Cloud Computing is and does, along with the normal round up of news from around the technology industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: August 2008

Last month focussed on the topic of Web Applications Frameworks and mentioned LAMP, the popular Open Source stack used on many Web sites. This month continues the theme with a closer look at LAMP and its Microsoft rival WISA – both of which are examples of Dynamic Web Platforms. Find out more about this and other news from around the industry in the July Monthly Technology Brief.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: July 2008

The popularity of the Web is mainly due to its simplicity of use, but is that really true when building web applications? Web Application Frameworks have done much to facilitate this by providing templates for all the common tasks associate with building web applications. This month’s technology brief examines two popular examples; AJAX and Ruby on Rails to show more of what they can offer. In addition there is the usual announcements and news across the technology industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: June 2008

There is a lot of talk about Open Standards playing a major role in changing IT and its use, but what exactly are Open Standards? It may surprise you to learn that different countries have different legal definitions of the term when applied to IT and contracts. This and other facts are in the May Monthly Technology Brief, as well as the usual roundup of news items across the industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: May 2008

Gadgets and widgets are yet another type of technology that has become familiar to the ‘Web Generation’ and are now entering business use as the perfect way to add dynamic interaction to existing web pages. What are gadgets and widgets? How do they work and what can you do with them? Together, with a personal widget for readers to download as an example, are all in this month's technology brief along with the usual roundup of industry announcements.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: April 2008

According to the European Union, Cloud Computing will change the nature of business and are therefore investing in how this capability can be developed. At the other end of the market, Amazon is offering their 'Elastic Cloud Computing' service to their retail customers in the manner of a traditional data center service or utility computing provider. What is Cloud Computing; how does it link to Utility Computing and Grid Computing; and why is it backed by every major vendor from Microsoft to HP, SAP to IBM, or Oracle to Cisco as they are introducing new products? This, together with the usual round up of news from across the industry can be found in this month's technology brief.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: March 2008

CRM 2.0 is official. Products have been announced and even Wikipedia is building a definition. So the inevitable crossing of people–centric Web 2.0 technology with customer relationship management is now firmly launched by SAP, Oracle and Salesforce.com. What is it and how does it differ from existing so called traditional CRM? The monthly Technology Brief attempts to answer this question and to provide an insight into other announcements across the IT industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: February 2008

A new year provides an opportunity for us to take a look at new technologies that are well established but have yet to reach critical mass. In the U.S., contactless and cashless payment cards have already been deployed in more than 400,000 retail outlets as an alternative means of payment. Unified Communications is seen by early adopters as the creator of a truly different and highly beneficial way of working, while others less aware of its potential, think of it as nothing more than enhanced video conference capabilities. And finally there is Zigbee, offering an even lower cost alternative to Bluetooth while further extending the rapidly growing market for wireless devices. Together with the usual round up of other technology announcements around the industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: January 2008

The term 'Enterprise 2.0' has become increasingly common, meaning an enterprise able to successfully integrate and use Web 2.0 technologies within their business. But what are these technologies; what do they do; and how might they be used? This month's Technology Brief defines the elements and provides 'click to go' URL links that will allow you to experience the technologies and how they are used. Together with the usual round up of other technology announcements around the industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: December 2007

The concept of 'agility', meaning the ability to change the IT support rapidly to reflect changing business requirements, has not gone away, even if it is less of a 'hype' topic. Instead, steady progress in a number of areas has been made in how to really achieve the goals. Much of the tangible progress has been made as part of the change to a different model, one based on loose, coupled, orchestratable processes based on service oriented architecture (SOA), and to the increasing recognition of the use of standards for certain common processes. These changes have made Model Driven Architecture (MDA) an increasingly viable method to deliver excellent results. What MDA does and how it is used is the topic for this months technology brief, together with the usual round up of other IT industry news.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: October 2007

