leadership bonus - bitpipedocs.media.bitpipe.com/.../cwe_111016_ezine_pp24.pdf · the business side...
TRANSCRIPT
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 1
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
computerweekly.com
STO
CK
FIN
LAN
D/I
STO
CK
Leadership bonus Financial rewards accelerate as CIOs enter the realm of business leadership
Home
11-17 OCTOBER 2016
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 2
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
Jeremy Vincent steps into Susan Cooklin’s shoes at Network RailNetwork Rail has appointed Jeremy Vincent as CIO following Susan Cooklin’s move to take up the role of route services director. Vincent, who left his role as CIO at Jaguar Land Rover in June 2016 after an eight-year tenure, will report directly to Cooklin as part of the route services senior management team. Vincent will be responsible for supplying IT, including infra-structure and support services.
Microsoft calls for creation of ‘responsible and inclusive’ cloudsMicrosoft is calling on the IT indus-try to help its bid to create cloud technologies that are trusted, responsible and accessible to all, as part of its “A cloud for global good” campaign. Speaking at an event in Dublin, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said cloud stood to benefit everyone on the planet, but achiev-ing this would require intervention from a variety of stakeholders.
Government provides free digital training to adults lacking tech skillsThe government has announced it will be offering free digital skills training to UK adults who do not have relevant digital qualifications. As part of the scheme, govern-ment-funded digital skills training will be offered to adults to help them learn the digital technology skills needed to participate fully in modern society. Funding for the training will be drawn from the existing adult education budget.
Internet of things security threat is real, says researcherThe internet of things (IoT) poses a very real threat to cyber security, according to James Lyne, global head of research at security firm Sophos. “When you dig into them, IoT devices have fundamental and scary weaknesses. The risk is not hype. It is real,” he told attendees of IP Expo last week. Lyne said investi-gations of a range of IoT devices had revealed all kinds of security failures.
TalkTalk fined £400,000 over 2015 data breachTalkTalk was hit with a record £400,000 fine for the cyber attack in 2015 that exposed personal details of more than 150,000 customers. Information com-missioner Elizabeth Denham said the telecoms provider had failed to apply “the most basic cyber security meas-ures”, leaving its database vulnerable to a SQL injection attack after failing to apply a fix for a software bug that had been available for more than three years.
❯Catch up with the latest IT news online.
NEWS IN BRIEF
SELE
NSE
RGEN
/IST
OC
K
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 3
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
NEWS IN BRIEF
Swedish bank uses Amelia the robot for customer servicesSEB in Sweden is the first bank to use IPsoft’s cognitive technology for customer services after the software robot, Amelia, proved successful in an internal IT service desk project. The implementation will see the robot speak Swedish in its first non-English-speaking deployment.
Mirai botnet code release raises fears of surge in DDoS attacksSecurity experts fear that the release of the code for the Mirai botnet will prompt a surge in pow-erful distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that will knock almost any company offline.
Organisations have DR plans, but neglect to update themThe number of organisations with a disaster recovery (DR) plan has increased in recent years, but many do not keep their plan up to date or test it, according to a survey by cloud provider Databarracks.
Sky and TalkTalk make final case to separate BT and OpenreachAs Ofcom’s public consultation on the future of the relationship between BT and Openreach draws to a close, BT’s rival internet ser-vice providers have been making their final arguments in favour of full functional separation of BT and Openreach.
Government invests in tech to future-proof post-Brexit economyThe government will pump £220m into helping the healthcare and life sciences sectors turn successful research projects into commercially viable products and business ven-tures to future-proof the economy.
Google to open UK datacentre region in enterprise cloud pushGoogle has revealed further plans to increase the enterprise-readiness of its cloud platform, including open-ing its first UK datacentre region, plus a further seven regions in 2017, including Frankfurt and Finland. n
Will.i.am takes Dreamforce stage to promote Stem Hip-hop artist Will.i.am took the stage at Saleforce’s Dreamforce 2016 conference to discuss the education programme he funds, whose goal is to direct black youth away from gang culture and towards education in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects. “We don’t want double Ds, in the sense of diplomas plus debt, but diplomas in subjects like robotics,” he said.
❯ Poor IoT security could take down power grid.
❯ Police charge third member of ATM hacking gang.
❯ UKtech50: help us find the most influential people in UK IT.
❯ UK firms living in fear of obsolescence.
❯Catch up with the latest IT news online.
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 4
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
Big bonuses abound for IT professionalsA Computer Weekly survey reveals the scale of remuneration package that IT managers can expect – with bonuses playing an increasingly important part as senior tech roles step into the realm of business leadership. Cliff Saran reports
People in IT are aspirational, with 45% prepared to jump ship to another company for the right offer even if they are not actively looking for a new job.
The Computer Weekly/TechTarget 2016/2017 Salary Survey, which questioned 738 UK and Irish IT and business profession-als, found that senior IT managers command the highest sala-ries, with an average annual income of £112,200, 19% of which is bonus-related. In comparison, the average salary for IT staff is £37,010, with a bonus of 8%.
Ben Booth, interim CIO and the UK representative of EuroCIO, said senior IT roles are seen as part of business leadership rather than technology leadership.
“Senior IT management may be board level or part of the core team that delivers the business mission,” he said. As such, the role tends to come with a remuneration package as part of the senior business cohort, and “bonuses depend on business performance”.
