CSC World Winter 2013

Transcription

Winter 2013
WORLD
Avis Budget’s
Road to Customer Value
Inside the Company’s Journey to Grow
Revenue with Big Data Analytics
INSIDE
Big Data Meets Presidential Politics
9 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2013
Technology Helps Fight a Deadly Disease
Cybersecurity for Industrial Control Systems
let the data
be your guide
How do you navigate today’s business challenges without a map?
CSC’s Big Data and Analytics services
allow you to identify faster routes to
your business goals. Our offerings help
you stay on course during your business
journey, no matter what the terrain.
Our data-driven insights quickly lead
clients to reliable results. That means
enabling faster innovation and decision
making for greater profitability and
growth along the way.
Learn more about how CSC
can help you use your data as
a guide: csc.com/big_data.
WORLD
DIRECTOR, GLOBAL BRAND & DIGITAL MARKETING
Nick Panayi
Inside CSC World
Big Data: It’s No Joke
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Patricia Brown
Senior managing editor
Jeff Caruso
Big data has typically been about the biggest brains in organizations looking for big solutions to big
problems. For years, business intelligence has been the domain of people planning strategy over a relatively
long time horizon, using tools and tactics that were cumbersome and often counterintuitive. You quite literally
had to be a rocket scientist to understand what the huge amounts of data meant to the organization.
Senior editor
Chris Sapardanis
But all of this is changing. Advanced processing power and rapidly maturing analytics technology are
Contributing Writers
Jim Battey
Dale Coyner
Peter Krass
Jenny Mangelsdorf
Art director
Deric Luong
Design & production
Creative Services — P2
CSC
colliding with a growing appetite among executives for in-depth, customer-based information. As a result,
we are seeing new demands from every level of the organization to access vast amounts of information in
support of day-to-day — even minute-to-minute — decision making, not just long-term planning.
In other words, the most successful entities — whether they are companies, agencies, political parties or
even individuals — are not just those that can apply economies of scale to produce competitively priced
offerings. Instead, the winners will most likely be those who can microtarget, delivering what different
segments of the market want based on a local understanding of conditions and circumstances during
specific customer interactions.
www.csc.com
THE AMERICAS
3170 Fairview Park Drive
Falls Church, VA 22042
United States
+1.703.876.1000
Asia
20 Anson Road #11-01
Twenty Anson
Singapore 079912
Republic of Singapore
+65.6221.9095
Australia
Take the case of CSC’s own Gary Jackson, who works with companies worldwide on developing big
data strategies. He is very serious about big data. But he is also a very funny guy. Seriously, he’s funny. A
couple of months ago he swung by D.C. from Hong Kong, and one evening a group of us saw him deliver
his routine at a downtown comedy café. Comedy is truly a high-wire act, and Gary will tell you that every
room is different. This is especially true if you cross continents and cultures. So, how is he able to leave
us all laughing? He has learned how to capture the mood of the room and the moment. Only then can he
segment the crowd to carefully choose the material he will present.
A joke, or a product, cannot be delivered in exactly the same way in different places to different cultures in
a successful manner. Organizations that understand this will increasingly provide more employees access
Level 6/Tower B
26 Talavera Road
Macquarie Park, NSW 2113
Sydney, Australia
+61(0)2.9034.3000
to big data resources and offer business intelligence tools to support routine interactions.
Europe, Middle East, Africa
has a new marketing science organization, a new customer value model, and a new marketing campaign
Royal Pavilion
Wellesley Road
Aldershot, Hampshire GU11 1PZ
United Kingdom
+44(0)1252.534000
CSC WORLD (ISSN 1534-5831)
is a publication of
Computer Sciences Corporation.
Copyright ©2013
Computer Sciences Corporation
All rights reserved.
Reproduction without permission
is prohibited.
Comment on what you’ve
read in CSC WORLD at
www.csc.com/cscworld.
Or write:
CSC WORLD
Falls Church, VA 22042 USA
This is clearly illustrated in our big data cover story, “Avis Budget’s Road to Customer Value.” Like many
businesses, Avis Budget had loads of customer data with no clear way to analyze it. Today, the company
and technology toolset. All of this has led to improved customer loyalty and improved profitability. Best of
all, it has helped the company increase its revenue by $200 million.
In the article, “Big Data Meets Presidential Politics,” we show how the Obama campaign successfully used
big data analytics to gain votes. The campaign deployed a team of technologists who built a sophisticated
data platform code-named Narwhal to help segment, track and microtarget voters. And don’t miss the
piece by Sashi Reddi, VP and general manager of CSC’s Big Data and Analytics group, which identifies
four big data trends you should be tracking.
We hope you enjoy the issue and take the opportunity to visit and interact with us online. CSC World
is also available at www.csc.com/cscworld, where you can subscribe, comment on stories, watch
accompanying videos or download mobile versions.
Best,
Patricia Brown
Editorial Director, CSC World
www.csc.com/cscworld
WINTER 2013 | CSC WORLD
1
CSC WORLD | winter 2013 | VOLUME 11 | NUMBER 4
14
28
22
36
8
4
NEWS
big data
Mergers-and-acquisitions activity dominates the end of
2012; a new center of excellence for mobility opens, and
CSC’s Yogesh Khanna wins a CTO Innovator award.
Customer intelligence is just one example of big data’s
value. As the technology evolves, big data is expected to
accelerate a number of important trends in 2013.
6
heard on csc.com
Experts are coming to CSC.com to make their voices
heard, in CSC Town Halls, online communities and
Ingenious Minds blogs.
cover story
8 Avis Budget’s
Road to Customer Value
2
Technology is disrupting the rental car business. For Avis
Budget Group, a new emphasis on big data analytics could
hold the key to achieving significant growth in the United
States and abroad.
CSC WORLD | WINTER 2013
12 4 Ways Big Data Will Transform Business
14 Big Data Meets Presidential Politics
In the 2012 presidential election, the Obama campaign
successfully used big data analytics to influence voters.
Enterprises can apply these same tactics to influence
customers and drive sales.
Executive Perspective
People are living longer than ever before, largely as a result
of improved public health and medical care. But as we start
the second century of mass medicine, healthcare systems
are under stress.
16 Better Coordination, Better Health
17 Australia’s World of Opportunity
Australia is the center of the world. Don’t believe it? Gavin
Larkings, vice president and general manager of CSC
Australia, discusses the importance of natural resources,
China and emerging tech in his region.
financial services
18 iPad App Appeals to Younger Clients
New ON CSC.COM
As one of the oldest banks in Europe, Van Lanschot
keeps in step with client needs. But company growth has
brought in a younger clientele and has the bank rethinking
its digital presence.
Infographics Central: Explore key trends and data in
visual and interactive ways with a collection of CSC
infographics on emerging technologies such as cloud
computing, big data and mobile banking.
csc.com/Infographics
20 Is That Really You?
Instant payments, paperless check deposits and one-touch
transfers have made online banking wildly popular with
customers. But the threat of fraudulent payments and
identity theft is up as well.
HEALTHCARE
When scientists need access to information on medical
topics such as human genetics and flu outbreaks, they turn
to the National Library of Medicine. CSC supports this vast
repository of healthcare data.
CSC Town Halls: Join a continuing series of online
conferences on IT topics that matter to you, featuring
CSC experts and special guest speakers ready to answer
your questions. csc.com/TownHall
22 Scientists Explore the Origin of Outbreaks Online
Success Story Briefing Center: View video success
stories featuring CSC subject matter experts, clients and
global partners or search hundreds of stories that cover
a wide range of solution areas.
csc.com/Success_Stories
24 Technology Helps Fight a Deadly Disease
At least 1.8 million people die from sepsis each year. CSC’s
CareVeillance™ real-time clinical surveillance tool is helping
The University of Kansas Hospital detect the disease early
and save lives.
CYBERSECURITY
Cybercrime and data breaches are among the most
common worries keeping healthcare CIOs up at night.
Healthcare organizations must pursue an enterprise-type
approach to securing data.
26 How Hospitals Can Immunize Against Hackers
28 Cybersecurity for Industrial Control Systems:
The Time Is Now
Research
36 Where ‘Mad Men’ Meets ‘Math Men’
Marketing is marketing, technology is technology, data
is data, and never the three shall meet — right? Not so,
says Frank Cutitta, a research associate in CSC’s Leading
Edge Forum.
40 Open Source: It’s Not Just for
Software Anymore
The need for strong cybersecurity on industrial control
systems is great. These systems — vital to the chemical,
electrical, water and other industries — are increasingly
under attack.
cloud computing
applications
30 Understanding Cloud and How to Buy It
CSC and EMC sponsored the Outsourcing Center’s Cloud
Buyer’s Guide, to provide a better understanding of cloud
and how it differs from traditional IT outsourcing.
32 Overcoming the Fear of Cloud
Despite cloud’s high adoption rates, lingering doubts about
data security remain, according to Information Security
Media Group’s 2012 Cloud Computing Security Survey.
34 How ‘Everything as a Service’ Can Save
CIOs Money
Today, nearly any type of hardware, software, IT process or
business process can be offered as a cloud-based service.
It’s called “Everything as a Service,” and the benefits to the
enterprise are many.
IT’s influence is growing beyond the server room to
rewrite basic business strategy. A new CSC Leading Edge
Forum study points to open source software as key to its
expanding sway.
42 ‘Mobile First’ Movement Drives
Application Design
The rapid adoption of smart mobile devices has redefined
industries and spawned new ones in just a few short years.
That shift is also causing companies to rethink application
development strategy.
Last Word
The cloud changes nearly everything, including IT’s
relationship with the business. Siki Giunta, vice president and
general manager of CSC Cloud Computing and Software
Services, predicts major developments coming this year.
44 9 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2013
3
news
CSC’s Transformation
Takes Big Turns in 2012
Another major transaction was designed to bolster the
company’s big data offerings. In October, CSC acquired 42six
Solutions, a premier software development company that
specializes in big data processing and analytics, and advanced
applications support for the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC)
and the Department of Defense.
“Data services and analytics capabilities are rapidly becoming
essential elements of commercial and government operations,
and these product offerings hold unmistakable benefits to
the intelligence community,” says Sashi Reddi, vice president and
general manager, Big Data and Analytics, CSC. “This acquisition
aligns directly with CSC’s strategy of offering customers greater
value through big data expertise and intellectual property.”
In other divestitures, CSC reached an agreement with Adcorp,
South Africa’s largest employment services company, to sell
Paxus, CSC’s Australian IT staffing unit. The total value of this
all-cash transaction is expected to be $73.5 million.
In work that began with the hiring of a new CEO in March 2012,
CSC’s turnaround plan hit major milestones in recent months.
The 54-year-old company is forging ahead with an aggressive
transformation initiative to rebalance its portfolio of services
and focus on next-generation technology solutions and services.
In its largest move to date, CSC sold its credit services unit to
Equifax for $1 billion in cash.
The after-tax proceeds from the sale of the business will be
approximately $750 to $800 million, based on preliminary plans.
CSC intends to use $300 to $400 million to repurchase shares,
contribute $300 to $400 million to its pension plans and apply
the remainder to general corporate purposes.
CSC’s credit services unit had owned credit files in 15
Midwestern and Central U.S. states representing 20% of the
U.S. population, and had been the largest independent U.S.
consumer credit reporting agency and an Equifax affiliate for
more than 20 years.
4
“Our turnaround is tracking to plan. We are transitioning to our
new operating model and we are aligning our assets with our
strategy of leading the next generation of technology services
and solutions. Our cost takeout initiatives are yielding results
as demonstrated by higher profit margins in all three lines of
business when compared with the prior year. As a result, we
are raising our target for fiscal year 2013 EPS from continuing
operations to $2.50 - $2.70,” says Mike Lawrie, president
and CEO. “During the quarter, we divested certain non-core
businesses and we are using the proceeds to return cash to
shareholders through our share buyback program and incremental contributions to our pension plans.”
Also in October, as part of its ongoing service portfolio optimization, CSC entered into an agreement with Dedagroup, an
Italian IT services company, for the sale of the consulting and
systems integration services part of its business in Italy.
After the transaction reaches final agreement, CSC will retain
a presence in Italy and continue to provide a select portfolio
of services, including cloud, financial services, infrastructure, business process outsourcing and healthcare offerings,
to multinational companies. CSC will also retain corporate
financial services products, solutions and services for CSC’s
international accounts.
Under the terms of the agreement, Dedagroup will assume from
CSC all pan-Italian consulting and systems integration projects,
as well as fashion industry software products and services.
CSC’s Yogesh Khanna Wins
CTO Innovator Award
Yogesh Khanna, chief technology officer
(CTO) for CSC’s North American Public
Sector, won the 2012 Government Contractor CTO Innovator Award in the large
company category from the Northern
Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) and
Washington Technology. The award was
presented on November 12 at NVTC’s
annual TechCelebration banquet.
Khanna’s award recognizes his instrumental role in establishing
CSC’s data center consolidation and cloud go-to-market
strategy and offerings. He also developed a strategic roadmap
for product offerings to support the Federal Data Center
Consolidation Initiative and to help CSC’s clients migrate to the
“as-a-service” consumption model. In addition, he established
an Innovation Task Force, comprising CTOs who represent their
respective divisions at CSC.
Mobility Center of
Excellence Opens in India
With mobility creating new disruptions in the enterprise, CSC
has established a Mobility Center of Excellence that serves as a
focal point for the company’s worldwide mobility resources and
a base for research and development, testing, demonstrations,
creation of custom prototypes and definition of best practices.
“Mobility has become a strategic priority for many enterprises,”
says Chirag Srivastava, head of CSC’s Mobility Center of Excellence.
“However, the opportunities generated by mobility may instigate
significant technology and organizational change.”
To address that change, the center, based in Noida, India,
has opened research and development laboratories in Noida,
Hyderabad and Bangalore, created tools that speed solution
development, and established processes and project-execution
models to help clients stay ahead of the mobility curve.
CSC has a legacy in mobility, creating mobile solutions when
wired solutions weren’t viable, such as in space or deep in the
earth. Today, the company’s mobility solutions continue to evolve
with innovation, providing a scalable, manageable, step-by-step
approach to mobile-enabling processes, people and assets.
“On the road or in the office, business must go on,” says
Srivastava. “Our approach is based on proven technologies and
process-transformation methodologies to help clients achieve
rapid results from their mobility investments.”
Learn more about CSC
Centers of Excellence at
csc.com/COE.
“Yogesh has remarkable passion for and proficiency in
delivering results that government customers and internal
colleagues value,” says David Zolet, executive vice president and general manager of CSC’s North American Public
Sector. “He leverages more than two decades of experience
to continuously drive next-generation solutions that help our
customers meet their missions and achieve greater efficiencies. I continue to be impressed by his technical acumen and
engaging approach.”
Khanna leads the development and implementation of the
government cloud strategy and is an active contributor to
CSC’s global cloud computing initiatives. He recently served
as a commissioner on the TechAmerica Foundation Big Data
Commission. He is frequently sought after for his opinions and
perspectives by media, appearing on Federal News Radio and
WTOP News in Washington, D.C. He also participates in panel
discussions at industry conferences, presenting frequently at
technology and business solutions conferences.