Mobility was the third most important topic (after business intelligence and security) on both Gartner and Forrester polls of CIOs' interests and buying attentions earlier in 2007. However the term does not mean application extension in delivery to a mobile device for field workers. It is a more comprehensive delivery approach of an enterprise's services to staff through a wide variety of formats and devices. Its market is currently growing fast and forecast to have more than half of all major enterprises investing in solutions by 2010. Learn more about Multi–channel Access Gateways and the new world of Mobility together with a round up of other news in the Monthly Technology Brief.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: September 2007

The popular press and television has featured Second Life, a 3D virtual world, quite extensively. If for no other reason, the presence of many of the world's top companies in Second Life try new ways to position their brands to a new generation of consumers. However, like other Web technologies, there is a serious business use emerging around simulation, training and engineering design (even mock ups of exhibition stands). There was also an announcement of the Chinese Government to support a virtual world for millions of its citizens as a way to overcome the limitations of the physical infrastructure of China. This month covers virtual worlds and encourages you to try to visit at least some of them to known more. Plus the usual roundup of technology announcements.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: August 2007

Unified Threat Management was first identified as a technology approach and a market segment in late 2004. Extremely high rates of growth in 2008 will see this to be a $2 billion market representing slightly over half the spend on security. What is it and what does it do? Read this month's technology brief to find out together with the usual round up of announcements in the technology industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: June 2007

Identity Management is a complex issue and increasingly requires a 'universal' solution that allows an individual to manage their identity in an independent manner to multiple businesses and sites. With OpenID approaching 100 million users and supported by many of the industry majors from Microsoft to AOL, the answer may have arrived. This, along with four new ways of using 'virtualisation' beyond saving money with Server management, is in this month's technology brief as well as the normal round up of news from around the industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: May 2007

This month our discussion around WEB 2.0 moves toward deeper analysis of some of the key new technologies that are able to provide the business capabilities outlined in last months technology brief. In addition there are all the latest announcements from technology vendors as well as the latest financial results for some of the biggest and best known companies.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: March 2007

This month SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM have all announced products that bring consumer–driven capabilities using so–called 'Web 2.0' technology into their mainstream business product sets. Most of us are, at home, using a wide selection of new capabilities such as YouTube, MySpace and countless other services to share views, content, photos, or similar, and to find people with similar interests. In doing this shifts the existing Web from being a content–based model based on search engines and page views towards a new interactive and collaborative model. The speed of this shift in 2006 and its impact in making blogs and wiKis amongst other technologies known has been remarkable. But exactly what is Web 2.0? This month defines the seven key principles of a Web 2.O service as well as providing an update on technology announcements around the industry as a whole.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: February 2007

Microsoft Vista has been a long time coming and now its formally launched on the commercial market with the home user version following shortly. It's not just a new operating system, it supports a very different way of working that fits in with the web–driven world of today. It's also driven by the slogan 'better together' reflecting the changes in Microsoft Office and Exchange Server that are linked to providing this very different set of capabilities. This and other industry announcements are all covered in the first Monthly Technology Brief of 2007.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: January 2007

The move towards Open Source seems unstoppable. So much so that the established major software vendors now seem to be looking for their route to becoming involved. At the beginning of November, Larry Ellison announced Oracle’s move to support Linux by offering not only development of more Linux features and core RedHat distribution code maintenance, but in a manner that shocked the Open Source movement. This was followed within a week by Microsoft announcing its own deal around the SuSE distribution. By the end of the month the Open Source movement had said it was making changes to the new General Purpose License version 3. (GPL 3.0) to make the moves illegal. More on this and details on other news in the Monthly Technology Brief.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: December 2006