Management bonusesThe survey found that people who progress into a management role tend to see the biggest rise in the bonus they receive. Almost a quarter of people earning between £35,000 and £49,000 said
they had received a bonus of 20% or greater on top of their sal-ary. At the top end of the salary scale, 40% of those earning more than £100,000 received a bonus of 20% or more (see Figure 1 on next page). Almost two-thirds of those surveyed said their organisations offered both a career path and the ability to work in different geographical locations.
In Booth’s experience, promotion for more junior people starts with being technology savvy, but shifts away from technology in more senior roles. “Exemplary technology skills will get you so far, but to reach senior positions junior people have to think of the business roles,” he said.
ANALYSIS
“Senior iT roleS are Seen aS parT of buSineSS leaderShip raTher Than Technology leaderShip”
Ben Booth, euroCIo
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 5
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
That said, technology skills should not be forgotten. The sur-vey reported that 84% of respondents agreed with the state-ment: “Continuing education/training is important to helping me achieve my career goal”.
Some 40% of those surveyed said their organisations would be hiring more developers, systems, network and security engineers, project managers and architects, suggesting that many busi-nesses are actively building technology skills. This reflects the general consensus across industries globally to digitise business.
“Technology does not stand still,” said Booth. “There is real danger for individuals if they don’t embrace change. There will be questions on commitment and usefulness. People who can get excited about the next new thing are going to be more valued.”
In Booth’s experience, having worked for several major organisa-tions across the private and public sectors, the interface between business and technology is difficult to get right.
“The technology is quite well understood and almost commod-itised,” he said.
ANALYSIS
Figure 1: Changes to IT leaders’ salaries in the past year
IT staff salary increases at mid-career (4 to 10 years’ experience)
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 6
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
The arrival of IT-enabled businessThe business side represents a challenge and an opportunity for IT. The survey found that 46% of respondents plan to increase the size of their technology team. There could be any number of rea-sons to grow the internal IT team, but industry watchers believe the era of IT-enabled business has finally arrived.
The first Fortune 500 list was published in 1955. By 2015, just 12% of the companies originally listed remained. Today, CEOs are scrambling to work out what “digital” means in the context of their business. Some are prepared to invest heavily to boost
their technology footprint, such as Walmart’s $3bn acquisition of e-commerce company Jet.com, which was announced in August 2016.
As businesses become more digitised, the role of internal IT becomes customer facing. At a recent gathering of European CIOs, Volvo Cars’ director of business development and strategy, consumer IT, Jonas Rönnkvist, said: “IT has 1,000-plus applica-tions and 50-plus legacy applications. Now we build services for millions of customers instead of internal employees. We are like an IT operator with our core systems supporting them.” n
Figure 2: Eight years’ experience yields a minimum of £35,000, whereas 20 years or more yields a salary of £50,000+
Annual IT staff remuneration compared with years’ experience
ANALYSIS
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 7
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
How IoT keeps trains on track and on timeMobile networks, cloud and deep learning are behind French rail operator SNCF’s efficiency drive, writes Cliff Saran
Railways defined the first industrial revolution – now tech-nology is at the heart of train networks’ modernisation in the 21st century.
In a recent blog post, Forrester principal analyst Dan Bieler wrote: “Businesses can obtain major benefits – including bet-ter customer experiences and operational excellence – from the
internet of things (IoT) by extracting insights from connected objects and delivering feature-rich connected products.”
A rail network comprises thousands, if not millions, of compo-nents, from rolling stock to signals, rails, stations and the staff who run it all. All the constituent parts need to work cohesively to avoid delays and dissatisfaction among commuters.
ANALYSIS
GRE
GO
RY_D
UBU
S/IS
TOC
K
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 8
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
The industrial internet, where IoT devices are combined with data analytics, is set to revolutionise train operations.
French national train operator SNCF is using the industrial inter-net powered by IBM Watson’s deep learning analytics platform and the Sigfox IoT network to boost efficiency. The strategy is part of the company’s 2020 Vision, under which it aims to become an industrial champion striving for operational excellence and opti-mum efficiency by using the IoT.
Using the IoT to support the operations of a rail service is now possible thanks to advances in the underlying technology, accord-ing to Yves Tyrode, digital director at SNCF.
Telecommunications networks are becoming dedicated to industrial internet applications and broadband is getting cheaper. The train company runs fibre along its tracks and has relation-ships with mobile operators to make use of this network to main-tain continuous mobile broadband connectivity.
The mobile network supports both commuters and SNCF’s remote data acquisition requirements.
Another advance is that sensors for data acquisition are getting smaller and now consume less energy. In some cases, battery life can extend up to five years. SNCF said this is important because it is not always possible to be close to an electrical supply.
The third area of advancement is maturity of the cloud, which SNCF said would be used to store sensor data and provide the elastic computing required for big data analytics.
Working with Ericsson, IBM, Sigfox and sensor specialist Intesens, the rail operator will deploy sensors on trains and tracks to reduce failures and improve the reliability of trains, sig-nals and tracks.
Analysing and acting on sensor dataMaking sense of sensor data collected remotely over the inter-net is computationally challenging.
IBM France president Nicolas Sekkaki said: “We have entered an industrial era.” The company has established an IoT centre for its Watson deep learning technology centre in Munich. “We have developed an infrastructure to measure IoT data,” said Sekkaki.
According to SNCF, IoT will enable the company both to improve customer service and the competitiveness of its trains. SNCF esti-mated that the improved maintenance of tracks and trains could reduce costs by a factor of 10. Engineers can connect to running trains in real time, enabling them to figure out whether a compo-nent is likely to fail and require the train to be taken out of service.