This annual award recognizes CTOs within the region’s
government contracting community for their critical contributions to achieving results for their customers and their
leadership within their own companies. The winner was
chosen by an independent panel of leaders from the government
contracting community.
Watch Yogesh and His Team in Action:
From Ideation to Reality —
Inside a CSC
Innovation Center
csc.com/innovation.
Learn more at
csc.com/newsroom.
5
Heard on
CSC.com
Experts inside and outside of CSC are coming to CSC.com to make their
voices heard, in CSC Town Hall webcasts, our online communities and our
Ingenious Minds blogs. Here are some highlights.
Cloud
cover
In years past, when you spent time making IT better
for your agency, you were probably making it harder
to communicate with other agencies. Now managers
see [cloud computing] as a way to jump over cultural
and technical barriers they had created in the past.
You don’t have to blow up what everyone has; you
just build over it with applications offered as a service.
Gen. Michael Hayden
Former CIA and NSA Director
csc.com/townhall/shadowIT
The new breed
of data scientist
If you are having a hard time finding and hiring data
scientists, you are probably looking for them in the wrong
places. Data scientists are not necessarily graduating from
universities with degrees in math, statistics or science. They
could be graduating from your local school of art and design
with a degree in digital media. … There is a massive shift
around analytics that our current university graduate is not
prepared for. Most university graduates know how to use
various analytical tools. They also understand the statistics
underlying the tools, but they cannot “abstract” or “story
tell” as is demanded in the current market.
Gary Jackson
Director of Business Analytics at CSC
csc.com/ingenious_minds/blog/Gary
6
CSC
CSC WORLD
WORLD || WINTER
WINTER 2013
2013
Understand the
Practical
BYOD challenge
The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend requires a lot
of architectural planning and engineering, and it’s
treated just like any large-scale business transformation
project. It requires everyone — help desk, network
engineers, server admins, architects of a dozen talents,
accountants, legal experts and most important of all, end
users — to come up with a solution that’s a) workable;
b) useful; c) affordable. Using your iPhone to check your
company email might seem effortless and easy, but it’s
complex stuff. If we’re doing it, we need to know what
we’re letting ourselves in for and how much of an open
season we really want to declare.
Mikio Tsunematsu
Networks Specialist
innovation
People tend to think of innovation
as cutting-edge technology,
pie-in-the-sky. But innovation
is also about cost, figuring out
how to deliver a product a number of times more
cheaply. I think that’s going to become increasingly
important as you have a government customer with a
constrained amount of funding that will be looking for
low-cost providers for the solutions it needs.
Joe Anselmo
Editor-in-Chief, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine
Town Hall: “Aerospace & Defense Industry Searches for Solid Ground”
csc.com/townhall/aerospace_defense
CSC Blog in CSC’s CIO Engage community
community.csc.com/community/cio-engage/byo-pita
Rise of the
machines
Machine-to-Machine: It’s the Internet of the future. There
will be two or three major distribution chains that will use
more and more machine-to-machine or credit-card-by-phone
networks to sell you, say, a Diet Coke at a ball game. In fact,
the Olympics in Brazil will be a total M-to-M type of Olympics.
Siki Giunta
Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Computing
and Software Services at CSC
csc.com/cloud2013
Value
evangelists
Organizations have at least three ways to get value from
IT: better management of IT itself, better management of
business processes, and enhancing the customer experience,
through smart uses of data, new services or new products.
We need to raise awareness about the kind of value IT
can bring to an organization, and then the senior leadership
team needs to be clear about who in the organization is
responsible for pursuing and achieving and sustaining
those three sources of value.
Nils Fonstad
Associate Director, INSEAD eLab
Town Hall, “CIO Barometer: The Rapidly Evolving Role of IT Leadership”
csc.com/townhall/CIO_barometer
7
Cover STORY
Avis Budget’s Road to
Customer Value
Inside the Company’s Journey
to Grow Revenue with
Big Data Analytics
by Chris Sapardanis
Technology is
disrupting the rental
car business. In a
post-recession market,
intense competition is
forcing companies to
offer new and better
services to customers.
The resulting touchscreen kiosks, mobile
apps and car-sharing
options are recent
proof of a global
$50 billion industry’s
innovation awakening.
8
For Avis Budget Group, a leading global vehicle rental services
company, and the only one operating two truly global brands, a
new emphasis on technology, data analytics and marketing could
hold the key to achieving significant growth in the United States
and abroad.
A postrecession plan
Back in 2009, nobody was talking about big data. In the midst of
the Great Recession, with millions of jobs lost in the United States
between Sept. 2008 and Sept. 2009, companies were cutting
back significantly on employee expenses such as business travel,
and the uncertain economic outlook led many consumers to
postpone or cancel their leisure travel plans.
The recession’s toll on travel meant a reduced demand for rental
cars at airports, which lowered revenue for rental car companies.
But instead of keeping their heads down until the economic
storm passed, executives at Parsippany, N.J.-based Avis Budget
began formulating a plan to identify new opportunities and grow
their business using customer data.
“The recession was the time to revise our strategic thinking,
and say, ‘When we come out of this, and we will come out of it,
what is the investment that our company should make in order
to enhance the post-recession customer’s experience and drive
loyalty, revenue and profit for the company,’” says Tom Gartland,
president of North America at Avis Budget Group.
“When we first started talking about a customer relationship
management (CRM) and loyalty program, the car rental industry
was seen by many as a commodity business,” he says. “We had
the opportunity to change that paradigm, that by the right
customer execution, service excellence and an enhanced loyalty
program, we would be seen by our potential clients as different
from competitors.”
Working with a big data team from CSC, Avis Budget began one
of the most important programs in the company’s history.
Their first goal: grow market share. “Avis is the leader in
commercial car rental in North America,” Gartland says. “We
have the No. 1 position when we talk about car rental for
commercial travelers and a 64% share of their wallet. But we still
have the opportunity for an additional 36%.”
The same is true of Budget. “Budget is more of a leisure brand,
and we have about 45% share of wallet with the normal Budget
client,” he says. “How do we capture that incremental 55%
share of wallet, so in their decision set they’re always thinking
of using the Budget brand? If we could do that, we could add
over two billion dollars of incremental revenue to the North
American business.”
A customer-centric plan
The result of Avis Budget’s strategic planning during the
downturn gave birth to the company’s focus on CRM. A
customer value segmentation roadmap would be the starting
point. CSC was chosen to help implement a program that would
enable Avis Budget to derive new insights from their customer
data and take informed channel-specific actions to market
programs and services.
“Before we arrived and started to work with Avis, the company
was a transaction-based company,” says Alex Black, a senior
partner in CSC’s Analytics Insights and Information practice.
“Avis had a lot of transaction information but none of it was
aggregated by customer.”
Data-driven growth
In the information age, data is a valuable asset. Research firm
IDC is predicting a big data market that will grow revenue
at 31.7% a year until it hits the $23.8 billion mark in 2016.
For companies such as Avis Budget, the potential to mine
their data — and derive actionable marketing insights — is
practically limitless.
CSC defines big data as data that consists of large volumes, high
velocity or variety. Avis Budget’s challenge concerned elements
of all three components. The company had significant volumes of
transaction data that needed to be analyzed for real-time actions
(offers, service treatments, etc.) and an accelerating volume of
unstructured data coming in from its website, call center, emails
and social media channels.
Alex Black, a senior partner in CSC’s Analytics Insights
and Information practice (left), and Tom Gartland,
president of North America at Avis Budget Group
9
cover STORY
CSC’s initial work with Avis Budget was to help it define and
implement a customer-led, service-driven vision. Both the Avis
and Budget brands would benefit from the program.
“What we were focusing on was to start with a customervaluation approach,” says Black. “Let’s build a model, determine
who the most valuable customers are and figure out how to
concentrate on them by doing some extra special things.
That meant a lot of data work, a lot of campaign-management
work and a full program that included really transforming the
entire organization.”
“Then we really focused on the top-value segments to drive
offers and treatments, as a way to engender loyalty,” Black says.
“At the same time we were careful not to discriminate against
lower-value customers because they might be high potential
in the future. All of those nuances got involved in applying the
results of the model.”
Better service via data
The car rental business seems pretty straightforward until you
pull the skin back. The complexity begins when one considers
all of the different touch points and systems. “Ultimately, Avis
Budget is trying to create a differentiating experience every time
someone rents a car,” Black says. “That’s a challenge, because
car rental seems like a commodity to a lot of folks.”
To validate the modeling, CSC helped Avis Budget develop and
run six marketing campaigns powered by IBM Unica’s marketing
campaign management tool. Despite the extreme complexity of
running multichannel campaigns using a new system, in a short
time frame, the effort solidified the power of the customer model,
and actually generated additional revenue while the program’s
work continued.
The first step in the CRM program with Avis Budget was
developing a customer intelligence roadmap. In six weeks,
CSC delivered a three-year plan that outlined what business,
technology and organizational projects were needed, broken
down by costs, timelines and dependencies.
A 360-degree view
The more you know about your customers, the better you can
serve them. Powered by IBM’s Master Data Management for
Customer application, Avis Budget’s customer value scores are
part of a 360-degree view of the customer that also includes
rental history, service issues, demographics, corporate affiliation
and customer feedback.
“A value model predicts a customer’s future value,” Black says.
“Avis had never done any customer value segmentation before.
So this was a great starting point. It made a lot of sense to focus
on, first and foremost, your most valuable customers and offer
them a way to move the dial on their business.”
10
After the lifetime value model was developed and approved,
implementation began. CSC applied the model to Avis Budget’s
40-million strong customer database. Customers were stack
ranked from the top down into value segments.
In order to develop further customer insights, CSC helped Avis
Budget develop and launch an advanced analytics team named
the Marketing Sciences Organization, including defining key
roles and interviewing candidates.
Fully launched six months ahead of schedule, Avis Budget’s new
focus on customer value segmentation is gaining steam. The
company is experiencing the benefits of big data analytics and
a customer database organized by brand, segment and other
key factors.
“The first thing our analytics told us was that we weren’t
capturing all of the potential rentals from our existing clients,”
says Gartland, who is responsible for operations, sales,
marketing and customer care for Avis Budget across the United
States and Canada. “We were missing something — which was
really rich data. And what the data said to us is that there were
opportunities to create relationships and provide offers that met
client needs.”
The data also told Avis Budget that there was significant
opportunity for customer upgrades. The company now has the
information to appropriately enrich offers to upgrade, based on
customer loyalty or different value propositions. The project has
already helped Avis Budget increase incremental revenue by
$200 million.
Unstructured social data
A major source of unstructured data for Avis Budget is social
media. In fact, that’s a growing trend for most companies. The
Nielsen Company found that one in three social media users
with a customer service issue prefer to use social media, instead
of calling the company’s customer service department.
“Today, any given company can have a customer service
problem that can go viral, and then the whole world knows
about it within hours or days,” says Gartland. “Companies that
fail to immediately address customer service problems, who
do not manage these situations as potential customer recovery
opportunities, are putting their brands at risk.”
To manage the company’s presence in the social space, as
well as collect valuable data, Avis Budget’s global social media
team monitors mentions of the company’s brands across
social channels.
“We have a recovery process in place, so if it’s a complaint or a
customer service issue, we can recover immediately, or reach
out to that customer and solve the problem,” Gartland says.
In addition to improving customer interactions, CSC is helping
Avis Budget capture this unstructured data. During the
customer value model implementation, CSC led a side project
called a “voice-of-the-customer” roadmap. This project identifies
the sources of feedback, figures out how that data can be
harnessed and then puts it into an environment where it can be
analyzed and acted upon.
Client: Avis Budget Group
Challenge:
•Maximize customer lifetime value
•Meet customer service expectations
•Build customer loyalty
Solution:
•A new Marketing Sciences Organization
•A new customer value model
•A new marketing campaign and database
technology toolset
Results:
•Improved customer loyalty
•Improved profitability
•Increased revenue by $200 million
About Avis Budget Group:
Avis Budget Group is a leading rental car supplier
that serves the premium commercial and leisure
segments of the travel industry. Budget also operates
one of the leading truck rental businesses in the
United States.
Avis Budget Group and its subsidiaries and
licensees provide a range of vehicle rental services
through 10,000 rental locations in approximately
175 countries. The company has three operating
regions: North America; Europe, Middle East & Africa
(EMEA); and Latin America/Asia Pacific. Avis Budget
Group has approximately 29,000 employees and is
headquartered in Parsippany, N.J.
Watch our Avis Budget Group
Success Story Videos at
csc.com/avis.
“We are now able to understand whether it’s a customer offer,
whether it’s a customer complaint, or whether it’s an opportunity
to recover if there’s a customer service issue,” Gartland says. “We
now better understand the lifetime value of the people in our
database. And we can change our behavior. Our behavior can
match the customer service expectation and the value of that
customer for life.”
CHRIS SAPARDANIS is a senior editor on CSC’s digital
marketing team.
11
4
Big Data
ways
Big Data
by Sashi Reddi
Will
Transform
Business
Big data is poised to
exploit previously
untapped efficiencies,
deliver new innovations
and create value.
He didn’t realize it, but the ticket agent at the counter was
about to make an expensive mistake.
“He said he could put me on standby — no problem — and I
felt grateful,” recounted a colleague, telling me of her recent
misadventure. But then he said, ‘That’ll be $75 for the change.’”
The agent didn’t know, and his system couldn’t tell him, that
even though her longtime elite status had expired with this
particular airline, my colleague was still an avid traveler whom
they might want to win back — one who rightly expected some
small consideration, a nuisance fee waived, as thanks for her
past and, more important, her future loyalty.
Big data expands customer intelligence
From a customer’s perspective, it’s a simple question to answer:
“Don’t you remember me?” For any enterprise with hundreds to
millions of customers, that recognition doesn’t always happen.
That’s changing. As our spotlight on Avis Budget notes, the
company uses big data to identify its most valuable customers
today and tomorrow. And it’s doing so without penalizing
customers who aren’t frequent renters.
1
How? Big data differs from narrow applications that look at just
one source of data, yielding small answers. Big data examines
a broad range of sources that include structured information
such as purchase histories, customer relationship management
(CRM) data and intelligence from industry partners, as well as
unstructured information such as social media. In the case of
the airline, those partners could include credit card companies,
hotels and other travel industry sources.
Big data analytics also brings unstructured data into the fold,
information gleaned from social media feeds, blogs, videos and
other sources. Sorting through this information would have
helped the airline answer a big-picture question that companies
have struggled for decades to answer: How do we treat all of
our customers like rock stars?
Expanding customer intelligence is just one trend. As the
technology evolves, using big data will accelerate three other
trends over the coming year.
12
2
Big data improves operational efficiencies
Big data will finally forge the last links of the value chain that
will help companies drive more operational efficiencies from
existing investments.
That feedback loop is created by data generated in the
field, and it’s growing at a pace that’s hard to comprehend.
Sensors on a single commercial aircraft generate 20
terabytes of data an hour. Automobiles are reporting back
data collected from onboard sensors and dealer service
systems. And let’s not forget the growing tide of RFIDequipped vehicles, crates and packages.