In the last month, Tesco (the UK equivalent to Wal–Mart), Google, and Amazon, have all done the unthinkable (actually so has Oracle, but an analysis on this and its impact on the open source community will have to wait to next month). In each case, they have done something that is outside their usual business model as it is currently recognizable. However, in each case, it corresponds to the theme that capgemini has been using at trade shows for the last six months: 'Welcome to the end of Business as usual.' This is also the theme in a new book out this month, joint authored by Chris S Thomas (chief strategist of Intel) and Andy Mulholland (Global CTO of Capgemini) called 'MashUp Corporations: the end of Business as usual.' Find out more in the monthly technology brief as well as the usual update on the industry as a whole.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: November 2006

It seems that a number of new terms have become the latest key technology 'hypes', and among them is 'Master Data Management' (MDM). Actually, like the others, it's not so much a hype as a necessity as more content in more forms is both being created and stored as well as having more applications, or services, requiring to use the same data. It’s a big challenge to be able to do this. This month the technology brief sets out an overview on this critical topic together with the usual round–up of other industry news.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: September 2006

A year ago, Business Week predicted that 'MashUps' would alter the web and internet. At the same time, Industry Analysts stated much of Google's valuation was dependant on their success in the MashUp model. IBM chose this month to announce that it too believed MashUps were a major part of the SOA revolution and introduced its own MashUp beta software. Yet for many older business users the term is unknown – let alone what a MashUp does to cause such intense industry comment. This month the Brief gives the opportunity to find out; and provides an online reference to learn more about the IBM perspective on the topic and its role in IT – together with the normal listings of announcements from around the industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: August 2006

The future has a degree of predictability in the IT industry. As a general rule, if there are no 'chips' available to support the functionality then there can be no mass market. Nobody is a bigger player in this game than Intel. For the power to create a market in this way, consider how – in just over a year – the WiFi market appeared by simple factor of Intel including this capability as standard on their PC Notebook platform. This month is a look at Intel and its change towards the 'platform' as the core of its strategy, together with the normal roundup of news and updates.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: July 2006

After 9/11, Cisco decided that it could not rely on its existing network products alone and set itself the task of growing multiple, new billion dollar markets. Today, as the leader in such diverse areas as security products and data storage software, along with continued high growth in revenue and profits, it has clearly succeeded. Its push into Service Oriented Infrastructure pulls all its products together into a cohesive vision that treats the network as the common platform for many 'services' and connects Cisco into a series of alliances with other technology vendors. More details on the 'Cisco you never knew about' and the usual round–up of industry news in this month's Technology Brief.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: June 2006

Some time ago there were rumours that Microsoft wanted to buy SAP. It didn't happen, but the two large software players, while still competing in the market in many areas, have continued to be users and supporters of each other's technology. The lead article provides some insights into the areas and the products where they have cooperated. In addition there is the usual round up of industry announcements, standards up dates, etc.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: May 2006

Software Portfolio Management has become a popular way of rationalizing costs and complexity in Enterprises. But this is currently passed on the using clients view of what they would like to consolidate, not on the Software Industry rate of consolidation. Between the leading 16 software vendors in enterprise software, they have bought and consolidated 49 other software vendors in the last 24 months. Some of these consolidations were pretty sizable companies: Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft and JDE. Beyond the well–published companies, there are many other important niche players with geographic or market specialities with thousands of users getting bought which makes for some different thinking on portfolio planning. More details and the usual round up of industry news in the April Monthly Technology Brief.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: April 2006

There are growing numbers of surveys that indicate that business managers are grasping and using 'services' for specific business benefits faster than IT professionals in a manner reminiscent of the way that PCs, networks, web servers, cell phones, and PDAs have all in turn been adopted faster by users rather than corporations. This month's Brief tries to explain where and why this is happening. At the same time the technology vendors are more active than ever over the last three years pumping out new products resulting in a larger than usual number of items covered in this month's issue.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: March 2006

The Application Services Provider (ASP), looked to have disappeared along with all the other hyped aspects of the internet bubble. ASPs are not only back with the emphasis on 'services' as opposed to 'applications', but ASPs grabbed 9.6% of the CRM market in 2005. More on this, and the usual general roundup of news and announcements, in the latest Monthly Technology Brief.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: February 2006

