Tag: Cisco

Driving out inefficiencies

Inefficiencies are being squeezed out of business and corporations are going to have to adapt, warns the World Economic Forum.

“We’re driving inefficiencies out of every single facet of life,” AT&T CEO Randall L. Stephenson told The World Economic Forum’s New Digital Context panel last month.

The CEO panel at the Davos forum, which included Yahoo!’s Marissa Mayer, Salesforce’s Mac Benioff, Cisco’s John Chambers and Gavin Patterson of BT discussed how corporations of all sizes are being affected by rapid market changes.

“All this bandwidth, all these connected devices, are as disruptive as anything this society has ever seen,” Stephenson said.

“Companies that aren’t moving and driving the new technologies are companies that don’t stay alive.”

Stephenson’s view was supported by Cisco CEO John Chambers, “if you look at big companies only a third of us will exist in a meaningful way in two decades.”

Chambers cited Cisco’s experience from the past two decades to illustrate how business is rapidly changing, “my competitors from fifteen, twenty years ago – none of them exist or they’ve exited. From ten to fifteen years ago only one exists, from five to ten years ago only a few.”

“If you don’t disrupt, you get left behind,” warned Chambers.

Chambers’ advice to managers is that teams have to be empowered and encouraged to take risks and learn from failures, advice endorsed by Yahoo!’s Marissa Mayer.

“The best thing you can an executive can do is play defense, not offense. Get out everybody out of the way and set up an evironment where they can really run and make a difference.”

Yahoo!’s Marissa Mayer endorsed the change, describing a much flatter organization; “we try and run things really flat, really transparent.”

That flat organisation is really the biggest risk to many executives in staid, safe organisations; it means fewer middle managers as the workplace is increasingly automated.

As businesses adopt new technologies, the need for Executive Vice Presidents or Group General Managers is eliminated – along with the armies of assistants and underlings required to help these folk in their roles.

In the past, those layers of management have isolated senior executives from their customers which Salesforce’s Marc Benioff is a luxury companies can’t afford in the current marketplace, “everything is going faster, companies have to change faster.”

“Today if you’re not listening to your customers more deeply than ever before and not reacting to them more rapidly than every before,then you are probably making a mistake,” warns Benioff.

Most of those in the room at WEF were the world’s top executives and government officials, how many of them take note of how business is changing will become clear in the very near future.

There’s also a warning for those government leaders on how employment and government services are going change in the near future which a lesson that needs to be heeded as policies are developed.

Now’s the time for every manager, business owner or executive to look at the inefficiencies in their workplace and whether it can be eliminated either through technology or business restructuring. It may well save you from being identified as an inefficiency yourself.

Steam train image courtesy of Gabriel77 through sxc.hu

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Tech security in a tough world

Even the professionals are struggling to keep up with a rapidly changing IT world, which is why businesses should start taking computer security seriously.

Network giant Cisco Systems released its 2014 Annual Security Report last week which should make sobering reading for every business manager and owner.

If you’re looking at a career change, the survey even suggests a possible new job.

Over two million of Cisco’s customers were examined in the survey and every single company had evidence of their systems being compromised in some way, from staff visiting suspicious websites to full scale hacker break-ins.

Keeping up with change

The survey points out IT security risks are evolving quickly as business technology becomes more complex and it’s hard for even industry professionals to keep up with the pace of change.

“Even the most sophisticated and well funded security teams are struggling to keep on top of what’s happening,” Chief Security Officer of Cisco, John Stewart, told a media briefing yesterday.

That concern was reinforced by Stewart’s colleague Levi Gundert, technical lead at Cisco’s Threat Research Analysis and Communications (TRAC) group.

“It’s not about are you going to be compromised,” said Gundert. “the question is how long is it going to take you to detect and shorten the remediation window?”

If even the world’s biggest corporations are struggling what can smaller organisations do to control the risk?