CSC’s BIG DATA
AND ANALYTICS PRACTICE
We offer consultancy and solutions to help organizations
gain competitive advantage by executing on insights
gained through the combination of internal and external
information sources. If your challenge is determining
where to find the right information and how to use it to
drive the outcomes you require, our Big Data & Analytics
experts can help.
Learn more at
csc.com/big_data.
These incredible repositories of data, combined with machineto-machine interaction, are fueling a new wave of predictive
analytics, services that enable equipment such as airplanes to
determine their own maintenance schedule, alerting the supply
chain to ensure that the needed parts arrive at the right place
at the right time.
For example, a delivery company with trucks in the field can
improve on first-generation, efficient-routing tools by using
smarter tools that can anticipate traffic conditions along
certain routes at a specific time of day or create a new route in
response to information about an accident that just occurred or
information that’s input by the driver.
Big data is moving from the realm of data scientists into
everyday business transactions and encounters. In call centers,
analytics-infused CRM systems can review multiple data sources
in real time to suggest offers that a representative can present
to a customer. At the doctor’s office, analytics integrated into a
health maintenance app may improve outcomes by presenting
the physician with informed suggestions and next steps to
consider in treating a patient.
No time to lose — big data and analytics go “as a service”
Building an internal big data department stacked with
petabytes of storage, rows of blade servers and a team of data
scientists isn’t within the reach or a desired core competency
of every company. In an earlier time, spreadsheets were the
de facto tool and best friend of marketing managers, collecting
data from campaigns and digesting it into rough but valuable
insights. Ask them how that’s working now.
Insurance companies, which have long been data driven,
will benefit significantly from the introduction of big data.
Industry-specific analytics will help them speed claims
processing while reducing costs and spotting potential fraud
by use of analytics-backed solutions that can determine
whether a claim can be processed automatically or should be
flagged for review by a specialist.
The avalanche of inputs from social media and other
unstructured information that is characteristic of big data
doesn’t fit the spreadsheet model any longer. The volume,
variety and velocity of data have made it too complex to
analyze using old-school tools, and not everyone wants to
become a data scientist.
3
Big data + mobile means new business processes
As companies become more data-driven, it’s only natural that
those insights find their way into the hands of people who can
put them into action. Mobility will accentuate the impact of big
data on both customer intelligence and operational efficiency
by making everything immediately actionable. Armed with
immediate decision-making capability and intelligence on your
mobile phone, you will be able to implement new business
processes that will change how business is done.
Adding mobility to big data means enabling frontline
employees with real-time insights, when and where they need
them. Those insights will come from blending data in motion
— information that’s changing on the fly — with data at rest.
Mobility also enables real-time data collection from the field,
adding to the pool of knowledge that will drive insights in
another part of the system.
4
That’s where data and analytics offered as a service will help.
Companies of any size can employ big data by sharing a pool
of scientists and resources, getting the expertise they need
without venturing beyond their core competencies or taking on
a big fixed expense.
Speaking of expense, that brings me back to my colleague and
the ticket agent. How did she fare?
“Well, I paid the fee because I really had no choice at that
point,” she said. “But I do avoid booking with that airline when
I can.”
That’s an important and expensive lesson. Maybe the issue
isn’t whether we can afford to implement big data, but rather,
whether we can afford not to.
SASHI REDDI is vice president and general manager of CSC’s Big
Data and Analytics group.
13
big data
Big Data Meets
Presidential
Politics
by Jim Battey
In winning the 2012 presidential election, the Obama campaign
successfully employed big data analytics to influence people and
get them to vote. Analytics experts say enterprises can apply
these same tactics to influence customers and drive sales.
The 2012 election was a watershed event for leveraging
technology in the political arena. Both the Obama and Romney
campaigns relied heavily on technology, but many observers say
the Obama campaign tapped into the power of data analytics
more effectively.
“Part of the reason for the Obama victory was the campaign’s
ability to mobilize the vote, and it used a lot of data to do that,”
says Alex Black, who leads CSC’s Enterprise Intelligence Practice.
The Obama campaign deployed a team of technologists who
built a sophisticated data platform code-named Narwhal that
proved highly effective for raising money and tracking voters.
Narwhal served as the technical backbone for campaign
operations, integrating data to enable functions such as
customized email fundraising and identification of likely voters.
Obama campaign staffers used the system to analyze voters’
14
registration data and online habits. “They developed models
predicting who was most likely to vote and then targeted
follow-up events at those people,” Black says.
Social media played a prominent role in the election. During the
campaign, Deen Freelon, an assistant professor in the School
of Communication at American University in Washington D.C.,
blogged extensively on the use of technology in the election.
Freelon says that although more research needs to be done
to determine the impact of social media, “There is no question
that both candidates took social media seriously.” He says the
best evidence of its impact is a study which found that people
are more likely to vote if they learn, via social media, that their
friends will vote.
As a by-product of the technology efforts, and the fact that
Democratic voters skew to a younger demographic, the Obama
campaign maintained a lopsided advantage in social media
circles. (See: “Obama vs. Romney: By the Numbers.”) The
experts say organizations can capitalize on lessons learned from
Obama’s victory in the use of data analytics and social media.
Obama vs. Romney: By the Numbers
Barack Obama
Mitt Romney
35.4 million
Facebook Likes*
11.8 million
24.9 million
Twitter Followers*
1.7 million
$1.07 billion
Total Funds Raised
$993 million
$690 million
Funds Raised Online
N/A
9
Swing States Won
1
65,367,939 (51.0%)
Popular Vote
60,707,106 (47.3%)
332
Electoral Votes
206
*As of Dec. 2012. Sources: Facebook, Twitter, New York Times, Time Magazine, Huffington Post.
Analytics comes to the fore
Obama’s victory confirmed the value of using technology and
data analytics. The technology side of Obama’s campaign
was organized into teams to oversee technology, digital and
analytics. Engineers working for the campaign developed
tools such as Dashboard, an online organizing community, and
Obama’s analytics team developed The Optimizer, a tool for
placing television advertisements in front of the most optimal
audiences for the least amount of money.
“The Obama campaign proved the power of big data,” says
Gary Jackson, CSC’s director of Business Analytics. One lesson
learned from the election is that enterprises can employ a
concept called the “psychology of analytics” to prompt action
from a customer. Jackson notes that many companies spend
a lot of time and money on big data projects only to end up
finding out the same insights they already knew. He calls it “Your
Mom’s Mom Is a Woman” analytics. The key for businesses, he
says, is using data analytics to target the right people.
“The Obama big data team sought out those who were already
advocates and did matchmaking using what CSC calls ‘affinity
ratios’ — linking people with the same life-style and life-stage
details with people in their social circles to drive action,” Jackson
says. “We believe that customer behavior changes only when
influenced by other human beings — social circles — or by being
compared to people like them.”
Dr. Freelon thinks there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that
will work for every organization. “Just because Obama did
it doesn’t mean it is right for everyone. Still, we do know the
Obama campaign conducted rigorous message testing of its
Web presences to determine what content and style elicited
the greatest responses from users.”
Engage your customers
Similarly, Black says the Obama team successfully engaged in
microtargeting voters. “But the key is what you offer them,
and how you make it stick,” he says. So how can companies
successfully engage with their customers?
Watch an Inauguration Day video
on Obama’s data-driven victory at
csc.com/BigData_Politics.
Learn more at
csc.com/big_data.
“Companies have a little bit harder time with engaging —
turning it into a relationship that is continuous — so it helps not
only with the purchase, but also helps postpurchase activities,
using the product or suggestions about the product,” Black
says. He advises enterprises to employ a lot of different tactics,
and make social media a part of an engagement strategy.
“Constantly review the analytics, build models and do a lot of
testing and re-testing to see what works best.”
Jackson says Obama’s team searched to find people who are
the influencers and added them to social circles of people who
would actually vote for him in the states he needed to win. “He
used the ‘psychology of analytics’ to drive the vote in his favor,”
he says. “Simply put, big data is about pairing up the ‘want to’s
with the ‘have to’s.”
Still, not all analytical data is useful and accurate. Companies
should beware of poll bias. “A lot of people think that when
there’s a sophisticated algorithm or model, it is statistically pure,
yet we know many have bias in them. Whether it’s the bias of
the researcher or the bias of the mathematician, all points in the
building of models and algorithms are subject to bias.”
In the end, just as in political campaigns, success in business is
a matter of engaging customers. “This campaign demonstrated
the ability to reach people,” Black says. “We’ve got to get our
arms around big data and social media and build an analytical
framework so we can gain insights and figure out how the
data is going to affect our businesses. Enterprises need to
learn how to use the data to come up with ways to improve
the operation.”
JIM BATTEY is a writer for CSC’s digital marketing team.
15
industry perspective
Better
Coordination
Better Health
by Andrea Fiumicelli
The massive improvement in human life expectancy was
undoubtedly one of the great achievements of the 20th
century. While there are still dramatic differences between
countries, people all over the world can expect to live longer
than ever before, largely as a result of improved public health
and the wide availability of medical care. But as we start the
second century of mass medicine, healthcare systems are
showing signs of serious stress, both in developed and
developing nations.
Coordinated care makes a difference
Research from across the world suggests that “coordinated
care,” by which we mean actively managing the relationships
among multiple care providers, can both improve health
outcomes and decrease costs. By establishing well-understood
care pathways and protocols, a coordinated care system can
make a real difference for patients.
The role of technology is clear: information flow, process
management, administrative scheduling and record keeping.
The technology provider’s requirement is to deliver robust
integrated systems that embrace multiple, independent care
providers. As we move farther into the 21st century, it will be
the way systems work together that will drive improvement as
much as the individual systems themselves.
A key feature of successful coordinated care systems is the
adoption of “evidence-based” medical practices. Clearly,
adopting approaches that have been demonstrated to be effective seems like a good idea. It is surprising then that Eric Topol,
M.D., in his influential book, The Creative Destruction of
Medicine, claims that “A large proportion of tests and prescriptions used frequently in medicine have little or no supportive
evidence of utility.” He quotes The Institute of Medicine as a
source supporting the claim.
This is not the place to comment on the culture and practice of
medicine. One thing is clear, though: The rising use of technology
in medicine means more electronically held patient data. It is a
scary thought that online retailers already have better systems
for understanding the motivations and habits of their customers
than healthcare systems have for their patients.
It’s a complicated picture, but two factors seem clear: The
activities of medical practitioners, no matter how effective they
may be in isolation, are often not well coordinated; and medical
interventions are often underpinned by surprisingly little
evidence. Our health, it would seem, is an area where
information technology can make a significant contribution.
Analytical techniques produce evidence
Applying analytical techniques to patient data will undoubtedly
yield a rich source of evidence about populations as a whole, as
well as insights that can transform the treatment of an individual
patient. We are already seeing analytics help healthcare payers
improve their businesses. The real health benefits will come
when we use it to improve the provision of care — as, for
instance, with the CareVeillance solution described elsewhere in
this issue.
Most of us will have experienced the frustration of dealing with
multiple clinicians, each an expert in his or her field but each
with only a partial picture of the situation. In some ways it is
an inevitable reflection of the multiple specialties that make up
medical care, but it is also a reflection that healthcare systems
have not yet embraced systems that speed data flow through
their organizations.
Take a look at any care setting and you will see technology in use.
Medical records and lab results are held electronically; in many
cases, appointment booking and scheduling are computer-based;
and of course a wide range of medical devices are measuring vital
signs. In some hospitals, such as Cabrini in Melbourne, Australia,
clinicians routinely carry iPads that give them immediate access
to patient data.
Watch Andrea Discuss Technology
and the Future of Healthcare at
csc.com/Future_healthcare.
The next step is to coordinate all of that technology across all
of those care settings, and to harvest the data we are already
collecting. The foundation is effective next-generation technology
solutions; the result will be better health outcomes.
Andrea Fiumicelli is vice president and general manager of
CSC’s Healthcare Group.
16
regional perspective
Australia’s
World
of Opportunity
by Gavin Larkings
Australia is the center of the world. Don’t believe it? Well, do
you monitor energy use? Australia is among the largest natural
resources providers in the world. Concerned about the aging
population? To us, it represents a growing market opportunity.
How about cloud computing, big data and other IT developments?
These and other new technologies have been eagerly adopted by
Australian CIOs. Are you watching China? It’s our single largest
foreign market.
In fact, as Asia expands, so do our markets. To be sure,
Australia, with nearly 23 million people, is nowhere near Asia’s
size and capability; China alone has a population of more than
1.3 billion. Yet Australia offers many of the vital products and
services that Asia requires. While Asian demand has temporarily
declined, it’s still far more robust than that of, say, Europe. In
fact, we believe that Asia will remain the source of big demand
for Australian products and services over the next decade. Asia
is where our business — both today’s customers and tomorrow’s
prospects — is growing.
so installations slowed dramatically. But now, people are looking
to absorb cloud computing in a better manner, and as a result,
we’re seeing the technology adopted across entire enterprises.
While much of the world frets over energy use, Australia deals
with it daily. Our natural resources sector includes mining, oil
and gas, and these companies constantly seek greater efficiencies. One example is the adoption of automated trucks.
Australia supplies great quantities of iron ore and other minerals
to China. With this technology, each scoop of minerals from a
crane is carefully measured, which means that trucks are always
filled to precisely the same level. Similarly, Australia is also a
major recycler. In the past year, CSC Australia alone recycled
some 675 kg. (approximately 1,490 lb.) of electronic waste.
An aging population is another issue that Australia, along with
much of the Western world, must deal with — and another that
can be addressed with IT. People 65 and older now represent
about 14% of Australia’s population, according to the Australian
Bureau of Statistics, while the proportion of those aged 85
years and older has more than doubled in the past 20 years, to
nearly 2% of the total.
Financial services is another critical domain for Australia. Four
of the country’s top banks rank among the global top 50. Given
Australia’s relatively small markets, that makes these banks
even more important to our overall economy. Also, Australia has
several large financial services and insurance companies. One of
them, AMP, has been a client of CSC’s for more than 40 years.
Technology for the business
Australia also is a leader in the transformation of business by IT.
Big data, cloud computing, virtualization and mobile technology are all game changers here. But the emphasis is always
on the business, never on technology for its own sake. Cloud
computing is a case in point. The business results of early cloud
implementations left many Australian companies disappointed,
Cybersecurity is another growing area of interest in Australia.
Local clients are especially concerned about the risk of cyberattacks, especially in light of recent reports that China infiltrated
the systems of several U.S. newspapers. That’s a big area of
concern for us, given that China is both a major diplomatic
partner and a large industrial customer.
One result: Healthcare has become an important component of
our national economy. IT can help. One of our healthcare solutions
is a patient-administration service that can be provided remotely.
So if you’re in the hospital in Melbourne or Sydney, your physician
could monitor your vital signs even while vacationing in Hawaii.
These and other challenges represent vital new opportunities
where IT — and CSC — can help chart the future.
Gavin Larkings is vice president and general manager of
CSC Australia.
Watch Gavin in the Video: Fueling the
Australian Economy
csc.com/AUSperspective.
Learn more about CSC Australia at
csc.com/au.
17
Financial services
iPad App
Appeals to
Younger clients
by Kim Henri Vandenhoute
As one of the oldest independent banks in Europe,
Van Lanschot has kept in step with client needs
consistently over its long history. But even this
centuries-old firm was surprised by the rapid
change in customer preferences.