The cloud enables SNCF to run distributed calculations, the results of which can be re-injected into its train and rail main-tenance processes. For example, Vincent Mazarguil, director of
ANALYSIS
Sncf will deploy SenSorS on TrainS and TrackS To reduce
failureS and improve reliabiliTy of TrainS, SignalS and TrackS
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 9
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
asset management at SNCF, said the company used big data sys-tems to capture telematics data. “We can anticipate breakdown and model predictive maintenance,” he said, citing the possible identification of a faulty signal component which could be fixed before it failed.
More efficient maintenance routinesRemote monitoring is also helping the rail operator reduce main-tenance time in the train depot. Train windshield water tanks are being equipped with a level sensor, which uses Sigfox to com-municate information back to SNCF. A technician is then able to
access this information via a web application on a tablet to see whether the water needs topping up.
Other data acquisition devices are fitted to the transmission system on TGV trains run by SNCF. The company has developed a prototype where sensors take gearbox oil temperature and oil level measurements. The data is transmitted over GSM and can be accessed remotely at the train depot, enabling technicians to see how well the gearbox is performing.
There are also Sigfox communication devices to measure the water level tank in the TGV toilets. This also speeds up the turna-round time when a train arrives at a depot. n
ANALYSIS
How French train operator SNCF is using the internet of things
Remote monitoring of train gearboxesRemote management/fault detection of train doors Remote monitoring of windshield water refill
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 10
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1Williams Martini Racing CIO Graeme Hackland discusses network infrastructure, data analytics and the future for wearable tech and augmented reality in Formula 1 motor racing with Alex Scroxton
It is the Thursday before the 2016 British Grand Prix, and as a summer breeze blows around the pit lane at Silverstone, Williams Martini Racing CIO Graeme Hackland looks on as
the official Formula 1 scrutineers cluster around the disassem-bled shell of Valtteri Bottas’ Williams Mercedes FW38, his arms folded, looking for all the world like the lord of his domain.
And well he might. Two and a half years ago, when Hackland joined Williams from rivals Lotus – the world of Formula 1 being a tight-knit place where those with the right skills can spend dec-ade-spanning careers flitting from one team to another – IT was not, by his own admission, a priority for the family-run team.
Over 16 years at various incarnations of Lotus, Hackland had essentially built the team’s IT infrastructure from the ground up. But when he arrived at Williams, he faced a major new challenge.
“Formula 1 has always been geared up around rapid iteration and a process of trial and error. The car is never finished, and what we weren’t doing at Williams was doing the same thing with our IT,” he reflects back in the team’s motorhome.
INTERVIEW
Graeme Hackland: “We don’t want exotic
platforms that are specific to Formula 1 –
we want everyone to be able to take what they
produce from us and the knowledge and knowhow of what we do, and apply
it to other customers”
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 11
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
“Before I joined, I think IT at Williams was put in a corner, told to keep the lights on and do it cheaper this year than last year. But I think there’s now an understanding that technology and IT can make a car quicker and add to performance.”
Williams has won only one race in the past decade, but with an epic history and drivers such as Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill winning Formula 1 championships in its cars, perfor-mance has been an issue of late. Could this now be on the turn?
Formula 1 fans will know a move to Mercedes-powered engines in 2014 has paid off in speed and reliability, with drivers Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa now challenging for podium places.
Behind the scenes, Hackland has also been pedalling hard. Last year he signed a major networking deal with BT to use its high-performance networking services for secure, superfast communi-cation and collaboration, and cloud-based fixed and mobile voice.
He has also deployed a 100Mbps multi-protocol label switch-ing (MPLS) network that delivers symmetric speeds between Williams’ headquarters at Grove, near Oxford, and 21 Formula 1 racetracks all over the world.
One immediate impact of this network refresh is a reduction in the amount of IT equipment the team hauls around when on loca-tion. Before last year, it took four racks of converged server, stor-age and networking hardware with it, but now it only has to take two. This mobile, mini-datacentre sits in the back of the cramped garages at Silverstone, surrounded by racks of carbon-fibre com-ponents and piles of wet-weather tyres.
But for Hackland, even this small saving is not good enough. “In three years, I don’t want it to be there at all,” he says. “I want us to be running exclusively in the cloud. I want to stream all our data back to the cloud to allow everyone to access it from there, whether at the factory or at the track.”
Encrypting data in the cloudWilliams is already encrypting all its data in the Microsoft Azure cloud, and has engaged business services specialist Avanade – itself a joint venture between Microsoft and business consul-tancy Accenture – to ensure elements of the team’s IT can run at the track on race weekends or in the cloud the rest of the time.
Moving to the cloud will also enable Hackland to eliminate an extra expense. Whereas at Grove he can run equipment for five to seven years in a standard equipment lifecycle, at the track things are always being moved around and getting bumped, and so the hardware needs a full upgrade every two years or so.
The increased reliability of the underlying infrastructure means that lately, Hackland has been exploring new strategies around how Williams uses software applications to gain a competitive edge on the track, which is where supplier Avanade comes in.
INTERVIEW
“There’S now an underSTanding ThaT iT can make a car quicker
and add To performance”Graeme haCkland, WIllIams martInI raCInG
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 12
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
For a sponsor, partnering with a Formula 1 team such as Williams is more than just a means of blowing some advertising budget and an excuse for some corporate hospitality every now and then, although it is partly both of those things. Perhaps more impor-tantly, it should be seen as a learning opportunity for both parties.