Disable Java

The biggest computer security risk is Java software. Cisco found a shocking 91% of software exploits were related to the application, “2013 was the year of the Java exploit.

It was a bad year for Java.” Says Gundert. It should also be noted that the first successful malware targeting Apple Macs, the Flashback Trojan, was a Java exploit.

The best way to deal with this risk is keep Java off your systems, the problem with that advice is many business applications – and games if you have a home office or kids use your computer – need the software to run.

If you have to use Java packages, make sure you have the latest version running on your systems.

Keep your systems up to date

It’s not just Java that is a risk, Cisco identified Adobe PDFs and Microsoft Office vulnerabilities as being other threats.

It’s important that all systems – Mac, Windows or any other operating systems – are kept up to date with the latest patches.

Lock down office systems

Except when your computers are being updated, there’s no reason for office computers to be running in Administrator mode.

Day to day use should be done in restricted user profiles; on a Windows machine, workers should be logged on as standard users, while on Macs they should be managed users, the only time an Administrator needs to be logged on is when maintenance is being done.

Watch those mobiles

The IT security industry has been watching smartphones for a while and 2013 started seeing large scale malware appearing on mobile devices, although it’s still small scale compared to PCs.

Cisco’s survey found only 1.2 percent of web based malware coming from mobile devices with almost all the infections being on Android systems.

Most of these Android infections were game add-ons downloaded from unofficial Android app stores so the message is to stick to the official, trusted services for Android apps.

Website risks

Another risky area for businesses identified by Cisco identified are websites being compromised and hijacked.

The software on these needs to be updated to the latest versions just as office computers should be.

Often, disused websites and blogs aren’t updated, the ABC discovered last year that abandoned, neglected websites are a great way for hackers and malware distributors to launch attacks or spread problems.

So if you have older websites or blogs, shut them down and redirect the domains to operating addresses.

For those operational websites password security needs to be beefed up as Cisco found ‘brute force’ attacks – where automated systems try every conceivable password combinations – were up threefold in 2013.

Professional skills shortage

A big problem facing the IT industry is a worldwide skills shortage: “There are essential a million jobs across the globe that can be filled but we don’t have trained people to fill them,” says Cisco’s Stewart. “We’ve got a dearth of talent and skills.”

For smaller businesses that means it’s harder to find someone to fix problems when they happen, for both business managers and owners it’s smarter to reduce the likelihood of having a problem rather than scrambling to find an IT professional to help after the event.

The good news from Cisco’s survey is if you’re thinking of a career change, or you have a teenager moping around looking for a job, then IT security could be the answer.

For everyone else, as business and the world in general becomes more connected the security of the systems our world is coming to depend upon is something we have to take more seriously.

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Defining a technology hierarchy of needs

Should broadband be considered an essential human right?

Speaking at the Internet of Everything conference in Barcelona today, Cisco CEO John Chambers described broadband as a basic human right.

This is an interesting, and somewhat provocative, idea. While there’s no doubt ubiquitous internet is an essential service in an advanced economy and increasingly critical to most industries, calling it a basic human right is a big call.

Perhaps we need to consider there is a kind of technological order of  services, something similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

maslows-hierarchy-of-needs

In the tech sector  the most basic is electricity as without power all this technology is useless.

Sitting above this are the core infrastructure like the cables, ducts, telegraph poles and subsea cables.

Then perhaps there is the internet itself including the routers, switches and base stations which keep the internet running.

Above those are the connected devices — the smartphones, the robot mining equipment and the internet fridge.

Processing all the data these devices generate is the job of the data centres and cloud computing services which make the internet of everything work.

So perhaps to describe broadband as a fundamental human right is overstating things when a large proportion of humanity doesn’t have access to reliable electricity or drinking water.

What’s interesting watching John Chambers talk is how passionate he is about the Internet of Everything, so much so he’s betting the company on it.