Early versions of Van Lanschot’s online presence
were limited to online payment services and
statement viewing. The firm felt customers would
continue to put greater importance on private
banking than online access. But it soon became
clear that the next generation of investment
banking customers expected a different banking
experience — one where tablets play a key role.
Paul Timmermans, managing director at Van Lanschot, says the
expansion of the firm’s client base brought in a wave of younger
customers in their 30s and 40s who expected online banking
services at a higher level. “These are clients who are very familiar
with the online world in both their professional and private lives,”
he says. “They expect to have online access to both their investment portfolio and the information that we offer them in our
capacity as asset managers and investment advisors.”
Designing a future-oriented platform
Recognizing a significant change in customer needs, Van
Lanschot engaged CSC to develop a new Web portal. Original
features such as investment portfolio viewing were given a
fresh look. New features were added, including access to a wide
range of personalized financial information and research.
Portal architecture was designed for performance on a wide range
of browsers and devices — a notable upgrade from the previous
system. Every aspect of the system was designed to be as flexible
as possible to accommodate ever-changing customer needs.
Client: Van Lanschot
Challenge:
• Improve the banker’s online presence and services
for customers.
• Offer more services that are attractive to all (and
especially younger) generations.
Solution:
• A new multi-channel solution consisting of a new secured
Web portal, which features a fresh look for investment
portfolio viewing and upgraded personalization functionality
for research and financial information. An app for iPad was
also developed.
Results:
• The new portal is flexible, supporting a wide range of
browser versions.
• A specific app providing advanced portfolio management
services is also available for the iPad.
18
The industry quickly took note of the Van Lanschot project.
Banking & Finance recognized the firm’s new portal winner with
its 2011 ICT Innovation Award.
Following a successful rollout, the firm began anticipating
additional services it could offer from its new platform as it
sought to evolve a new multichannel organization. The evolution
of tablet computers presented the firm with an opportunity to
extend its innovative portal services to this new class of devices.
“We saw the steady rise of mobile devices, the tablet in particular,
with the iPad in the lead,” Timmermans says. “With the new portal
as a base to expand from, it was clear we could immediately seize
the occasion. iVan Lanschot would soon be a reality.”
The change from a face-to-face, single-channel institution to
one that serves customers via multiple channels isn’t a task that
happens overnight. Timmermans says it required a commitment
from the firm’s business group at all stages of the process, from
the original design through delivery.
The resulting iPad application
makes Van Lanschot one of the
first private banks to offer financial
information and research to clients
on a tablet computer.
Of the firm’s 140 employees, seven members of the business
group provided critical validation at each step, taking a leading
role on the project. The entire 10-member IT team was involved
as well. The firm also supported the change with a large dose
of business transformation coaching to ensure that everyone
was prepared.
From a technical perspective, making the Van Lanschot portal
accessible from a tablet required the coordination of multiple
technologies and companies, including IBM for mainframe
development, Thomson Reuters for front-office software,
Clear2Pay for online payment and UnifiedPost for the delivery
of digital account statements.
Effective project management was a key success factor,
Timmermans says, noting that a part of the bank’s systems is
hosted at IBM and Accenture in the Netherlands. “Initially, we
were going to manage the project ourselves, but we finally
entrusted that aspect to CSC,” he says.
Any undertaking of this magnitude often uncovers the need
to make additional changes. Van Lanschot’s iPad application
development was no exception. Designs called for an update to
Thomson Reuters’ eXimius front-office software and improvements to Van Lanschot’s server park, both significant projects in
their own right.
CSC’s plan to make the maximum use of Web services resulted
in a solution based on a service-oriented architecture and
housed in a cloud infrastructure. “It was a good idea to further
develop the underlying systems along with the modernization
project that we carried out. Everything now runs with greater
stability than ever before, exactly as an iPad user would expect,”
Timmermans says.
Offering information and research in a new way
The resulting iPad application makes Van Lanschot one of the
first private banks to offer financial information and research
to clients on a tablet computer. Clients receive a structured
view of their investment portfolio, including a clear overview
of risks, returns realized and maturities. Investors can break
down results by region, sector, share prices and more. iPad
users also have access to all the research Van Lanschot offers,
anytime, anywhere.
“The whole idea fits into the concept of private banking. With
Van Lanschot Private Banking Online and iVan Lanschot, we
are clearly differentiating ourselves from our competitors,”
Timmermans says. Recognizing the application’s popularity and
client service capabilities, Van Lanschot’s Netherlands-based
parent company has announced plans to make the application
available to clients of other subsidiaries. “We’re quite proud that
an initiative from a modest subsidiary was taken up in that way,”
Timmermans says.
For Van Lanschot the success of its iPad application confirms
the institution’s strategy; a multichannel approach with a central
focus on Internet access and mobility. Timmermans expects
that the investment will continue to provide multiple returns as
application use increases. “It’s ultimately about more than that,”
Timmermans notes. “Our clients are just very happy that we can
provide them with a solution via their iPads. And that may be
the most valuable return of the project.”
Kim Henri Vandenhoute is a senior consultant for
Multichannel Service Offerings, CSC Financial Services.
Learn more at
csc.com/banking.
About Van Lanschot
With a history of more than 270
years, Van Lanschot is one of
the oldest independent banks
in Europe. Its focus is on private
banking and providing services
related to asset management and
investment advice. Van Lanschot
manages approximately €50 billion
of assets. The Belgian subsidiary
was created in 1992 to serve Dutch
customers settling near the Belgian
border. Since that time, the firm has
expanded into the Belgian market.
19
Financial services
Is That
Really
You?
Authenticating your
identity for online
banking leaps forward
with mobile devices.
by Dale Coyner
When was the last time you stood
in line at a bank? It’s probably been
a while.
Instant payments, paperless check
deposits and one-touch transfers
have made online banking wildly
popular with customers. And as virtual
banking grows, the threat of fraudulent
payments and identity theft rises as well.
Financial transactions have always been
a popular target for thieves, although the
nature of the threat has changed over time.
Mike Groat, partner executive at Daon, a CSC
partner that supplies identity assurance software
for CSC’s ConfidentID™ Mobile platform, says it’s more
profitable today to conduct financial fraud electronically.
“Financial institutions face a number of threats, and adding
online and mobile banking increases the number of potential
avenues for thieves,” Groat says. “You have direct assaults on a
financial system as well as ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks that try to get between customers
and banks. That is becoming more prevalent with the use of mobile devices.”
Fraud isn’t limited to hackers pounding on a bank’s firewall. Sometimes it’s an inside job,
Groat says. “Some of the largest losses come from employees who misuse funds, engage in
unauthorized after-hours trading or [make] transactions that don’t follow policy,” he says.
20
Despite the risks, the popularity of online and mobile banking
services (and attendant cost savings for banks) means that
financial institutions will continue to develop and extend them,
even as the variety and sophistication of cyberattacks grow.
Does mobility equal security?
On the one hand, the use of smartphones and tablets provides
more devices for cybercriminals to target with malware and
Trojan apps that go after sensitive personal and financial data.
Conversely, those very same devices are playing an increasing
role in making mobile banking the most secure channel.
Geoffrey Weiss, director of channel solutions for banking and
credit services at CSC, says that having a second, independent
device involved in a transaction improves fraud deterrence.
“For example, while you’re making a money transfer on your
computer, this other device that’s not a party to the transaction
or ‘out of band’ can verify your action,” Weiss says.
That’s just the start, Weiss says. Smartphones are becoming
more capable with each revision, with more processing power
and onboard features that can be used to verify a person’s
identity with certainty.
“This allows us to verify a person’s identity based on more
than one factor,” Weiss adds. “The most secure solution
combines several checks. If you put together something you
know, like a PIN, something you have like a phone, and physical
characteristics like voice recognition, and even where you are,
that is the basis for a secure transaction.”
You’re holding the answer
Collecting all those factors in an easy-to-use way makes
today’s smartphone the perfect platform for verifying an
individual’s identity. Solutions such as CSC’s ConfidentID
Mobile use mobile devices to perform identity verification for
transactions conducted on that device, or as an additional
check for Web-based transactions.
Facial recognition is managed by the onboard camera while
the microphone picks up the spoken PIN. The number is
verified, as well as the speaker’s voice. Ownership of a device
can be confirmed to correspond with an account holder.
Location matters, too. Using the built-in GPS receiver, location
can be compared to an owner’s address. If you usually circulate
around Atlanta but a transaction request is on a mobile device
not registered to you and located in, say, eastern Asia, that
raises a red flag.
Liveness is another factor that today’s powerful devices can
tackle. Every voice has unique speech patterns, tone and timbre
that can be analyzed. Your face does, too. Adding a factor of
liveness to the mix eliminates the possibility that someone
could employ low-tech covert tactics such as a voice recording
or a static picture to spoof the system.
Authenticate
with Confidence
CSC’s ConfidentID Mobile User Authentication is a
biometric-enabled authentication solution that helps
you verify your customers’ identity beyond a shadow
of a doubt. Powered by Daon’s IdentityX engine, this
offering is part of the ConfidentID Mobile Security
Portfolio, CSC’s flexible, many-layered approach to security in the online banking environment.
Learn more at
csc.com/ConfidentID.
There’s more to come, too. Todd Hawkins, CSC’s director of
Identity Management Business Initiatives and ConfidentID
portfolio manager, anticipates that smart devices will gain the
ability to perform more verifications as onboard hardware
improves. “Within a generation or two, we’ll have cameras on
phones with enough resolution to take a picture of your iris to
verify your identity,” Hawkins says.
“We are using mobility to secure the mobile channel, as well as,
using the mobile channel to secure more traditional channels
like logical, remote and physical access,” he says.
Transparent authentication is the key
Using built-in capabilities such as the camera, microphone and
touch-screen is critical to the success of identity authentication
for consumer applications such as mobile banking.
Weiss says that any solution aimed at improving the security of
financial transactions has to be seamless. It has to be familiar and
easy to use,” he says. “That’s the advantage of ConfidentID on a
mobile device. Solutions that rely on special hardware you have
to add or configure create cost barriers and usability barriers.”
Hawkins agrees. “When you consider how much special hardware
it used to require to perform biometric authentication, it’s easy
to see why it wasn’t suitable for this type of application. Mobile
devices remove many of those barriers.”
That advance, Hawkins says, has laid the foundation for an
easy-to-use, multifactor solution for high-risk transactions that
requires nothing more than the device you’re holding in the
palm of your hand.
“ConfidentID Mobile ensures that you are who you say you are.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
Dale Coyner is a writer for CSC’s digital marketing team.
21
Healthcare
Scientists Explore
the Origin
of Outbreaks
Online
by Jim Battey
Client: National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Challenge:
• Provide IT infrastructure support to meet high volumes
of Internet traffic and help keep the world’s largest
medical repository up and running 24x7.
• Digitize and provide online access to a vast collection of
historical medical materials.
Solution:
• Designed and deployed a “best of breed” open source
software solution to enable the digitization of thousands
of historical documents, photos and videos.
• A veteran CSC team delivers technical expertise,
development skills and local knowledge to provide
ongoing support.
Results:
• Higher infrastructure capacity, improved security, 24x7
availability of online resources and more efficient use of
NLM computing resources.
• Ongoing success of the Digital Collections project and
reliable worldwide access to online resources, enabling
more than one billion searches each year.
22
When scientists need access to information on medical topics
such as human genetics and flu outbreaks, they turn to the
National Library of Medicine (NLM). As part of the world’s
largest repository of healthcare information, the NLM is home to
vast resources, including the principal DNA sequence database,
a key resource in researching the genetic factors underlying
human diseases.
Founded in 1836 and located on the campus of the National
Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., NLM plays a critical role in
enabling biomedical research. Elements of the library’s collection of
more than 18 million books, journals, manuscripts and audiovisuals
have been digitized and made available online.
NLM’s resources are searched more than one billion times each
year by users around the globe. Using a combination of local
knowledge and technical expertise, CSC teams with NLM staff
and other contractors to support the shared communications and
security infrastructure that helps NLM make these biomedical
resources available to the public and research community.
24x7 availability is imperative
Such an essential collection of resources needs to be reliable
and secure. Since 2001, CSC has provided IT infrastructure
services that help the library run efficiently. Over the years,
CSC’s work has included support for desktop and server
computing, communications networking, application development
and IT security, as well as support for green initiatives and data
center reengineering.
Wes Russell, the NLM’s head of network engineering, says CSC
delivers services in a reliable, efficient and effective manner. “It’s
all about the technical staff and their expertise, their knowledge,
skills and dedication in being able to support our multiple and
diverse systems,” Russell says.
NLM requires that services are run 24x7 to continuously support
the global medical community, and, Russell says, “The staff
is dedicated to doing that. They’re willing to work off-hours
and deal with issues, as well as work with other teammates to
resolve those problems to keep our services up and running.”
Russell points to cybersecurity as a good example of how CSC
is able to meet a significant technical challenge. CSC helped
reengineer NLM’s internal network, which included the design
and implementation of a number of security zones separated by
firewalls to protect various sets of private resources that have
restricted access.
“CSC staff was integral in implementing those systems and
monitoring our security, as well as responding to any kind of
incidents we might have, which are rare, but they do happen. So
it’s very important for us,” Russell says.
Tom Gigl, CSC’s program manager for NLM, says that CSC’s
local knowledge and a strong partnership with CSC strategic
teammate AAC Inc. are also indispensable. “We’ve been fortunate
to have the bulk of our team providing the same services for
five-plus years. The people on the ground have a lot of experience
as well as local knowledge of NLM.”
Medical resources go digital
CSC’s local knowledge came in handy when the NLM undertook
an ambitious digitization project in 2006. A massive digital
preservation repository, known as Digital Collections, gives
online visitors access to a wide range of historical medicalrelated materials, all of which are in the public domain.
Wei Ma, NLM’s applications branch chief, who led the digitization
efforts, says, “The content people are like librarians. They know
the content very well and know how to prioritize which historical
books and videos should be digitized first.”
Now, hundreds of rare documents, videos and photographs can
be accessed free of charge. Ma says the resources are especially
useful to epidemiologists studying the origins and outbreaks of
diseases, such as the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, which infected
some 500 million people.
In planning the digital repository, the CSC and NLM team
worked together to evaluate and then recommend a leading
open source software solution. The open source suite has
Fedora Commons, a digital asset management architecture,
at its core, combined with open source image server and
book viewer software. The repository is more than just a Web
application or database. Using semantic Web technology, it
stores manifestations of content that describes and interrelates
the materials using descriptive metadata.
A user looking for specific content in a video, for example, can
pinpoint just the part that is related to a search and not have
to view the entire video. “Without the strong contribution of
the technical development team, the Digital Collection project
wouldn’t have been successful. CSC staff, as part of the
technical development team, did a great job supporting the
Digital Collections project,” Ma says.
Russell adds, “CSC is involved in technical support of the
communications and security infrastructure that enables making
the library’s systems available to researchers and the public. If it
wasn’t for these reliable IT services, NLM’s mission of enabling
biomedical research, supporting healthcare and public health,
and promoting healthy behavior could not be fulfilled.”