For example, Unilever, which sponsors Williams through its Sure and Rexona brands of anti-perspirant, helps out by applying its production-line knowhow to the team’s small factory, while in return it learns more about the importance of streamlining deci-sion-making processes in a business.
Elsewhere, Williams’ expertise in aerodynamic design is of use to aerospace specialists, while its knowledge of energy-efficient technologies has won it clients in renewable energy and electric vehicles. It has even lent its experience to Formula E, the world’s first fully electric-powered motorsport series.
Besides a decal on the car, Avanade also gets to apply the team’s stores of knowledge to its own business and has taken a front seat in helping Hackland to make best use of new applications.
New capabilitiesIt has already enhanced the car production process at Grove with new capabilities around quality control and reporting that are enabling Williams’ design and manufacturing teams to work more closely together to weed out components that don’t work.
“We are expecting that this will mean designs that were rejected in the past won’t now get to that stage, that manufacturing will find it easier to make the components that design is pushing their way, and so there will be less wastage,” says Hackland.
“These non-conformance reports are mostly a process change, and they are built on Microsoft SharePoint as well. We don’t want exotic platforms that are specific to Formula 1 – we want everyone to be able to take what they produce from us and the knowledge and knowhow of what we do, and apply it to other customers.”
At this year’s Austrian Grand Prix, Williams deployed new stra-tegic predictive analytics capabilities, again provided by Avanade. With new rules governing tyre use now in force, Bottas, Massa and their race engineers have more choice in which tyre compounds they use, which has made racing a lot more complex strategically.
For Williams technical director Pat Symonds and his teams, the new analytics capabilities mean he is better able to calculate race strategy on the fly, and even adjusts pit strategies if, for example, a certain tyre compound shows heavier graining.
The new strategy system is a source of particular pride for Williams. Hackland reckons it has given the team a distinct advantage over the likes of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. “We think we’ve gone ahead of other teams with some of the predic-tive analytics,” he says. “We don’t think they have that capability
“we Think we’ve gone ahead of oTher TeamS wiTh Some of The predicTive analyTicS”
Graeme haCkland, WIllIams martInI raCInG
INTERVIEW
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 13
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
yet, and that’s the beauty of it. The partnership and using the offshore model gives us access to much more resource than we could have put to it ourselves, which means we can jump ahead of the other teams rather than just following what they’re doing.”
Of course, there remains much work to be done to get the driv-ers to the top step of the podium, and so Hackland is constantly looking ahead to bring in new technologies where possible.
Internet of thingsOne aspect of IT everyone is keen to discuss right now is the internet of things (IoT). However, this is one area that is actually rather old hat in Formula 1. The first IoT-type sensor was fitted to a racing car in 1979, before anybody had heard of the IoT, or even the internet. It was a 64kb data-logger and it measured three aspects of the car’s telemetry. It also took 20 minutes to download one lap’s worth of data.
So with the concept of the IoT well established in the sport, Hackland is looking to human instrumentation as the next step. “Avanade is running a new project to instrument our pit crews,” he says. “Pat [Symonds] has a vision to get our pit stops down under two seconds. We were the fastest team on pit stops for the first nine races of 2016, and our average is 2.2 seconds. To get below that, we have to get down to the very fine margins of human per-formance, so IoT and wearables have a real role to play.”
Hackland cites an incident that occurred at the Austrian Grand Prix as a good example of how technology can be used to improve human performance. Valtteri Bottas accidentally stopped his car slightly short of his box – the painted marks on the ground that
guide the driver during a pit stop – which meant every member of the pit crew had milliseconds to react and adjust their positions.
“I think there’s a role for wearable technology, maybe some-thing that would give an audible signal in mechanics’ ears, based on the GPS data from where the car is positioned,” says Hackland.
“We can already see [from real-time braking telemetry] that the car is going to stop short, so the mechanics need to move slightly to the right, and they get a beep in their ear to tell them to do that. There’s a lot we can do in terms of human performance. That is where the future gains are going to come from – small, tiny leaps around the margins, saving fractions of a second.”
Virtual futureWhile fans can rest assured that Formula 1 won’t go fully auton-omous, the world of virtual and augmented reality (AR) is start-ing to make its presence felt in the paddock as well.
“This is a big area we are looking at,” says Hackland. “Take the mechanics working on cars in the garages. If they want to check a technical diagram, they have to print out a 2D drawing and hold it up to the car and work out how the part fits. We see potential for AR to help them see where a part should fit.”
Overall car design should also benefit from this. Right now, Williams is preparing to switch more of its design staff onto next year’s car – and with big changes to technical regulations in 2017, that is no small task. “We do a good job of building a 60% wind tunnel model to simulate aerodynamics,” says Hackland, “but we can’t do a lot of visualisation of those models. I think we can make design decisions more quickly if we can visualise it instead.” n
❯McLaren-Honda Formula 1 team in three-year technology partnership with NTT.