It’s understandable that John Chambers and Cisco would consider broadband internet to be one of life’s essentials as it is critical for the company’s growth and survival but for humanity we should remember that some technologies and services are more essential than others.

 

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Exploring the internet of everything

What does the internet of everything mean for businesses? Cisco’s Ken Boal explains.

As part of the Decoding the New Economy video series, I had the opportunity of interviewing Ken Boal, the head of Cisco Australia and New Zealand, about the Internet of Everything and how it will change business.

“The internet of everything is about things, it’s about people, process and it’s about data,” says Ken. “Compounding together to create new capabilities and drive opportunities for nations, enterprises, government and right down to consumers.”

“It’s a huge transition in the internet’s evolution.”

Reducing the road toll

A previous Cisco presentation looked at some of the ways the internet of everything can reduce road deaths, Ken sees this both private and public sector benefits of the connected economy flowing to consumers and the community.

“When you think about things like traffic congestion, health care and how education is delivered we know there’s huge opportunities for greater efficiency,” says Ken.

“Just on road safety, when we’ve got all the vehicles and trucks connected, when the traffic lights and traffic control systems are all connected,” suggests Ken, “then consumers are going be better informed about what is the most efficient route to work.”

“Cars will be communicating with each other to reduce fatalities and collisions in the future as well.”

Bringing together industrial, consumer  and public safety technologies creates a grid of connected devices, including cars, that improve public safety while making industries more efficient.

Of course these connected services come with risks to privacy, particularly when multiple points of data can triangulated despite each individual item being anonymous on their own.

What Ken finds is particularly important is the current value of these technologies with Cisco predicting $1.4 billion in productivity gains through the internet of everything this year, half of which are available for businesses.

A warning for Australia

For Australia, the concern is that business and the economy in general is falling behind, Cisco’s recent Internet of Everything Value Index rated Australia among the BRIC countries in adopting the new technologies.

“We’ve always counted Aussies as fairly innovative and leading edge,” says Ken. “Australia is ranked tenth out of the twelve largest economies in the adoption of internet of everything capablities.”

The countries leading – such as Japan, Germany and the United States – have had a solid record of investing in technology, “in Australia, we’ve had that in the past but we’ve lost our mojo.” Ken says, “IT has been viewed more as a problem – a cost to business – rather than a provider of productivity for the long term.”

How business can adapt

For businesses, the question is how can they take advantage of the internet of everything? “You don’t have to start from scratch,” says Ken. “There are a whole heap of use cases for every vertical.”

“Start to drive some innovation. Think about your business processes at the front end where you touch your customers, look at your supply chains and your back office arrangements driving workforce productivity and how fast can you deliver new innovations to the market.”

“Internet of everything themes can address a whole host of these different processes in different parts of your business.”

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Realising value from the internet of everything

How will businesses benefit from the internet of everything?

How much opportunity does connecting all our machines to the internet really offer businesses and society?

Cisco’s Internet of Everything index released last week looks at one of the great opportunities facing today’s managers in realising business value in these new technologies .

On Cisco’s calculations, the internet of everything is worth over $14.4 trillion to the world economy and nearly half the business benefits are going wasted.

Germany and Japan lead the pack and, as discussed yesterday, Australia wallows between China and Russia.

Cisco comparison of countries
Cisco comparison of countries

Despite German businesses being the leaders, Cisco estimates $33bn, or nearly 40% of the potential gains, isn’t being realised even in that country.

How different industries are using the internet of machines is notable as well, with Cisco claiming the biggest benefits currently being realised by the IT industry while the greatest potential lies in the service, logistics and manufacturing industries.

cisco-internet-of-everything-value-index-by-industry
Internet of everything value by industry

If anything, these projections could be on the conservative side with Cisco estimating fifty billion devices connected to the net by 2020. Given the rate of smartphone being sold and everything from vending machines to clothing being online, it may well be ten or even a hundred times that number.