Jim Battey is a writer for CSC’s digital marketing team.
23
Healthcare
Technology
Helps Fight a
Deadly Disease
by Jenny Mangelsdorf
The numbers are staggering. At least 1.8 million
people die from sepsis each year, and some say
that the bloodstream infection really kills closer to
18 million worldwide. What’s worse is that those
numbers are growing, fueled by an aging population
and antibiotic-resistant infection.
“Sepsis is going to be the dominant feature in the
medical landscape,” says Steven Simpson, professor
of medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care
Medicine at The University of Kansas Hospital and
co-director of the hospital’s sepsis team. “There’s no
escaping sepsis unless we do something about it.”
Since Simpson’s team began working to cut sepsis
mortality rates in 2005, the hospital has seen its
rates drop from 49% to 22% and savings increase by
$18 million annually. However, for Simpson and the
hospital, that is not good enough.
Learn more at
csc.com/health_services.
Client: The University of Kansas Hospital
Challenge:
• Lower patient mortality rates from bloodstream infection
• Speed detection of sepsis, a leading cause of death
in hospitals
• Leverage electronic health record data aggregation
and integration
Solution:
• CSC’s CareVeillance Clinical Surveillance tool
Results:
• Fewer readmissions and reduction of critical care
length of stay
• Decreased costs
• Reduced mortality rates
24
A key challenge with sepsis, which is a treatable condition when
caught early, is how quickly it becomes fatal. The chance of
death rises about 1.5% every five minutes treatment is delayed,
with the mortality rate jumping to 50% if treatment for septic
shock is delayed more than four hours.
“Fortunately, quickly catching sepsis is something our tool excels
at,” says Bryan Eckert, CSC Health Delivery Group senior principal.
A pioneering software tool
CSC developed a tool called CareVeillance™ Clinical
Surveillance, while working with the hospital, which is the
region’s premier academic medical center and one of the first
participants in the international Surviving Sepsis campaign.
CSC drew on its legacy of software development, data integration and data aggregation skills to create the tool, which
integrates patient data from disparate systems, analyzes and
connects this information, displays consolidated clinical data
focused on the condition and alerts clinicians that a patient is
showing early signs of sepsis.
“In a pilot project we are finding that CareVeillance is a very
useful tool and is almost always correct,” says Simpson, who
adds that they have found that CareVeillance is more than 99%
sensitive in its ability to find sepsis when it’s present and highly
accurate in diagnosing the disease. “CareVeillance is helping us
identify an extra two or three patients a day,” says Simpson.
Saving lives with technology
Unlike existing electronic health record (EHR) and data
warehouse systems, CareVeillance leverages new EHR data
about a patient and compares it, using complex clinical
algorithms, to existing data to identify conditions requiring
investigation or intervention. This gives caregivers the earliest
possible opportunity to assess and treat at-risk patients and to
ensure that best practice measures are delivered during critical
time frames. The solution also acts as a predictive tool to
identify patients at risk for re-admission.
In addition to saving lives, the tool promises to save in other
ways, too. Since its development, CSC’s tool has been certified
as an inpatient EHR module for quality reporting. By 2015, U.S.
hospitals that do not demonstrate meaningful EHR use will be
subject to reductions in Medicare fee reimbursements.
Jenny Mangelsdorf is a writer for CSC’s digital marketing team.
Connect
Care
Collaborate
Coordinated care is essential to meeting the healthcare expectations
of people across the world. You need a technology provider who
can make all of your systems work together. CSC is a global provider
of next-generation technology solutions serving public and private
sector healthcare clients in provider, payer and life sciences. Our
products and services support coordinated care, providing superior
returns on technology investments for our clients and improving
individual and population health outcomes for everyone. Learn more at csc.com/health_services.
25
CYBERSECURITY
How Hospitals Can
Immunize
AGAINST hackers
by Jared Rhoads, Richard Staynings and Ashif Jiwani
Cybercrime and data breaches are among
the most commonly cited worries keeping
healthcare CIOs awake at night. Recent
surveys show that roughly three-quarters
of healthcare organizations have suffered
some kind of data breach or security
incident in the past 12 months.
Hospitals and other healthcare organizations need to broaden
their focus on compliance and pursue a robust, integrated,
enterprise-type approach to securing data and other
key assets.
Under the U.S. Health Information Technology for Economic
and Clinical Health Act, hospitals and other organizations
can be fined up to $1.5 million per year for serious
security incidents.
Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services’
Office for Civil Rights issued for the first time a financial
penalty for a non-major breach (i.e., a breach affecting fewer
than 500 individuals). In this instance, a hospice company in
Idaho that reported the theft of a laptop will be required to
pay a $50,000 fine and agree to a corrective action plan.
The incident is believed to have affected 441 individuals.
26
The full cost of a breach, however, goes far beyond the fines.
According to Ponemon Institute, the cost of identifying and
notifying affected individuals — now mandatory under the
law — is on average $214 per record. There are also intangible
costs associated with compromised trust and reputation, as
well as other significant costs, including harm to health, or
even death.
Cybercrime is well-organized, and cybercriminals will go
after valuable information wherever it resides, including
within healthcare organizations. Typically, cybercriminals do
not distinguish based on public versus private sector, type
of institution or other such factors. Instead, they target the
most valuable information and sell it to the highest bidder.
According to the World Privacy Forum, a stolen medical
identity has a street value of $50 today, compared to $14 – $18
for a credit card number or $1 for a Social Security number.
Most hackers who infiltrate health IT systems are seeking
financial data, not medical information. In an analysis of 855
data breaches involving more than 174 million records from
the healthcare, financial services, retail and hospitality
industries, researchers found that such breaches are “almost
entirely the work of financially motivated organized criminal
groups, which typically attack smaller, low-risk targets to
obtain personal and payment data for various fraud schemes,”
according to a Verizon Communications 2012 Data Breach
Investigations Report.
BYOD presents new weaknesses
Cybercriminals constantly target new areas of perceived weakness.
Three of the newest trouble areas for healthcare organizations
are mobile devices, portable media and medical devices.
Mobile devices are targeted by cybercriminals interested
primarily in identity and financial theft. Although most breaches
still come from laptops and paper records, breaches related
to mobile devices are rising the fastest. According to a recent
CSC survey of IT executives, 57% of respondents named mobile
clients and unmanaged devices their top security challenge.
Resisting the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement,
however, is not the best solution. Rather, organizations
should design a secure way to allow employees to use their
own equipment to do their work without increasing risk to
the organization.
Portable media is another prime target, especially for
cybercriminals interested in identity theft, insurance fraud and
financial theft. Loss and theft of portable media have affected
more individuals than any other type of breach. Besides setting
and enforcing clear policies and procedures surrounding the
use of portable media, it is important to employ technical
safeguards as well.
Medical devices also need protection. These devices are a
new target of choice for cybercriminals out to wreak havoc
by causing equipment failures and malfunctions. To date, no
medical injuries in the United States have been reported as a
result of infected medical devices, but sophisticated malware
has been “running rampant,” according to some government
officials and hospital IT staff.
Gaining cyberconfidence
With lives at stake, security must involve more than locking
down individual applications and systems; today’s threats
require a holistic approach. Achieving cyberconfidence enables
organizations to engage securely with patients, partners and
others in a context of mutual trust. It is the knowledge that the
organization can react to any threat or incident with speed
and agility.
One step toward cyberconfidence is performing a
comprehensive risk assessment. An organization can undertake
its own risk assessment or enlist the help of outside experts.
Publicly available tools also can help.
Once healthcare organizations complete a comprehensive risk
analysis, security should be made part of an ongoing process
of improvement that ties together security, compliance, risk
management and corporate governance.
As security threats grow more complex and challenging to
keep up with, many organizations are turning to managed
security service providers for 24-hour network monitoring,
incident tracking and immediate incident response. This level of
detection and response is critical to an organization’s security.
A recent review of healthcare data breaches found that nearly
two-thirds persisted for months before they were detected,
giving criminals ample time to do damage.
Staying current with cyberthreats can be challenging,
but IT security should not hinder an organization’s growth
or prevent it from using data assets to improve care delivery,
quality and financial performance. With increased vigilance
and the right technological tools, healthcare organizations can
achieve true confidence in their cybersecurity.
Jared Rhoads is a senior research specialist with CSC’s Global
Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices.
Richard Staynings is a CSC cybersecurity and privacy officer.
Ashif Jiwani is a partner with CSC’s Healthcare Group.
5 Ways to Protect Healthcare Data
Regardless of your current risk profile, consider these ideas and
recommendations at your next high-level security meeting:
1. Deploy advanced network monitoring. Organizations need
automated tools to assess vulnerabilities and look for breaches.
Seek out advanced tools to self-test the effectiveness of your
firewall and consider egress solutions, which automatically
monitor what is being sent outside the walls of an organization,
where it is being sent and when.
2. Develop a 21st-century strategy for mobile devices and
medical devices. You cannot fight the bring-your-own-device
movement, but you can manage it and help employees make
good decisions. Embrace security practices that are easy for
end users. Try integrating part of the IT security function with
the biomedical engineering services department.
3. Make system authentication multifactor and adaptive.
Multifactor authentication systems are much preferred over
systems that use only passwords. Multifactor systems are
expensive and take a long time to deploy, so get a head start
before they become required.
4. Test yourself by contracting with ethical hackers. Using
ethical hackers to try to find exploits from the outside can help
to identify more obscure vulnerabilities that may have been
overlooked. Ask ethical hackers to test your technical environment as well as the training of your staff (i.e., through social
engineering).
5. Consider whether purchasing cyberinsurance might be right
for you. New insurance products on the market are designed
specifically with hospitals and other healthcare organizations in
mind. While insurance won’t make your systems more secure, it
can help you feel more confident about your ability to survive a
major adverse incident.
Learn more at
csc.com/health_services.
27
CYBERSECURITY
CYBERSECURITY FOR
INDUSTRIAL CONTROL SYSTEMS
THE TIME IS NOW
by Edward J. Liebig
The need for strong cybersecurity on
industrial control systems (ICS) has
never been greater, or more urgent.
These systems — vital to the chemical,
electrical, water, oil and other industries — help companies control their
field devices, collect data and detect
problems. And they’re increasingly
under attack.
Cybersecurity events affecting ICS have increased by 2,100%
over the past three years, according to data from the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security’s ICS Cyber Emergency
Response Team. These include targeted attacks by well-funded
organizations, including both nation-states and terrorist groups.
Yet today’s ICS environment is difficult to secure, mainly because
older approaches no longer work. Historically, ICS environments
had been protected from cyberattacks by physically isolating
them, a practice known as “air gapping.” ICS environments were
also considered low-priority targets. After all, these systems
controlled not money, but industrial processes.
Now all that has changed. The attacks are real, and they’re
increasing. At the same time, businesses in nearly every industry
are under pressure to do more with less, and that includes their
ICS environments. These systems are now expected to provide
insights into business metrics, increase supply chain efficiencies,
provide business intelligence, and support mobile computing.
Air gapping is no longer a viable approach.
What’s more, ICS environments were never designed to support
these new business requirements. Many IC systems, in fact,
are quite old; some still run on Windows 98 or Windows
2000, versions of the popular OS no longer supported by
Microsoft. While the solution would seem to be simple
— just upgrade — the reality is more complex. Some
hardware and underlying applications can’t run on the
newer Windows versions. And many of the vendors of
these older applications can’t write software patches,
because they’re no longer in business.
28
Another challenge stems from how ICS environments are
connected — or, more accurately, not connected. An ICS setup
typically involves discrete processes known as “control loops.”
For example, imagine a chemical plant process that combines
two chemicals, blends them, then heats them, and finally
packages the result. Each step could involve a separate control
loop, one that does not communicate with the others. Worse,
the control loops may not use TCP/IP, the common protocol
for both networks and security tools.
Combine all these factors, and
you get an ICS environment that’s
complex and difficult to secure.
Companies must balance what’s
reasonable from a security viewpoint
with what’s feasible for the business.
Policy puzzle
Policies are another piece of the ICS cybersecurity puzzle.
Security policies essentially codify industry best practices.
Unfortunately, many common security policies can’t work in
the ICS environment. For example, consider the practice of
giving all users a unique user ID and password. Basic, right?
Now imagine a factory control room staffed by six or seven
engineers. The control-room displays show critical processes
from across the plant; therefore, they can never go dark. But
what happens when one work shift ends and the next begins?
The plant can’t let the system go down while the new work
crew logs in. Somehow, an alternative to individual logins and
passwords must be created and implemented.
In other words, ICS security differs dramatically from traditional
LAN/WAN security. You can’t blindly apply the same policies
or standards to both. You must think about each critically.
How? Mainly, by assessing risk. CSC has embraced a process
that examines all devices in an ICS setup and then evaluates
the ramifications or risks they could pose to the business.
This involves a review of several key risk factors, including life,
health and safety, environmental release, monetary risk and
reputational risk. Next, we review existing security standards
to apply not the letter of the law, but its spirit. Then we
cobble together a new standard — one that applies to the ICS
environment while also striking a balance between the need
for security, the relative areas of risk, and the unique demands
of industrial controls. For any company with an at-risk ICS
environment, that’s one safe bet.
Learn more at
csc.com/cybersecurity.
Edward J. Liebig is the CTO of cybersecurity consulting at CSC.
Trends in Cybersecurity: A Forecast for 2013
by Sam Visner
The challenges of securing enterprise data, keeping data
private and protecting intellectual property may seem daunting. But fasten your seatbelts: In 2013 we’re also going to start
integrating these concerns with the security of systems used
for manufacturing, supply chains and critical infrastructures.
Here’s what I expect to see in 2013:
Getting Integrated: This is the year when we’ll finally get
serious about viewing cybersecurity from an integrated
perspective. By integrated, I mean moving away from simply
protecting individual desktops and databases, and instead
protecting the entire enterprise. That includes mobile devices,
industrial control systems, manufacturing supply chains and
critical IT infrastructures (including the cloud).
Control Systems: 2013 will also be the year when people
accept the need to get serious about safeguarding the cybersecurity of not just information, but also the systems that rely
on that information for control and management. Consider, for
example, the control systems of a power plant or hospital.
Different Strokes: We’ll become more aware this year of
the two differing, even competing, visions of cybersecurity.
In much of the West, cybersecurity means protecting the privacy and security of confidential information. But elsewhere,
another approach is emerging.
Going Mobile: Bring your own device (BYOD) is here to stay,
and as a result, the world of cybersecurity will get more interesting in 2013. Employees have shown they’re willing to spend
their own money to buy the devices they want. Now enterprises will need to spend some of their money, too, ensuring
that these devices — and the applications and databases they
can access — are secure.
Double-Barreled: Organizations should start to offer cybersecurity from not one, but two perspectives: architecture and
management. By architecture, I mean taking an integrated
view of enterprise-wide security. And by management, I mean
taking a top-down approach to cybersecurity. Too many organizations try to secure systems from the bottom up.
Invest in Security: I hope this will be the year when we make
a far more powerful and enduring investment in the science,
technology, development and engineering behind cybersecurity
technologies. It’s time to reinvigorate our academic base,
research base, science base and technology base.
