Wolverhampton Girls’ High School goes wireless

Wolverhampton Girls’ High School has installed wireless technology across its campus to enable its staff and students to use mobile devices in lessons.

Wolverhampton Girls’ High School has 750 pupils, many of whom bring in their own laptops, tablets and smartphones. However, the school didn’t have the infrastructure to support them.

They chose to install 15 wireless arrays from Xirrus, which was both cheaper than a fully-wired alternative and meant there were no concerns about damaging the buildings during installation.

“Wolverhampton Girls’ High School is set in a very beautiful and old building,” said Sharon Holness, assistant headteacher. “It was important for us to get a wireless solution in place that would be sympathetic to the surroundings.”

“The Xirrus engineers conducted in-depth surveys around the school and were thorough and professional.”

Each array has the capacity for 125,000ft2 of coverage, but with the number of buildings and obstructions, it was necessary to install more.

The deployment happened throughout 2012 with two phases, although Xirrus said each phase itself only took a couple of days.

Now, teachers have embraced the new network by making extra resources available to pupils online, which they believe has led to richer lesson plans and stronger interactions with pupils.

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Hyper-V boost pushes Microsoft virtualisation closer to VMware

Microsoft has done a lot to boost Hyper-V but the improvements do not justify switching from VMware, according to Gartner.

Speaking prior to the analyst’s datacentre conference at Westminster, Gartner vice-president and distinguished analyst Carl Claunch said: “Hyper-V is a viable alternative to VMware. Microsoft has improved the product’s position.”

Claunch said Microsoft’s push to establish Hyper-V as a VMware alternative means lot of added features that used to cost more in VMware now come free as part of Hyper-V, which is bundled free with Windows Server 2012.

“VMware will now have to deal with add-on virtualisation functionality that is now a datacentre commodity, ” said Claunch. He believes Hyper-V will damage VMware’s revenue.

“Microsoft is a sizeable, capable competitor, but VMware is fast-paced and can innovate quickly to avoid competition.”

However, he said: “VMware has strong a strong position on x86 servers for Windows workloads, so people don’t feel they are going to miss out by not moving to Hyper-V.”

While there is no need to switch, he added: “If you are beginning to move to the cloud then Hyper-V is worth a serious look.”

For instance, in a fresh virtualised environment, Windows Server 2012 is more advanced than VMware, because it is able to move workloads around more easily than VMware, according to Claunch.

He said: “Hyper-V is much more flexible. VMware requires advanced planning. The machine needs to be in a compatible part of the network.”

Performance improvements include Hyper-V’s ability to combine multiple network adapters for load-balancing, its large memory support and the way it handles storage.

He said: “Thin provisioning, data deduplication, used to require SAN. Hyper-V now allows direct attached storage to be used.” This is considerably cheaper and could make it attractive to SMEs.

In system administration, Claunch said Windows management tools can be used to connect to each server individually. “You can now manage groups of servers in one go on Hyper-V.”

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Centrica delivers SAP self-service HR portal with agile testing

Energy company Centrica has carried out its first corporate agile IT project, building an employee self-service HR portal in an SAP environment for 30,000 users.

Mark Tristram, agile development manager, Centrica said the SAP competency centre at the energy group’s corporate headquarters had been looking for an agile project candidate and alighted on the HR project partly because of the function’s enthusiasm. 

“They were keen to get the right project delivered. It was not a case of IS doing agile to the business,” said Tristram. Centrica’s business units, which include British Gas, have agile project experience, he said, but this was their first corporate project.

Inspiring the project was a “three amigos” approach, he said. Testing, development and the business were “all on the hook together”.

Simon Evans, director at Experior, a testing consultancy that worked on the project, said that “agile is still very rare in the SAP world”. He and Tristram presented at this week’s SAP UK & Ireland user group conference in Manchester.

Centrica was looking to replace a system from HR consultancy Aon Hewitt, which remains a user of the new system. The project took 18 months, with an August 2012 go live, and comprised 10 three week development sprints, five in 2011, and five in 2012.