The real challenge for businesses in all these projections is how individual organisations can realise this value in their operations.

For some businesses, there’s plenty of existing opportunities with well established services in areas like field services and logistics tracking the locations of staff and packages. These are relatively simple to incorporate into existing operations.

In other applications, businesses will find things more complex as the connected devices will tie into analytics and Big Data plays. These won’t be simple.

One particularly important area for the workforce as a whole in business process automation where many tasks currently done by humans can be carried out by machines talking to each other.

This is already happening in fields like fast moving consumer goods and hospitality where stock levels can be automatically monitored and replacement stock ordered in without staff being involved. As the technology becomes more widespread this will threaten the roles of many previously well paid managers.

Many of those managers though will be challenged anyway unless they’re prepared to deal with the changes that internet of things is bringing to their businesses.

How do you think the internet of everything will change your business?

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What happens when the power goes out?

How would you cope if the electricity was turned off?

Cisco gave a media and analyst briefing earlier today on the Internet of everything looking at how various technologies can help with tasks ranging from reducing traffic accidents to improving productivity which I’ll write up later.

One of the analyst’s questions though is worth pondering – “what happens when the power goes out?”

For most of the industrial processes discussed by Cisco and the panellists, this would be a hassle but most of the systems would, or should, be designed to fall back to a default position should the power fail.

On a much bigger scale though this is something we don’t really think through.

In modern Western societyour affluent lifestyle is based upon complex supply chains that get the food to our supermarkets, fuel to our petrol pumps, water to our taps and electricity to our homes.

Those chains are far more fragile than we think and few of us give any thought to how we’d survive if the power was off for more than a few hours or if the shop didn’t have any milk and bread for days.

It’s one of the fascinating thing with the end of the world movies. When the meteorite hits or aliens take over then our power and food supplies probably have only 72 hours before they dry up.

After that, you’ve probably got more to worry about your neighbours trying to steal your hoard than being ripped to pieces by zombies.

Most of us probably wouldn’t cope without the safe, comfortable certainties which we’ve become used to.

One thing is for sure — if the power does fail, then most of us will have more to worry about than whether our smartphones are working or whether our geolocating, internet connected fridge is tweeting our wine consumption.

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Latently obvious – the importance of data networks

The internet of things is going to see more emphasis on reliable and fast network connections.

One of the big buzz phrases of 2013 is going to be “the internet of everything” – where machines, homes and even clothes are connected to each other.

In the near future, we’re going to be more surprised when things when things like cars, washing machines and home automation system aren’t connected each other.

To get all these things talking to each other requires reliable communications with low latency – quick response times – so technology vendors are seeing big opportunities in this area.

Last night Blackberry launched its new platform and the beleaguered handset company’s CEO Thorsten Heins was adamant in his intention to focus his business on the internet of machines where he sees connected cars and health care as being two promising areas.

Blackberry isn’t alone in this with the major communications providers and telcos all seeing the same opportunities.

Cisco has been leading with their role in ‘the internet of things’ and much of their Cisco Live conference in Melbourne two weeks was spent looking at the technologies behind this. The company estimates the “internet of everything” will be worth 144 trillion in ten years.

Rival communications provider Ericsson sees the revenue from this sector being worth $200 billion by 2017, so it’s not surprising everyone in the telecommunications industry want to get a slice of it.

The question is though how to make money from this? Most of these communications aren’t data heavy so metering traffic isn’t going to be the deliver the revenues many of these companies expect.

If offering priority services with low latency is the answer, then we hit the problem of ‘net neutrality’ which has been controversial in the past.

Whichever way it goes, businesses will want to be paying a premium to make sure their data is exchanged quickly and reliably. For many organisations data coverage and ping speeds are going to be the deal breakers when choosing providers.

The ‘machine to machine’, or M2M, internet market is something we’re going to hear more about this year. It’s clear quite a few executives are staking their bonuses on it.

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