Big Data, Big Threats: In all the excitement over the potential of data mining, we mustn’t forget to secure and protect
that data. Big data lets us unlock value — but only to the
extent that we have confidence in our data’s security. If we
don’t know where the data comes from, don’t know whether
it’s secure, and don’t know whether it’s been tampered with,
then we can’t use it for decision making.
Sam Visner is VP and general manager of cybersecurity at CSC.
Watch 5 Cyber Predictions for 2013 at
csc.com/cyber2013.
29
CLOUD COMPUTING
Understanding
Cloud
and
How to Buy It
An Outsourcing Center Cloud Buyer’s Guide
Reveals How to Optimize a Cloud Contract.
by Jim Battey
More sourcing professionals are evaluating cloud
contracts from a variety of service providers. While cloud
is often called another type of outsourcing, the contract
terms, service level agreements and pricing are very
different. In order to provide a better understanding of
cloud computing and how it differs from traditional IT
outsourcing, CSC and EMC sponsored the Outsourcing
Center Cloud Buyer’s Guide to highlight some
distinctions that require special attention. Here’s
an excerpt of that report.
The value of cloud
The advent of cloud brings to enterprises new agility, speed and flexibility.
Cloud enables them to contain capital expenditures, reduce operating costs,
and scale up and down with ease to meet fluctuating market demands.
For the past few years, everyone’s been talking about cloud, and for good reason.
This delivery model has changed how companies work and the speed at which they
can respond to changing market demands. The fast provisioning, dynamic scalability
and pay-as-you-go cost model deliver big advantages to businesses and more fluidity
to users.
The cloud model: delivery types
The cloud model is a measured service that promotes availability and delivers key
benefits, such as on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling
and rapid elasticity. There are three basic cloud delivery models, and enterprises can
employ one model or a combination of different models:
Private or internal cloud: Cloud services are provided solely for an organization and
are managed by the organization or a third party — or a combination of both. These
services may exist on the customer’s choice of premises. This is similar to a traditional
data center environment, but the services are provided within the cloud capabilities,
not as complete IT service delivery.
30
Public cloud: Cloud services are available to the public
and owned by an organization selling cloud services, such
as Amazon, Google, Rackspace or other cloud businesses.
Typically, a public cloud solution leverages a shared
infrastructure service for all customers and may or may not
enable the end customer to specify or even identify where data
resides or applications are executed.
Hybrid cloud: An integrated cloud services arrangement that
includes a cloud model and something else. For example,
data stored in a private cloud or a customer’s database in a
traditional infrastructure is manipulated by a program running
in the public cloud.
Cloud benefits over outsourcing
Cloud computing provides a threefold advantage over the
traditional IT outsourcing (ITO) model: agility, predictability in
costs (including moving expenses from CAPEX to OPEX), as
well as potential cost savings, particularly when compared to
a nonleveraged model. The three basic types of cloud service
offerings are Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service
(PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
The cloud brings cost benefits in that enterprises can quickly
leverage new technology to be more efficient when compared
to introducing new technology by traditional means. On the
infrastructure-management side, the benefits result from
using a shared, multitenant infrastructure or by consolidating
a company’s infrastructure through virtualization. On the
application run-and-maintain side, cloud allows for a more
leveraged shared-services model for applications with which
the supplier has competence and capacity.
On the application side, cloud benefits result from an
environment that can be quickly established for application
development, testing, QA and staging for production. Being
able to replicate in a low-cost environment to reconfigure,
change, test or stage before moving to production is a
definite advantage. This saves time, accelerates application
development to meet critical business or mission requirements,
and provides a higher level of quality across an organization.
How to buy cloud services
Cloud agreements require a living document of business
requirements, containing only those technical requirements
that are absolutely necessary. When soliciting cloud services,
enterprises should be stating their specific business challenges
and any explicit requirements they may have for that system —
such as interconnectivity, middleware or data exchange.
Because every provider defines a virtual CPU (vCPU) differently,
companies need to ask some specific questions to adequately
compare services in the cloud. When assessing a cloud solution,
consider the following:
vCPU: It’s important to understand how the provider is
measuring CPU capacity: in gigahertz, number of cores or some
combination. Smart customers should request that providers
compare their measurement to a standard set by the customer,
using the Intel Xeon X processor as a baseline, and assess how
many vCPUs it takes to equal that capacity.
RAM and Storage: Some vendors do not include RAM as a
measured service because, as a commodity, it is a very small
fraction of the total cost. Regarding storage, in the majority of
cases, customers should base their cost structure on persistent
storage only.
Network: It is important to accurately estimate the volume
of data traffic the network solution may require, so either
dedicated connections or an expansion of current capacity can
be planned prior to implementation.
Capacity Planning and Usage: Customers can opt for
Capacity on Demand, which typically refers to a specific set of
circumstances in the private cloud that lets a customer reserve a
minimum capacity but lets the usage “burst,” with the customer
paying for the additional capacity only when using it. Or,
customers can opt for Guaranteed Capacity, in which a “block”
of computing resources is purchased, but not all of it used due to
any number of reasons; however, the capacity has a finite limit.
Support: The single most important point to consider is the
delineation of support between the provider and the customer.
In most instances, management and support ends either at
the virtual hardware level or at the OS level, with all additional
application support provided by the customer.
Cloud contracts are less complex than traditional ITO contracts
but also less negotiable, because customers are buying a
bundled service. A typical cloud contract will have little flexibility in negotiating terms and penalties. The only real option in a
true cloud implementation will be a credit for downtime, with
no enhancements for loss of business-critical functionality.
The Cloud Buyer’s Guide
The Cloud Buyer’s Guide was created by the Outsourcing
Center (outsourcing-center.com) and sponsored by CSC
and EMC. CSC provides cloud solutions for the enterprise
that are secure, reliable, easy to use and supported by
an innovative business model; it offers the only OPEX
private cloud — CSC BizCloud™ — billed as a service and
ready for workloads in just 10 weeks.
Download the full version of the
Cloud Buyer’s Guide at
csc.com/CloudBuyersGuide.
Learn more at
csc.com/cloud.
31
CLOUD COMPUTING
OVERCOMING
THE FEAR
OF CLOUD
Results from the 2012 Cloud
Computing Security Survey
by Jenny Mangelsdorf
Despite cloud’s stratospheric adoption rates among businesses,
governments and personal users, lingering doubts about data
security remain. Information Security Media Group’s 2012 Cloud
Computing Security Survey found security concerns are still topof-mind for users considering cloud adoption.
The CSC-sponsored survey examines cloud security concerns, as
well as how risks are being addressed through policy, technology
and vendor management. The survey queried senior
leaders who are involved with cloud computing decision
making in their organizations and help determine their
organizations’ IT and/or IT security budgets.
The survey found that nearly one-third of respondents’
organizations haven’t used any cloud architecture,
citing worries about data protection as their
“greatest reservation,” followed by “enforcement
of security policies” and “data loss.”
“Data protection is a particularly important
concern,” says Sam Visner, vice president
and general manager, cybersecurity.
“Organizations need to ensure that their cybersecurity policies
and protections cover information assurance — particularly as
they seek to unlock the value of information and big data and
use it to make high-value decisions regarding customer strategy,
public policy and national security. The survey shows we still have
some way to go to allay these types of cybersecurity concerns.”
Almost three-fourths of the respondents reported that security
concerns prevent them from adopting many cloud services.
Of the services they currently or will shortly use, application
hosting tied email/messaging at the top of the list, both at 34%,
with data storage following at 29%, collaboration software at
25% and application development/testing at 23%.
Popular Offerings
What cloud services does your organization have or will shortly
deploy? (top five answers listed)
Application hosting
34%
Email/messaging
34%
29%
Data storage
25%
Collaboration software
23%
App dev/testing
Vendors, trust and risk
Tied to cloud security are issues such as cloud vendors’ trustworthiness, risk, ultimate responsibility and the cloud’s effect on the bottom line. More than two-thirds of the survey’s respondents expect
cloud computing will save their organizations money. When asked
about the benefits of cloud computing, respondents ranked cost
savings at the top, followed by better scalability and improved flexibility as second and third, respectively.
Even though survey respondents believe in the cloud’s benefits,
approximately 40% of respondents’ organizations had allocated
just 10% or less of their IT budgets on public, community and hybrid
clouds. Nearly 40% hadn’t budgeted for these types of clouds at all.
When organizations use the cloud, they believe that trust is key
to adoption. More than 85% stated that external certification of
a cloud provider is crucial. To reduce risk, 66% of respondents
used a third-party organization to “certify or attest a cloud
provider’s security,” whereas only 7% reported not verifying
provider security in any way.
Checking Out Cloud Providers
What are the primary ways your organization verifies the
security your cloud provider offers? (top six answers listed)
35%
Third-party attestation
28%
Conduct own assessment
Joint vulnerability
testing with provider
Accept word of provider
7%
We don’t verify
7%
Follow lead of another
company similar to yours
32
16%
5%
“Information technology professionals in general, and CIOs in
particular, need to be informed about the controls necessary
to protect their operations and the providers’ approach to
meeting those controls,” says Visner. “Those contemplating
the acquisition of cloud services should look carefully at how
security certification or attestation is being performed, and
who is performing it.”
The Guardians
Who’s responsible for ensuring security of cloud resources?
Cloud provider
IT or IT security organization
Business side/data owner
For U.S. federal government respondents, 57% said they use
third-party providers to vet cloud providers’ security. That
will change as a new U.S. initiative called the Federal Risk and
Authorization Management Program becomes operational
this year. Under the initiative, the government will require
agencies to use third-party assessment organizations to
independently verify and validate that cloud providers meet
security requirements.
While 79% of respondents stated that security is a “high
priority” when evaluating a cloud provider, only 41% believe
they have adequate policies and procedures to enable safe
and secure cloud use. Just 50% of respondents also stated
that internal audit reviews provide appropriate feedback to
improve cloud security. Two reasons respondents cited for this
low confidence in internal audits is a lack of education and
sophistication in many cloud initiatives.
To enhance confidence, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL), an early cloud adopter, has created a Cloud Computing
Commodity Board, whose members span JPL, from departments
such as finance and acquisitions to individuals such as the
scientists and researchers who will be using the cloud.
“We don’t put everything in one cloud because different clouds
are good at different things,” says Tom Soderstrom, JPL chief
technology officer/IT, in the survey report. “So far we have data
in 10 different clouds, and we let the users dictate which one is
the stronger.”
Ultimate responsibility
Regardless of how well vetted a cloud provider’s security may
be, respondents show different views on who ultimately has
responsibility for security.
“Whether you put [your data] in the cloud or in the trunk
of your car, it’s your responsibility,” says Françoise Gilbert, IT
Law Group managing director, in the survey report. “It may
be even more responsibility than before because there are
situations where the cloud provider does not have a clue
about the data that you have ... because that’s not
their business.”
Just more than half of the respondents agree with Gilbert, with
38% handing responsibility to the IT or IT security organization,
and 14% giving it to the business side/data owner. However,
48% of respondents give responsibility for ensuring security
of cloud resources to the cloud provider.
48%
14%
38%
“One of the things people thought [was], ‘Maybe we could
get out from under some of this risk if we move things to the
cloud,’” says David Matthews, City of Seattle deputy chief
information security officer, in the survey report. “We just have
to assume that we’ve got, if anything, maybe more risk, or a
different kind anyway.”
As enterprise computing continues to move to the cloud,
ultimately security will be the IT security professional’s
responsibility, the survey reports. However, the survey adds, in
taking that responsibility, professionals should partner with their
organization’s IT and business groups as well as the cloud provider.
Jenny Mangelsdorf is a writer for CSC’s digital marketing team.
6 Principles for Effective Cloud Computing
ISACA, the professional association focused on IT
governance, says organizations adopting cloud should
adhere to the following principles:
• Enablement: Plan for cloud computing as a strategic
enabler, rather than as an outsourcing arrangement or
technical platform.
• Cost/benefit: Evaluate the benefits of a cloud acquisition
based on a full understanding of the costs of cloud
compared to the costs of other technology solutions.
• Enterprise risk: Take an enterprise risk management
perspective to manage the adoption and use of cloud.
• Capability: Integrate the full extent of capabilities that
cloud providers offer with internal resources, to provide a
comprehensive technical support and delivery solution.
• Accountability: Manage accountabilities by clearly
defining internal and provider responsibilities.
• Trust: Make trust an essential part of cloud solutions,
building trust into all business processes that depend on
cloud computing.
Download the full Cloud Computing
Security Survey report at
csc.com/CloudReport2012.
33
CLOUD COMPUTING
HOW ‘EVERYTHING AS A SERVICE’
CAN SAVE CIOs MONEY
Cloud computing is changing the
way IT serves the enterprise. Today,
nearly any type of hardware, software,
IT process or business process can
be offered as a cloud-based service.
It’s called “Everything as a Service”
(XaaS), and the benefits to the
enterprise include greater agility,
higher levels of innovation, faster
responsiveness to market
changes, and a new, improved
ability to contain costs and
reduce the need for capital.
by Jim Battey
XaaS is a combination of utility-based
offerings that can be consumed on
a flexible per-seat, per-month model,
based on usage. Companies with broad
technology portfolios such as CSC are able
to bundle as-a-service offerings and deliver to
CIOs only the products and services they want
and need.
Wendy Hartzell, CSC’s CIO for Global Sales and
Marketing, sees XaaS as a paradigm shift in IT. “We
are in the midst of one of the most exciting times
in technology, fueled by the combination of mobile
devices and emerging XaaS capabilities,” she says.
“This is requiring an overhaul of our thoughts
around IT, the IT department, budgeting models,
and in fact, ‘everything.’”
Research firm Gartner also views as-a-service as a
significant trend. According to an August 31, 2012
report, “Market Trends: Cloud Business Process as a
Service Outsourcing Trends,” by Cathy Tornbohm,
a research vice president at Gartner, “Cloud and
‘as a service’ are being promoted as great ways for
customers to cut costs and access technologies and
34
services quickly.” The report also says, “To clients, the
attractive marketing features of most as-a-service
cloud offerings are lower costs, pay-as-you-go per
transaction, limited or no capital investment and
increased speed to solution.”
As cloud computing emerges as a viable enterprise
strategy, CIOs have more options than ever to
choose from. But how does XaaS reduce costs, and
how does everything fit together?
Flexible model
As CSC’s executive director of Global Unified
Communications and Collaboration Solutions, Dean
Fernandes helps customers craft their IT strategies.
“What CIOs are looking for today is a way to manage
costs,” he says. “And they want their costs to be
usage based. They want to pay for things such as
email storage on an ‘as-you-go’ basis, and they also
want the model to be flexible enough that it can be
delivered either on premises or in the cloud.”
For example, enterprises can experience dramatic
swings in network traffic, Fernandes says. “It’s very
seasonal, and this is especially true when you have
a contact-center business where there are peak call times
and non-peak call times,” he says. To accommodate these
fluctuations, cloud technology provides infrastructure flexibility,
giving CIOs the choice of deploying a private cloud, a public
cloud or a hybrid.
XaaS reduces costs in that you pay for only what you use, says
Fernandes. “Our clients want to go from a fixed-cost model
to a variable-cost model, based on usage,” he says. “If you
understand your usage and your usage goes up or down, that’s
what you want to pay. You don’t want to pay for the capacity
you’re not using.”