INTERVIEW
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 14
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
Computer Weekly, 2nd Floor, 3-4a Little Portland Street, London W1W 7JB
General enquiries 020 7186 1400
Editor in chief: Bryan Glick 020 7186 1424 | [email protected]
Managing editor (technology): Cliff Saran 020 7186 1421 | [email protected]
Head of premium content: Bill Goodwin 020 7186 1418 | [email protected]
Services editor: Karl Flinders 020 7186 1423 | [email protected]
Security editor: Warwick Ashford 020 7186 1419 | [email protected]
Networking editor: Alex Scroxton 020 7186 1413 | [email protected]
Management editor: Lis Evenstad 020 7186 1425 | [email protected]
Datacentre editor: Caroline Donnelly 020 7186 1411 | [email protected]
Storage editor: Antony Adshead 07779 038528 | [email protected]
Business applications editor: Brian McKenna 020 7186 1414 | [email protected]
Business editor: Clare McDonald 020 7186 1426 | [email protected]
Production editor: Claire Cormack 020 7186 1417 | [email protected]
Senior sub-editor: Bob Wells 020 7186 1420 | [email protected]
Sub-editor: Jaime Lee Daniels 020 7186 1417 | [email protected]
Sub-editor: Ryan Priest 020 7186 1420 | [email protected]
Sales director: Brent Boswell 07584 311889 | [email protected]
Group events manager: Tom Walker 0207 186 1430 | [email protected]
UK digital economy needs overseas talent
We didn’t hear much about the digital economy during the recent political party conferences. Prime minister Theresa May made a throwaway comment in her big set-piece speech suggesting a recognition that more needs to be done to improve the UK’s broadband infrastructure, but that was about it.
That minor reference wasn’t insignificant though, coming a few days after business secretary Greg Clarke told the Institute of Directors that the current level of “broadband and mobile coverage is simply unacceptable in 2016”.
For the past five years we’ve been consistently told by government that we have the best broadband infrastructure of all the big European countries, so it’s quite an about-turn to start talking in those terms. We’ll have to wait and see what it all means.
But the big topic that has concerned the tech community – and many others – was the Tory rhetoric around immigration and overseas workers employed in the UK. As Computer Weekly highlighted at the time of the Brexit referendum, UK IT remains highly dependent on non-UK skills – in startups, venture capital, IT suppliers, and in IT departments across the country. As the most international of profes-sions, IT has always been a global melting pot, with skills following demand. If there are plenty of IT professionals in the UK who don’t have UK passports, it’s because we’re a growing digital economy, doing interesting things and attracting the top talent.
Those same reasons also contribute to job creation for UK IT experts too – and explain why we still have a serious digital skills shortage.Today, many of those overseas IT professionals have come from across the European Union. In recent years, many came from India.
Going back 10 or 20 years, you couldn’t walk through an IT department without hearing Australian, New Zealand or South African accents. It’s the way it has always been, and it’s one of the reasons we have such a thriving technology sector.
It goes the other way too. Remember that our most famous IT professional, Tim Berners-Lee, worked for CERN, a European venture based in Geneva, when he invented the web. He was a great British tech export.
There are noises coming out of government that senior figures in May’s team recognise the importance and significance of the digital economy to their future plans for the UK. Support for training and development for UK citizens to help bridge the skills gap would, of course, be very welcome. But we will never take a place among world-leading digital nations if we ignore the historic international nature of UK IT. n
Bryan Glick, editor in chief
❯Read the latest Computer Weekly blogs.
EDITOR’S COMMENTHOME
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 15
The world is getting more and more mobile, cloud-based, flexible and agile. This shift is ushering in a new way of living and working, one that can service the needs of our new always on, always evolving workforce. It is also
changing the way IT works, with consumption-based, pay-as-you-go models increasingly popular, enabling businesses to scale resources up and down as demand dictates.
The network should be the enabler in all of this. In fact, it has to be – data is flowing across networks at levels never seen before. But, in many cases, the network is holding everything up. A fixed network architecture is simply no longer flexible enough to cope with today’s networking needs.
That is where network function virtualisation (NFV) comes in. Essentially a decoupling of network functions such as firewalls and routers from proprietary hardware, these functions are instead managed through virtual machines (VMs) running on x86 hard-ware. This means new services and applications can be rolled out when needed, making the network much more flexible and agile. Commodity hardware means costs are lower, too.
Sounds like SDNThis sounds very much like software-defined networking (SDN). Although the two are complementary and have plenty of cross-over, there are substantial differences. SDN is very much focused on the network itself, while NFV is about the components that run on the network, such as load-balancing, firewalls and intru-sion prevention systems (IPS). And while one can be used with-out the other, it is fair to say they are better together.
Add flexibility with NFVFixed network architectures can no longer cope with today’s networking needs, says Steve Evans. Network function virtualisation is the answer
BUYER’S GUIDE TO NETWORK FUNCTION VIRTUALISATION | PART 2 OF 3
MACROVECTOR/FOTOLIAHOME
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 16
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
The benefits NVF can bring are pushing it higher and higher up the enterprise agenda. According to IHS Markit, the market for NFV hardware, software and services will reach $15.5bn (£12bn) by 2020, up from $2.7bn in 2015. About 80% of those sales will be from software, the report said.
Research from Ciena, meanwhile, claims that NFV has “tipped into the business mainstream” in the UK. Nearly two-thirds (61%) of businesses are already invest-ing in some form of virtualised application or have plans to do so within the next year. Nearly half of businesses (41%) said speed of new service deployment was key in making the shift to NFV.
But why now? Ultimately, it is a case of the technology catching up with the demands of users, according to Jennifer Clark, vice-president of network research at 451 Research.
“With the emergence of cloud and access to information and resources from wherever you are, it demands a similarly flex-ible network architecture,” she says. “If you don’t have a network that is as flexible as your application architecture, you are hobbling the overall enterprise.”