A quick overview of three technologies that look set to be in the headlines in 2006; Full broadband speed mobility services will be available both from the upgrade to WiMax from WiFI and from 3G, leaks from both cellular operators on one side; Intel, Microsoft and HP on the other suggest a full scale assault on the business market. Google continues in the news so why do some pundits bet on Google changing computing operating systems, and why does it link to the full speed mobility market? Finally, it seems that the long time favorite of the military, Quantum Computing, may be ready to go commercial by the end of 2006. Plus the usual mix of news from major vendors, standards bodies etc.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: January 2006

Who am I? or who are you? And can you prove it? An increasingly common question as we all use communication and collaboration to work with an ever–widening circle of people, and in many cases people we have not met before. This month the topic is identity management and the progress made internally within Enterprises with new identity suites of software contrasting with the different approaches still being tried in the external public market. Plus all the normal coverage of industry announcements.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: December 2005

Microsoft and Oracle are both introducing their new generation of products for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) but as the marketing machine pushes the direction, what exactly is being released, and what is its functionality? This month a short summary of Oracle Fusion and Microsoft Vista will provide a starting point to understanding the key points of both in a non–technical manner, and to provide those who will want further information with a primer to start their research. Plus, the usual round up of news and press releases across the industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: November 2005

Its pretty clear that the activity levels and interest in Open Source Software are continuing to rise month by month. Less obvious perhaps is that this is not just a Linux effect but a broader change across the whole software industry. In this month's Technology Brief, the top ten players in the Open Source Software market are identified, and surprisingly five of the ten are the best known proprietary software vendors including Microsoft. Find out more and catch up on the usual range of updates across the industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: September 2005

As the pressures for frequent changes increase, automation of code generation increase, multi–site development and standardization of features/capabilities increase, the choice of tools and development methods becomes steadily more important. This month's Technology Brief takes a look at some of the new terms such as 'life cycle' to explain why many vendors now see their toolsets as a competitive differentiator. Plus the usual roundup of other news around the IT and technology industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: August 2005

It is a remarkable and little known fact that almost all data stored, especially for compliance purposes, uses a form of storage technology that only appeared in the market three years ago. Originally called Content Addressable Storage by EMC, who launched the technology, it has now become available from a range of other vendors with minor variations under names from proprietary such as HP RISS, to the generic name of Object Based Storage. The technique suits a wide range of other new technologies proving to be ideal for Business Intelligence, and Service Orientated Architecture, to name just two. This month's Technology Brief describes how Content Addressed Storage makes a difference as well as providing the usual round up of announcements from across the IT industry.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: July 2005

Last month the topic of searching started by examining web–based search methods where the principle needs are based around discovery of dynamically changing unstructured content. This month we examine the difference of searching inside the enterprise with the goal of ensuring that people or machines are steered to recover the 'right' data, or knowledge in a more structured form. Knowledge management represents the opposite extreme of searching to web searching and introducing different techniques and products. Plus the usual round up of key news from the technology industry, including standards boards and open source.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: June 2005

There has been a growing buzz around search engines lately – from well known existing online vendors such as Google and Yahoo, as well as from leading technology vendors such as Microsoft and IBM. Add the number of new players, along with the variety of differentiating capabilities that each vendor provides and the topic becomes complicated. This month's technology brief begins with Internet based search engines leading to desktop search engines, and in next month, will continue with desktop search leading into enterprise search as a part of knowledge management.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: May 2005

What are the hot new technologies that are impacting the market and is there any connection between them? This month the Technology brief will try to answer this complicated question with some simple focus areas that can be used to classify where technology is being applied and to what business purpose. Together with the usual round up of announcements across the industry, standards bodies, open source etc.

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: April 2005

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(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: December 2004

(PDF - 0 KB) - Published: October 2004