Hartzell adds, “The flexibility introduced by XaaS will introduce
a more dynamic element to the budgeting process. There will
be a shift from the major long-term capital investments needed
for traditional on-premises systems to subscription-based, as-aservice offerings.”
Integrating everything
Since XaaS is all about everything, a key challenge for CIOs is
how to integrate everything. “At CSC, we have been building
our portfolio around as-a-service, and we have the ability to
integrate various services together and provide our customers
a per-month, per-user bill based on their requirements,”
Fernandes says.
For instance, in the area of unified communications, CSC
offers a virtualized environment on a per-seat, per-user basis.
“Not every user in the company uses the same features, so
why should customers pay for features they’re not using?”
Fernandes asks.
Fernandes says people should be able to collaborate and talk
to each other in the way they want to. The various as-a-service
models provide employees diverse ways to communicate
and help make them more productive. “With mobility and
the consumerization of IT, we are able to communicate very
effectively across all the mediums on iPads, iPhones or other
devices wherever we are and whenever we want to,” he says.
The best news for CIOs is that XaaS lets technology
professionals concentrate on what they do best. “XaaS offers
great opportunity for the IT department to redirect focus to
more forward-thinking and strategic initiatives while confidently
leveraging XaaS offerings,” Hartzell says.
Evergreen model
The beauty of XaaS also lies in the fact that an evergreen model
is built into it. “One of our customers’ biggest complaints is that
after three to five years, the technology becomes obsolete.”
With XaaS, Fernandes says, “Whenever we have an update, we
will update our customers’ environment as part of the cost. That
way, they are always up to date with the hardware and software,
and we continue to manage that service for them.”
In Gartner’s report “Market Trends: Cloud Business Process as
a Service Outsourcing Trends,” August 31, 2012, author Cathy
Tornbohm observes that as-a-service offerings are increasingly
being configured for specific industries. “Options for buying
business services have never been more varied, with heavily
customized offerings still being available and a host of very
prescriptive, potentially configurable offerings emerging,” the
report states.
The financial services industry is especially ripe to benefit from
XaaS, Fernandes says: “Some of our biggest financial services
customers are looking at using multiple portfolios and offerings
from across CSC.” CSC’s vast network of partnerships and
alliances serves as a solid foundation for making XaaS happen.
Fernandes says, “CSC can offer as-a-service subscription models
only if our partners help us get there — they have to provide a
special licensing model.”
Through it all, Fernandes says, the key for CIOs is to identify which
cloud option and what as-a-service offerings best meet their
needs: “CSC can tie the various offerings together and funnel
those to the customers so they get a bundled solution of all the
products and services that we offer in an as-a-service model.”
3 Flavors of Cloud
Cloud-based services are available in several varieties, giving CIOs and their enterprises a wide range of
choices and options. But choosing the best solution can
be complicated. Here are three main approaches to take:
•Private cloud: Offered on an enterprise’s private
network, this approach provides the highest levels of
security and control. But it also requires the highest
levels of staffing and equipment, which can limit or
even cancel the cost savings.
•Public cloud: Helps an enterprise reduce its need for
capital, staff, hardware, software and maintenance.
Public clouds also provide an enterprise with added
flexibility and speed. The tradeoffs include less control
and, possibly, lower levels of security.
•Hybrid cloud: Combines the strengths of public and
private clouds. For example, in a setup known as
“cloudbursting,” a retailer that normally runs its applications on a private cloud could rely on a third-party
public cloud during periods of high activity.
Learn more at
csc.com/cloud.
35
research
Where
‘Mad men’
meets
‘math men’
by Patricia Brown
An interview
with Frank Cutitta
Research Associate,
CSC Leading Edge Forum
36
Marketing is marketing, technology is technology, data is data,
and never the three shall meet — right? Not so, says Frank
Cutitta, a research associate in CSC’s Leading Edge Forum,
which provides clients a knowledge base and global network
of innovative thought leaders on the current and future role of
IT. To find out why, CSC World, spoke recently with Cutitta. An
edited version of that conversation follows.
How can IT and marketing learn to cooperate and coordinate?
Cutitta: We’re researching that right now with our Weapons of
Mass Discussion™ project, which is an offshoot of the “socially
awkward” research we completed last year. That research
looked into the relationship — or lack thereof — between
marketing and IT. We found there really were two cultures. In
some organizations, it’s a pitched battle, while in others, more
of a “friendly fire” situation.
Either way, there’s still the age-old stereotype that IT is the “land
of slow and no,” and marketing is the realm of unguided missiles.
The truth is somewhere in between, of course. But many people
still believe that IT’s major function is simply to keep the lights
on, while marketing is much more customer-facing.
We’ve also found a great deal of anxiety among CIOs and other
IT professionals. They worry about marketing taking share
and control of IT budgets. CIOs also see marketing absorbing
traditional IT functions, mainly in a quest for greater agility. And,
in an age of instantaneous metrics, there’s even a difference
between how IT and marketing define agility. This has a bearing
on investments, because a lot of marketing technology doesn’t
look like traditional IT. Marketing doesn’t have to worry about
email, databases, networks and the like. Yet many other things
that walk like IT and quack like IT are now part of marketing’s budget.
technologist. But that’s like saying that if I take a physics course
and a biology course, I could become a biophysicist. It’s just
not that simple. What’s needed instead are people who think
in a way that combines both marketing and technology. It’s like
learning a second language; when you start dreaming in French,
you know you’ve got it. The same is true here.
You mean things such as social media?
Cutitta: Yes. IT often doesn’t have a personal relationship with
social media. In fact, in both our socially awkward research and
other surveys we’ve done, CIOs and other IT professionals tend
to view social media as little more than using LinkedIn as a CV
or resume service. They don’t see social media from the conversational marketing point of view.
Could this be resolved by creating C-level positions that
combine marketing and IT?
Cutitta: In some cases there will be chief marketing information
officers, chief information marketing officers, perhaps even chief
marketing data officers. So we can see the development of a
whole new alphabet soup.
Job titles aside, our research shows that organizations need new
skill sets to reflect the rapid coevolution of IT, marketing and data.
These skill sets will differ significantly from those of the past.
It relates to what I call the biophysicist problem. In IT and
marketing, we think that if someone has taken a marketing
course and an IT course, [he or she] could become a marketing
Then, making it even more complicated, we need to add data.
So now you’ll be seeing the convergence of IT, marketing
and data. This will herald a new way of thinking. It may also
give data scientists an advantage over IT professionals. Data
scientists already possess many IT skills, and it’s relatively
easy for them to acquire additional behavioral marketing and
psychology skills.
What can CIOs do to improve the situation?
Cutitta: CIOs need to develop personal branding strategies on
a global scale. This will help them enhance their careers, be
viewed as legitimate partners by other parts of the organization,
and form new alliances among IT, marketing and data.
Data is a separate issue. You might suppose that anything
having to do with data automatically belongs in the IT department. But we’re finding new organizations that cannibalize both
marketing and IT. We’re also finding that less-than-agile business intelligence organizations can fall victim to new big data
and predictive behavior groups.
37
You mean by way of “shadow IT”?
Cutitta: Yes, and we’re seeing a lot of it. In the past, it was
limited to marketing stealing IT people to create agile,
technology-powered marketing programs. But now, new
data organizations are emerging that are independent of IT
and marketing. Within these organizations, data scientists
are setting up shadow IT and shadow marketing. While they
operate in a world that’s separate from marketing and IT, they’re
also dependent on them.
In response, marketing is saying, “Wait a second! Data is now
part of social media. I need that information for my metrics.”
At the same time, IT is saying, “Hold on. We’ve always handled
data. Why aren’t we handling this?”
So it behooves both marketing and IT to look closely at
how data has evolved. In the past, data was like a rear-view
mirror, showing us historical data. Now, it’s more like the
front windshield, giving us a much more predictive view.
was coming from customer relationship management (CRM)
systems and finance feeds, IT was able to hold onto it. Mainly
for historical and legacy reasons, this data was considered the
domain of IT. But now, as data becomes more predictive — and
as data intersects with both the science of “why they buy” and
technology-driven loyalty programs — a new way of thinking
has emerged.
One example is the way Target has identified women customers
in their first trimester of pregnancy — in at least one case, even
before the father knew the baby was coming! Target essentially triangulates the shopping patterns of women customers
based on tiny, obscure buying “blips.” Maybe a woman buys
a new vitamin, an organic food, or something else that seems
unrelated to her pregnancy. But in this way, Target can pretty
accurately determine when a woman customer is in her first
trimester of pregnancy. Then the retailer uses that information
for targeted messaging. Target’s research shows if it captures
women at this earliest stage, they are more likely to consider
Target a preferred supplier after their baby is born and, more
importantly, as their family grows.
Could data scientists be the ones to bridge the IT/marketing gap?
So data marketing involves far more than just social media?
Cutitta: Certainly, they add a third party to the relationship. But
we’re still trying to determine how data science operates within
the organization. Is it independent, or is it really an extension of
IT and/or marketing?
We’re also at a moment when CEOs are fed up with all this
infighting. As a workaround, some CEOs have established innovation centers that report to them and incorporate IT, marketing
and data science. It may be that where IT/marketing alliances
fail, data-minded CEOs can succeed. Certainly, our research
shows that when a marketing-technology or data-science
deployment is driven from the top, it has a much greater
chance of success.
Cutitta: Yes. It’s part of the “Internet of Things.” We have literally
hundreds of new kinds of feeds, and these make data different
from what it had been before.
Of course, this is also related to the phenomenon of big data. I
like to say that the “big” is actually a verb: We’ve got to “big” the
data. Though it doesn’t mean you must have petabytes of data.
For CIOs and others in IT, data is a big challenge. They must
look at the unstructured, conversational data coming from
blogs, customer feedback and the help desk. Thomson Reuters,
for example, has nearly 19,000 indices it tracks, based on the
intersection of news and social media feeds.
Has something important changed the nature of data?
Cutitta: We’ve always had database managers, and they tended
to be part of IT. Every now and then, you’d see an instance
where data was totally independent. But because much data
Target has identified women
customers in their first trimester of
pregnancy — in at least one case,
even before the father knew the
baby was coming! Target essentially
triangulates the shopping patterns
of women customers based on tiny,
obscure buying “blips.”
38
Typically, that’s outside the mentality of IT as we know it. Yet
enterprise IT is increasingly under pressure to turn unstructured
data into a corporate and competitive asset. When we talk
about “weapons of mass discussion,” that information — the
ability to optimize conversational content — is, in effect, the
enriched uranium.
You seem to be making a distinction between content
and data. Why?
Cutitta: You can’t optimize data unless you optimize the content
that generates it. This data can be traditional (print/broadcast),
online, social or conversational. Then IT has to look at what I call
the “alchemy of content” as inseparable from data. That means
inculcating a culture of content as data, then developing an intimate relationship with the content developers in the enterprise.
For example, what are the characteristics of the content that let
me make a supposition about what a recent engagement meant?
This is essentially a lab test on content. We want to quantify
data’s characteristics, much as a physician might analyze your
blood sugar or cholesterol level. Needless to say, this is quite a
stretch for IT. But in the new “content as data” culture, it is an
essential skill.
“CIOs need to develop personal
branding strategies on a global
scale. This will help them enhance
their careers, be viewed as legitimate
partners by other parts of the
organization, and form new alliances
among IT, marketing and data.”
Anything else IT executives can do to retain their
marketing relevance?
Cutitta: CIOs should get more involved in the social enterprise,
as opposed to customer-facing social media. Mainly because
the social enterprise is, like CRM, still seen as an IT concern.
Also, because marketing tends to have a much more indirect
relationship with the internal social enterprise, this presents an
opportunity for IT.
Besides, the social enterprise is a great place for CIOs to get
their feet wet. By using platforms such as Jive, Chatter and
Yammer, CIOs can learn about the psychology of communication and unstructured data. The social enterprise can also
improve the way IT is perceived within the organization. It’s
a subliminal way to market IT internally. And many CIOs are
bringing in shadow marketing talent to do just that.
Once you’ve established credibility within the organization, you
can extend your credibility to external, customer-facing projects.
Because now you know the dynamics and metrics related to
social enterprise interactions. You also have the street cred when
it comes time to extend to external, social CRM deployments.
Other marketing tips for CIOs from your research?
Cutitta: Perhaps the most important area involves adopting
what we call an “outside-in” approach to deployment strategy.
Our research shows that many deployments fail as a result of
an updated version of the old last-mile telecom problem. The
technology gets to the curb, but not into the house. Often,
it’s because either IT or marketing neglected to research the
limitations of the current corporate infrastructure, skills sets or
ingrained habits.
Consider healthcare: While physicians use a great deal of
technology to treat patients, when it comes to putting those
patients’ healthcare records online, doctors mainly scribble
illegibly on a paper notepad. Then they hand it off — often, to
someone who can’t read their handwriting — to be uploaded
into a medical records system. As a result, the accuracy rate
for transcribed dosages can be frighteningly low. That’s what I
mean by the problem of the last mile.
To what degree are these issues generational? Some
workers are digital natives, but many of us are recent digital
immigrants.
Cutitta: It’s definitely an issue. CIOs should survey their users
to determine their mix of digital natives and immigrants.
Otherwise, they could end up supposing that all of their users
are comfortable with social media or tablet usage, when that’s
not true. In fact, some CIOs may need an entirely new game
plan, one that involves either re-educating workers or making
sure they get their data in a form that’s digestible.
In this way, a CIO could avoid a budgetary surprise when, say,
transforming to a data-driven sales force or agent network —
and that surprise could be more expensive than the technology
infrastructure modernization. Further, our research shows that in
this outside-in model, an analysis of the digital immigrants in the
field should precede any work on the design and deployment of
“Weapons of Mass Discussion.”
Patricia Brown is director of digital content strategy at CSC.
Can you give an example of how that might work?
Cutitta: One of the fastest-growing areas in the social enterprise
is reducing the number of help desk tickets. IT can do this by
implementing a pre-emptive social self-help service. In effect,
employees help each other. Other social enterprise initiatives
have found IT and HR working together to create collaboration platforms. These let people across the organization share
ideas and knowledge, as well as offer suggestions to corporate
management. So the social enterprise can touch IT in a positive
way from both a perception point of view and in terms of cost
reductions and resource efficiencies.
Watch CSC Town Hall Sound Bites: Weapons
of Mass Discussion — Enterprise Social Media
csc.com/EnterpriseSocialMedia.
Learn more about the LEF
and its latest research at
csc.com/LEF.
39
research
Open Source:
It’s Not Just for
Software Anymore
An idealistic trend from the ’90s emerges as a key
economic force in today’s connected, global economy
by Dale Coyner
As the backbone of private companies and public institutions alike, information
technology has become more than a technical marvel. Rapid data sharing, analysis
and instant communication enabled by IT have unlocked immeasurable economic
value, reinvented industries and even toppled governments.
Now IT’s influence is growing beyond the server room to rewrite basic business
strategy. The key to its expanding sway? A new CSC Leading Edge Forum (LEF)
study, titled “Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts: Strategies for an Increasingly Open
Economy,” points to a trend that has grown remarkably in size and influence from its
inception in the early 1990s — open source software.