It is no surprise that telecom and service providers are the early adop-ters of NFV – they stand to gain most from the capital expenditure (capex) and operating expense (opex) sav-ings and the increased network flex-ibility offered by NFV. Within this,
it is virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) that is gaining most traction at the moment.
“Like most new technology, NFV solves an exist-ing problem, but solves it in a better way,” says Michael Bushong, vice-president, product man-agement software networking, at Brocade. “On the telco side, the earliest use cases are around virtual customer premises equipment. VCPE solves a fun-
damental problem – branch connectivity. How do you connect different sites, or branch offices, or campuses to the wider net-work, the datacentre or the cloud?”
Joe Marsella, European CTO at Ciena, adds: “It’s about scale. The amount of virtual CPEs can outweigh the number of physical ones, and there is a big advantage in being able to scale that.”
Other companies are thinking bigger than vCPE, however. Orange Business Services (OBS), for example, has been looking into NFV and SDN since 2013, when a survey of its own custom-ers revealed a desire for a more agile network. OBS had been using
a static network architecture, which meant services took a long time to deliver. The company joined up with Juniper and set about creating an SDN/NFV-based network service, which it called Easy Go Network.
Featuring MX Series 3D Universal Edge routers, a Contrail SDN con-troller and a vSRX virtual firewall, Easy Go Network gives customers
“if you don’T have a neTwork ThaT iS aS flexible aS your
applicaTion archiTecTure, you are hobbling The enTerpriSe”
JennIfer Clark, 451 researCh
BUYER’S GUIDE
❯Service providers are rapidly adopting NFV infrastructure, but addressing security is essential,
with network and security teams working together.
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 17
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
control over their own network policies and enables the dynamic creation of new network services.
Pierre-Louis Biaggi, head of the network solutions business unit at OBS, says: “We are already offering a full set of services, includ-ing firewalling, load-balancing and web content filtering in a virtu-alised mode. Any customer can order this service in a few clicks and have it delivered automatically. Most importantly, all of it has been built using open protocols, allowing multiple suppliers to add functionality and value to the network.”
AT&T is also looking to NFV and SDN. Its Domain 2.0 programme is an ambitious plan to virtualise and con-trol more than 75% of its network by 2020. “In eight years, data traffic on our wireless network has increased by 100,000%, driven primarily by video,” it says. “We are ask-ing a network model designed years ago for modest, predictable increases in voice traffic to adapt to a world of streaming videos, high-definition games and photo-intensive social media.”
Not mature enoughBut while many businesses are pushing ahead with NFV roll-outs, the technologies are not yet mature enough to make it a worthwhile investment for everyone. Performance can be an issue, says Colin Evans, senior director and head of centre of excellence at Juniper Networks.
“There is a common misconception that virtualised functions are going to replace physical functions,” says Evans. “They both have a role to play, and virtual functions are very useful in that they are flexible, agile and easy to spin up and down. But they don’t have anywhere near the performance that you’d get from a piece of dedicated physical hardware.
“Where we have customers with high-scale requirements, we will still push them down the physical network function route. Virtualising things works for certain use cases, but not for everything.”
That is why vCPE is such a big draw at the moment. It sits at the edge of the network where throughput and size are not that important, says Ciena’s Marsella.
Meanwhile, 451 Research’s Clark says scaling and management can cause issues. “One of the most problematic areas of NFV has been in scaling,” she says. “We have seen proofs of concept that work for 200 or 2,000 users, but break down at 20,000 users. So scaling the applications can be a problem. Management can also be an issue, because of all the competing proposed standards.”
While Clark says performance can be an issue, she adds that the benefits of virtualising applications far outweigh the potential drawbacks. Ultimately, that is what is driving many businesses to look at NFV to modernise their network infrastructure and offer more flexibility and agility and new ways of working. n
BUYER’S GUIDE
“There iS a common miSconcepTion ThaT virTualiSed funcTionS are going To replace
phySical funcTionS”ColIn evans, JunIper netWorks
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 18
The DevOps movement has given rise to a number of buzzwords, causing the phrase infrastructure as code to rise to prominence.
The phrase itself is nothing new. In a world of phys-ical servers, infrastructure was defined in terms of servers, networks and storage systems, and software was provisioned onto the hardware. When the IT world moved to a more vir-tualised and abstracted environment, it became much more attractive to be able to look at the whole IT platform in terms of capabilities.
As servers moved to become abstract concepts with vir-tual central processing units (CPUs), storage and networking resources, it became theoretically possible to use declarative constructs around software provisioning.
That means a system administrator could define what the ideal conceptual environment would be for a specific workload, and the elasticity of virtual environments could ensure those conditions were met. As enterprises have moved to expand the variety of ways in which to consume IT resources – mov-ing beyond private datacentres to include colocation sites and public cloud – the need for greater flexibility in dealing with workloads has risen further.
Workloads can be moved from one environment to another more effectively if all the hardware dependencies have been removed or can be managed using code. It also means system administrators do not have to remember to set all the variables themselves, as long as the system does this effectively, and errors are avoided.
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Infrastructure as code is gaining ground as a way to manage complex workloads – but it should be managed carefully, writes Clive Longbottom
IT INFRASTRUCTURE
TCM
AK
E_PH
OTO
/IST
OC
K
HOME
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 19
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
Brave new worldIn the on-premise hardware world, the provision-ing of code into the operational environment was often carried out by system administrators writ-ing scripts that contained specific settings for the countless variables involved, such as IP addresses and logical unit number (LUN) targets.
These scripts were run manually, and checks had to be carried out to ensure all those variables were set correctly. The process was error-prone, with roll-backs often required when some of the settings were applied incorrectly. Some of the early configuration management (CM) suppliers, such as SaltStack, CFengine, Chef and Puppet, started to provide the means of managing the more automated provisioning of code onto shared cloud computing platforms. CM aims to make the creation, auto-mation and reuse of these scripts easy and predictable.
Code forms the backbone of this approach, giving rise to the term infrastructure as code (IaC), which means code that helps in provisioning systems out onto an IT platform. IaC has grown to be full-function and highly flexible, and there are several variants to consider, including declarative, imperative and intelligent IaC.
The declarative approach creates a required state and adapts the target infrastructure to meet those conditions, while the imperative version creates a target environment based on hard definitions set out in the script. The intelligent state, meanwhile, takes into account other pre-existing workloads in the target environment, and reports back to a system administrator about any problems it encounters.
Of these three approaches, imperative is the least useful and has been known to create perfor-mance problems in the target environment. The declarative take is good, but should be stretched into being an “intelligent” approach through a full understanding of the existing stresses on the tar-get environment.
IaC through the agesDevOps and continuous delivery have driven the evolution of IaC. Rather than just being a means of taking code and pushing it out into the operational environment, the whole process flow of the development, test and operational environments has to be taken into account.
Software configuration management tools from Serena Software, Jenkins, IBM Rational, Perforce and the like sit along-side the CM tools to provide end-to-end lifecycle management. Others, such as Automic Software, aim to provide an orches-tration engine that sits over the top of a set of code lifecycle management tools to provide a coherent and consistent con-trollable environment.
Regardless of the route taken, it is important to create scripts that are reusable. Different CM suppliers will have different terms for these. For example, Chef uses “recipes” and “cookbooks”, while rival Puppet favours “manifests”. These reusable compo-nents can be created in different ways, and each CM tool has its own domain-specific language (DSL). For most, this will depend on the programming language in which the CM tool is written.
IT INFRASTRUCTURE
❯With every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The same rule applies to IaC:
while it’s beneficial, it also creates some problems.
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 20
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
This is also the case with containers. Docker has a built-in basic CM system, enabling it to use the abstraction of state required for containers to operate fully. Although Docker can operate independently, many organisations prefer to use it with other CM tools.
How the code is orchestrated is key and, without full moni-toring, audit and control of how the scripts are run, chaos could follow. This is where intelligent IaC comes to the fore – but there is the possibility that things will still go wrong. Each sys-tem should be able to roll back to previous known states, and defined preferred states should be capable of being maintained if something starts to move the workload environment outside of that state.
Why is it needed?IaC is becoming a much-needed way of dealing with the com-plexities of an organisation’s hybrid IT platform. Today’s busi-nesses need a more responsive IT environment; they demand the capability to change and adapt the IT functionality to sup-port the business’s changing needs better.
Attempting this with hard-coded one-off scripts, or through a mish-mash of siloed tools, will not give businesses the sup-port they need – it may well further hinder IT management in attempting to prove its worth to the business itself. As such, IaC – whether or not the term itself rubs you up the wrong way – will provide that much-needed set of checks and balances to enable the provisioning and management of workloads across complex, hybrid IT environments. n
IT INFRASTRUCTURE
DA
MA
RATS
KAY
A_A
LEN
A/I
STO
CK
Infrastructure as code provides a way of easily addressing complex, hybrid IT platforms
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 21
As the cost of memory has fallen, interest has grown in applications that don’t regularly swap data out to disk in the traditional method for conserving system RAM.
Instead, popular big data applications, such as SAP Hana, work entirely or primarily in-memory, using servers with many gigabytes or even multiple terabytes of system RAM.
Working in-memory is a powerful approach for big data work, especially for applications such as real-time analytics – an area where SAP Hana has gained growing acceptance.
However, while Hana runs in-memory, it still has to write to persistent storage – which means disk, flash and eventually tape too – to protect its work. Persistent storage is what provides the essential database transaction guarantees known as Acid – ato-micity, consistency, isolation and durability.
SAP Hana can be installed as a turnkey appliance or in a form that SAP calls TDI (tailored datacentre integration), with serv-ers running on enterprise storage. For the latter case, SAP offers a hardware configuration check tool to make sure your storage meets Hana’s performance and functional requirements.
Single host or cluster?A scale-up installation on a single host is simplest from the per-spective of storage allocation and directory layout. Alternatively, the software can be installed as a distributed scale-out cluster, either on physical servers or virtual machines (VMs).
A distributed cluster is potentially more powerful and useful (although a single host can also scale up), but makes storage management rather more complex. For either installation type,
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
If you’re starting down the road towards SAP Hana in-memory analytics, you’ll need to understand its storage requirements.
Bryan Betts has some basics to get you started
ANALYTICS
HOME
SID
OP/
ISTO
CK
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 22
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
the storage requirement is further complicated by the need to add data protection.
As standard, SAP Hana uses storage for several purposes. The main ones are:n The operating system boot image – Hana runs
on Linux.n Hana installation – its run-time binaries, scripts
and configuration files, for example. This is where trace files and profiles are normally stored. In distrib-uted systems, every host has its own copy of these, plus scale-out configuration and trace files.
n Persistence data – each Hana service or process ensures per-sistent in-memory data by writing changed data to free stor-age in the form of savepoint blocks. This happens every five minutes by default.
n Re-do log – each Hana service records each transaction to a log file to ensure that the database can be recovered without data loss.
n Backup – backups are written on a regular schedule.