Open source is more than free
The author of the study, LEF Researcher Simon Wardley, says there’s an
important distinction between software given away at no cost, free software
and open source projects.
“Software that companies don’t charge you anything to obtain is still controlled
by a person or a company. Free software is software that you have access to the
code, it can be used and modified by anyone and it is free from many traditional constraints. Open source software, on the other hand, had not only
a focus on freedom from constraints but encouraged the growth of
a community and a collaborative manner of development around
a piece of software. That’s a critical aspect of the open nature.”
Wardley says Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating
system, pioneered today’s concept of open software
development. “Torvalds created more than an operating
system; he built a large community around his project.
This collaborative way of working helped rapidly evolve
the project and drew more people and companies into
the Linux universe.”
Popular open source projects can become global
collaborative efforts, Wardley explains, with features
and bug fixes contributed by software developers
around the world.
40
Simon Wardley
LEF Researcher,
CSC Leading Edge Forum
“It’s a highly collaborative approach that encourages the
development of a community around an idea,” Wardley says.
“Individuals contribute to open source projects because they’re
interested in the solution a piece of software provides, but it is
also a means to improve and display their coding skills and gain
peer recognition.”
Clearly, the incentives to participate are powerful, and popular.
Black Duck Software, which maintains a knowledge base of open
source software projects, estimates that as many as 600,000 open
source software initiatives have created more than 100 billion lines
of code through 10 million person-years of human effort.
Without open source products such as Apache, mySQL and
Hadoop, Wardley says, transformative technologies such as
the Internet, cloud computing and big data would be far more
expensive and limited, if they existed at all.
What drives the influence of open?
Today, the open concept is spreading to areas beyond software –
from open data to open hardware. This open notion of collaborative
and community-based efforts is gaining acceptance in manufacturing, science, higher education, government and beyond.
“Software is indispensable in virtually every industry, so it should
come as no surprise that the dynamics of the software industry
should begin to be modeled elsewhere,” Wardley says.
The collaborative work practices honed by software developers
are being borrowed by other departments inside the business.
Competitive pressures play a role, too. Wardley’s research shows
that the continuing need to drive out costs while increasing
innovation is causing companies to consider new and more
open strategies.
Open as a strategy
While individuals may participate in open source projects to
demonstrate their expertise, companies are generally motivated
by economics. Wardley explains that open initiatives are a tactic
companies can use to tilt markets in their favor.
“You have to understand your value chain very well, and if you
do, an open strategy creates opportunities for you to build
walls around some aspects of your value chain, or perhaps
lower barriers [to] entry at other points that would impact your
competitors,” Wardley says.
Google, for example, uses a mix of proprietary and open strategies to maintain its market leadership. “Google offers many
products that are open, such as its Android operating system,
but its search algorithms remain proprietary. In the case of
Android, you can view this open approach as a way for Google
to protect its value chain around data from the walled garden
that Apple was creating. It’s a highly competitive play to build
an alternative ecosystem to compete with Apple.”
While the vast majority of companies consume open technology,
the most advanced companies think highly strategically and
appear to use open as a competitive weapon.
IT as consultant
The growing influence of the open movement and its roots in
information technology offers an interesting opportunity for the
enterprise IT department.
Wardley says that the experience IT departments have gained with
open models in software and services makes them natural consultants to other parts of businesses that want to adopt open models.
“IT’s knowledge in these areas can be leveraged in new and
often highly strategic ways, from methods of collaboration to
tactical game play to the importance of transparency, governance and standards to the practical details of how to operate
an open project,” Wardley says.
Many businesses lack experience in these areas, and the forms
of cooperative competition they often imply remain strange
ideas to many people who built businesses through proprietary,
closed methods.
The open movement extends well beyond commercial interests.
Wardley says that both a growing emphasis on open science
in universities and free curricula have roots in the open source
movement. Government is getting in on the act, too, with a
growing commitment to more transparent operation, the publication of data and creating level playing fields with open standards.
Wardley believes that the ability to adapt to open methods is
an imperative that companies must address. And what fate lies
ahead for companies that fail to adapt?
The open movement isn’t limited to intangibles such as software or data; the manufacture of physical products is seeing
the effects of the open movement as well. “One of the most
intriguing aspects is the power of open source manufacturing
designs when combined with 3D printing,” Wardley says. “There
is now open activity at virtually every level of business and IT.”
“That’s an open question,” he says, adding, “Failing to adapt to a
changing environment doesn’t normally work out well, though.”
The Power of Open
lef.csc.com/PowerOfOpen
41
applications
‘Mobile First’
movement
Drives Application Design
New tools and evolving standards answer a growing need
to develop mobile apps quickly and easily.
by Dale Coyner
42
The rapid adoption of smart mobile devices has redefined
industries and spawned new ones in just a few short years. That
sudden shift is also causing companies to rethink strategies for
application development.
Jim Petrassi, managing director, Systems Integration &
Development at CSC, agrees. “A few years from now, you won’t
say ‘We need a mobile application,’ you’ll just say ‘We need an
application.’ Mobility will be presumed,” Petrassi says.
Jonathan Marshall, CSC’s global portfolio director for end-user
services, says tablets and smartphones have completely changed
how we think about applications. “Mobile devices demand sniperlike applications with very specific functions. That stands in
contrast to the shotgun-like approach of desktop applications.”
Developing applications that accommodate devices with
different screen sizes, input methods and connectivity is a
special challenge. In the enterprise, Marshall says application
development can follow the Henry Ford model: “You can have
any device you like, as long as it’s an iPad.”
Applications for a broader audience have a greater need
to operate across platforms. HTML5, the new standard for
describing Internet documents and applications, brings important
capabilities to mobile Web development that have previously
been available only in native development environments.
• Offline Support — Tools such as AppCache and Database
inside HTML5 enable developers to store data locally on a
device, ensuring that Web-based apps will work in environments with limited connectivity.
• Canvas and Video — These features support graphics
and video on a page without the need for plug-ins. This
capability may have influenced Apple’s decision to support
HTML5 in its mobile devices instead of the popular Flash
plug-in published by Adobe Systems. Adobe has since
discontinued Flash support for mobile devices to focus
on HTML5.
• Advanced Forms — HTML5 improves frequently used
features such as forms that will make mobile applications
easier to use. For example, HTML5 forms will be able to
validate data such as credit card numbers and zip codes
inside the browser instead of relying on add-ons. That
means less communication and faster processing.
Petrassi says that in addition to HTML5, many of the standards
and best practices that communicate to back-end systems are
still relevant for mobile apps.
“Mobility adds a layer of complexity because you need lighterweight protocols to reduce the amount of data you’re moving
over cellular networks,” Petrassi says. “You need to make sure the
data is secure — not only when it’s in transit, but when it’s sitting
on that device, too. Is it encrypted? Can I wipe it if I need to?”
Petrassi expects a growing number of enterprise applications
will be built with open standards such as HTML5, especially as
it matures. “There will always be applications that require native
code, but I think over the next couple of years, we can build
three of four mobile apps on open platforms,” he says.
Accelerating that trend is a new crop of hybrid application
toolkits such as PhoneGap, a development environment that
combines native code with HTML5. Native code offers access
to device-specific features such as a camera, while the overall
application is wrapped in HTML5. This reduces the amount of
time required to port an app from one device family to the next.
And lest we forget, the impact of Windows 8 has yet to be fully
felt in the marketplace. “It’s hard to predict these things, but I
do believe Windows 8 is a game changer,” Petrassi says.
Marshall notes that even though Microsoft is arriving late to the
mobile party, its large base of enterprise clients and mature
management tools make it relevant. He believes that Microsoft
may yet play a role in setting, or influencing standards, whether
official or de facto.
X-Ray Vision for Your Phone
Any kid who ever held a comic book gazed longingly
over ads for magic tricks, go-karts plans and other
youthful ephemera. But all eyes were drawn to the ads
for X-ray glasses. The promise to “see through anything”
was tantalizing, but too good to be true. Or is it?
Richard Brown, CSC’s application visualization lead at
the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, says augmented
reality apps coming to market may help mobile devices
do just that, in a manner of speaking.
Keyed by GPS, location markers or visual clues,
augmented reality apps on mobile devices will enable
workers in a wide range of industries to find relevant
information immediately.
If a building has been mapped, an augmented reality app
will reveal the location of everything hidden behind the
walls, including pipes and cable runs. “That concept can
be replicated for gas mains, water or electrical utilities or
nearly any type of infrastructure,” Brown says.
And it can have life-saving applications too. “It will be a
real aid in nighttime operation. For example, a firefighter
will [be able to] open a display to locate fire hydrants in
the dark,” he says.
“We’ve had augmentations in military aircraft for
decades, but it’s about to become a widespread
technology. I think the winning scenarios are where
augmented reality lets you see what can’t be seen and
know what isn’t known.”
Sounds like those X-ray glasses weren’t so far-fetched after all.
- Dale Coyner
“When you apply adoption curves to this market, it’s clear that
we are still in the innovation phase,” Petrassi says. “We’ll see a lot
of change, dead ends, and exciting things in app development
and management over the next few years. But one thing is clear
— everything will be built with mobility in mind.”
Learn about CSC’s FuturEdge, a unique
approach to applications modernization
csc.com/FuturEdgeVideo.
Learn more at
csc.com/applications.
43
9
last word
cloud
Computing
Predictions
for 2013
by Siki Giunta
Cloud computing is without question
the most important IT development
in recent memory. The cloud changes
nearly everything, including the role of
the CIO, how companies pay for computing power, even IT’s relationship with the
business. And these changes show no
sign of slowing. In fact, we expect to see
several new and dramatic cloud-computing developments this year:
Security: The conversation matures.
While the business continues to worry about security and
compliance in the cloud, the security trade-offs are now better
understood. Some workloads are appropriate for the cloud; others
are not. One result of this should be a rapid adoption of virtual
private clouds. These systems let CIOs provision private, isolated
sections of larger public clouds. This approach helps CIOs lower
costs while offering security at nearly data center levels.
Financial services: Accepting the cloud.
Until very recently, the financial services industry distrusted
the public cloud and instead chose to build private clouds,
essentially virtualized data centers. However, building private
clouds has proven expensive, with few benefits to show. As a
result, we expect financial services companies to begin
engaging trusted service providers to offer selected IT services.
Manufacturing: Machine-to-machine.
The cloud is a great platform for machine-to-machine (M2M)
communications. A soda-vending machine can now communicate with banking systems, via the cloud, to securely accept
credit cards. Automobiles will increasingly stream over the
cloud videos, applications, driver manuals, security information
and more. And houses connected by the cloud could assist the
elderly while also helping all of us reduce energy use. M2M is
the Internet of the future.
44
Watch Siki Discuss 5 Cloud
Predictions for 2013 at
csc.com/cloud2013.
Public sector: “Shadow IT” hangs around.
Thanks to the cloud, individuals can order IT services directly, without having to go through their IT departments. Known as “shadow
IT,” this development may be empowering for individuals, but it’s a
problem for both IT and public sector organizations. Fortunately,
government programs are now formalizing cloud contracts, and
eventually, there should be no need for individual workers to order
IT services directly. But “shadow IT” will not disappear overnight.
Enterprise applications: Get on board.
This year, automated production workloads — enterprise-class
applications — should move to the cloud en masse. Increasingly,
automated templates will be used to initiate applications in the
cloud. This, in turn, should spur the development of enterpriseclass clouds that are secure, scalable, automated and easy to use.
Disaster recovery: From “nice-to-have” to vital.
Last year the United States saw devastating hurricanes,
blizzards and droughts. Yet many cloud vendors still offer
disaster-recovery services that are less than top notch. This
must change. Enterprises today demand instant availability,
continuity and recovery. These demands will only intensify,
placing cloud providers under severe pressure to respond.
Mobile computing: Love the cloud.
Mobile computing and the cloud were made for each other. As
4G service becomes more widely available, and as the quantity
of data that flows in and out of our smartphones and computing
tablets grows exponentially, the cloud becomes indispensible.
Mobile apps and data will increasingly live in the cloud.
Cloud brokers: Gaining prominence.
Expect to hear a lot this year about cloud brokers, community
platforms that offer template-based services. Users of these
cloud brokers can now buy software, infrastructure or other
platforms — all as a service. For now, however, the cloud-broker
market is still somewhat vaguely defined. That will change. In
fact, we believe cloud brokers represent cloud computing’s
next generation.
Asia: Leapfrogging to the cloud.
China’s market for cloud services will likely exceed $100 million
for the first time this year. That will set the stage for even more
investment and segmentation. Other areas of Asia — notably
Malaysia and Indonesia — are ripe for the cloud, too. These
countries have a tradition of leapfrogging technologies. For
example, while the West transitioned from the mainframe to
the minicomputer to the PC, much of Asia jumped directly
from mainframes to the Web. Now these countries are mostly
skipping virtualization and heading directly to the cloud.
Siki Giunta is VP and general manager of cloud computing
and software services at CSC.
Solving
Government’s
Most Difficult Challenges
Improve mission performance.
Reduce costs. Secure data.
Meet mandates.
With more than 50 years of government and commercial
experience, CSC brings your agency world-class best
practices around next-generation technology — cloud,
applications modernization, cybersecurity, big data and
mobility — to address the nation’s biggest challenges.
We proudly serve nearly every agency and department
of the U.S. government, helping our clients achieve
excellence through best commercial practices, innovative
IT, business operations and engineering services.
Worry less about business processes and technology.
Focus more on the mission.
Learn more at csc.com/government.
45
Worldwide CSC Headquarters
The Americas
Falls Church, Virginia 22042
United States
+1.703.876.1000
Asia
20 Anson Road #11-01
Twenty Anson
Singapore 079912
Republic of Singapore
+65.6221.9095
Australia
Level 6/Tower B
26 Talavera Road
Macquarie Park, NSW 2113
Sydney, Australia
+61(0)2.9034.3000
Europe, Middle East, Africa
Royal Pavilion
Wellesley Road
Aldershot, Hampshire GU11 1PZ
United Kingdom
+44(0)1252.534000
About CSC
The mission of CSC is to be a global leader in providing technology-enabled business
solutions and services.
With the broadest range of capabilities, CSC offers clients the solutions they need to
manage complexity, focus on core businesses, collaborate with partners and clients, and
improve operations.
CSC makes a special point of understanding its clients and provides experts with real-world
experience to work with them. CSC leads with an informed point of view while still offering
client choice.
For more than 50 years, clients in industries and governments worldwide have trusted CSC
with their business process and information systems outsourcing, systems integration and
consulting needs.
The company trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “CSC.”
© 2013 Computer Sciences Corporation. All rights reserved.
www.csc.com/cscworld

CSC World Winter 2013

Transcription

Similar documents

Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center (CRDAMC) COL Mark

Preview - Civil Service Commission

CSC1att2 - Marlow Casino Chips

Cobra XL Accessories - Houston Trikes and Trailers

success story — cortal consors

(CSC).

Annual Report 2012 - Center For Social Change

iPPlus Sales Sheet - IP Plus Consulting, Inc.

Will you help them pursue their dreams?