Shared storage or server-side?The decision of which type of storage to use for the persistence is complicated by two factors.
First, the savepoint blocks and re-do log files can use signif-icantly different block sizes – up to 16MB (or even 64MB for super blocks) for the former, and up to 1MB for the latter.
Second, both are latency-sensitive and have different access patterns, with data access being mainly random while log access
is sequential. Both are write-heavy, except during restarts, backups, reloads and so on.
All that means you need fast and flexible stor-age, so server-side flash (PCIe SSD) is often advised. Be warned, though, that server-side stor-age in a distributed cluster can affect your abil-ity to do automatic load balancing and failover, especially in a virtualised environment – unless
you take other steps, such as also virtualising and pooling the server-side storage.
Alternatively, since this is logically a shared-nothing approach, with each Hana service managing its own persistence data, you can use a shared array or subsystem.
Scale-out clusters are both share-nothing and see-everything: each node has exclusive access to its own data and log persis-tence volumes, but all the other nodes still need to be able to see those volumes. This is because host auto-failover relies on mov-ing the failed node’s persistence volumes to a standby node.
Sizing requirementsMemory sizing is a complicated matter, based on the space required for row and column data, objects dynamically created at run-time (such as temporary table duplication during delta merge operations), software code and caching, for example.
Persistence (savepoint blocks and re-do logs) sizing for each node can be calculated by analysing its tables using SQL or by taking the node’s RAM capacity, and then in each case adding 20% more for headroom.
ANALYTICS
❯Read up about the differences between Hana Cloud Platform
and Hana Enterprise Cloud and what they mean for SAP deployments.
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 23
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
You then need to add at least half as much again for backups, plus space for the other storage requirements mentioned on the previous page. It can be useful to direct all the backups from the nodes in a distributed system to the same storage device, but beware of routing a Hana node’s backups to the same array that its persistence data lives on.
Overall, if you total the memory capacity of all the hosts in a Hana cluster, then as a rule of thumb its storage subsystem should pro-vide at least 2.5 to three times that amount of persistent capacity. If system or storage replication is added for disaster recovery, that doubles the storage needs – essentially, the same amount of storage must be provided on the secondary site.
Latency and bandwidthSAP Hana’s log l/O in particular is latency-sensitive, which lim-its the use of synchronous replication to distances and media that permit low-latency connections. Hana’s application-based system replication is a more expensive alternative; a cheaper one is asynchronous storage replication – if you can live without instant recovery.
SAP also expects isolation of the Hana workload from other storage workloads. A TDI installation needs 400Mbps per Hana
node, which with overheads is between 4Gbps and 5Gbps, both over the SAN backbone and at the array. That equates to approximately one 16Gbps Fibre Channel inter-switch link and
array port per three nodes. While it is unlikely that all nodes will hit this peak at once, it is a requirement for Hana certification.
Each node also requires two Fibre Channel ports, preferably on sepa-rate HBAs to enable multipath load-balancing and redundancy/failover. In a scale-out installation, you will need to set up multiple zones, each in turn covering multiple networks.
The zones needed are client (for the application servers and users), internal (inter-node traffic and replication), storage (which also covers backup) and admin (including the boot and vMotion networks). For a TDI installation you will need to configure all four, while an SAP Hana appliance will come with internal and storage zones already configured.
One caveat with all the above is that SAP’s developers continu-ally develop and enhance Hana. That means its capacity require-ments for disk and memory can change from one version to the next, as well as varying from one implementation to another depending on the data and the workload. A project of any sig-nificant size will probably need professional sizing assistance, but the information above should arm you for commissioning the pro-ject and dealing with the professionals. n
ANALYTICS
Sap’S developerS conTinually develop and enhance hana,
meaning capaciTy requiremenTS for diSk and memory can change vaSTly from verSion To verSion
computerweekly.com 11-17 October 2016 24
Home
News
Big bonuses abound for IT professionals
How the internet of things can keep trains on track and on time
Cutting-edge IT helps Williams Martini Racing get up to speed in Formula 1
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to network function virtualisation
Infrastructure as code in the workload
Beginning the SAP Hana storage journey
Downtime
Datacentre chic hits the Paris catwalkChanel has confirmed a truth that remains shamefully unac-knowledged by much of the IT industry: that datacentres are cool and the place to be seen.
At the luxury fashion brand’s flagship Paris Fashion Week show last week, models wearing garments from noted designer Karl Lagerfeld sauntered down a catwalk decked out like a data-centre. The backdrop featured stacks of servers and storage units laying side-by-side in racks, knitted together – in an admit-tedly amateurish fashion – by networking cables to create the “Chanel Datacentre”.
The opening was a bit of coup for Chanel, as it beat both Microsoft and Amazon Web Services to the crunch with its datacentre opening, after both recently outlined plans to open French facilities, but not until 2017.
Lagerfeld also endeared himself to the IT community at the show by bigging up the important, yet often underappreciated, role server farms play in our everyday lives, no doubt securing a few VIP invites of his own to some of the continent’s finest datacentres.
“We all depend on it,” he is reported to have told Reuters TV in a post-show interview. “Imagine your life without the telephone, and the next step will be artificial intelligence and robots.” Quite. n
DOWNTIME
❯Read more on the Downtime blog.