Centrica’s Tristram said the company’s IT function is “not aiming to become an agile factory”, but that this project lent itself well to the agile methodology. The contrast is with the waterfall approach, where “IS [information systems] goes down a hole and comes back in a year, declaring: ‘this is what we thought you wanted’”.

“With agile the business is in the room every day”. Their motivation is that they want all business administration process to go from 40% to 80% automation, he reported.

One advantage with the agile methodology was that an initially ugly user interface was dealt with early in the process. “We would not have caught that in a traditional project. And the business will pay more attention to that next time”, said Tristram.

Experior’s Evans said: “the project was big enough to be taken seriously, but not too big. HR is slightly isolated within the SAP platform at Centrica”.

The value of agile from a testing viewpoint, at least on this project, was that “all the nasty stuff is sorted in testing at the beginning. And so we went live very quietly”, he said.

Testing is also “front and centre” with agile said Evans. “It’s not about rattling keyboards”, in isolation.

“You do want to be involved in an agile project again, once you have done one”, said Tristram. “It is hard, especially for the business, but it is rewarding.

“Take up has been high”, he said. “You’re not so much looking to save money with agile. It is more about doing the right things, in the right order. The business is very pleased [with the outcome].

“Now we have an internal SAP platform that we can control. We can keep costs down and move faster”.

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Greater Anglia rolls out train station Wi-Fi

Greater Anglia has signed a deal with The Cloud to roll-out Wi-Fi across its stations in the east of England.

The first station to get the technology will be Chelmsford – available from today – but other stops, including Cambridge, Norwich and Stansted Airport, will go online in the next few months.

“Since taking over the railway franchise in February, we have been focusing our efforts on improving customer service,” said Andrew Goodrum, customer service director for Greater Anglia. 

“Offering our customers free Wi-Fi is an important part of this as we recognise that the internet is a vital part of people’s everyday lives.”

Users will only be entitled to one hour of free Wi-Fi per day from the service though, unless they are Sky customers. The Cloud is owned by BSkyB and offers free use of its hotspots as part of its TV and internet packages.  

Vince Russell, managing director at The Cloud, added: “We have seen usage on our network increase at an unprecedented pace in the last two years and it shows no sign of slowing down.”

“To keep their customers satisfied, Greater Anglia needs a fast and reliable internet connection, which The Cloud Wi-Fi will provide, ensuring each person passing through the stations can enjoy the best journey possible.”

The Cloud provides Wi-Fi to a number of retail outlets, restaurants and sports venues, including Pizza Express and Lords Cricket Ground. 

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Cyber attack reporting will boost defence capability, says Neelie Kroes

The European Commission (EC) is considering making it mandatory for companies to report cyber attacks to harness the benefits of open dialogue, says vice-president Neelie Kroes.

Despite industry opposition, open discussion about cyber threats is vital to enable organisations to learn and improve understanding of the issue, she told the German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Details of the EU’s plans are likely to be revealed later this year with the publication of the its cyber security strategy.

Kroes, who is responsible for the EU’s Digital Agenda, believes cloud computing may give new impetus to the faltering economy, provided people are confident that the new model is reasonably secure.

The EC predicts that cloud computing could boost European economic output by €160bn a year because of increased efficiencies and lower cost access to resources by smaller companies.

Kroes believes that increased use of cloud technologies will also create 2.5 million jobs by 2020 and help redress high unemployment among youth across Europe.

In January, Kroes called on public authorities, industry, cloud buyers and suppliers to come together in a European cloud partnership.

Calling for action to support the speedy uptake of cloud computing in Europe at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kroes said the main obstacles to cloud adoption like standards, certification, data protection, interoperability, lock-in, and legal certainty needed to be addressed.

The EC has established a working group to address the need for common technical standards to support and grow the cloud computing industry.

The working group is set to tackle thorny issues such as what happens to organisations’ data after the cloud services contract expires.

In early November, the steering board of the new European Cloud Partnership (ECP) met in Brussels to kick off the process of building an EU Digital Single Market for cloud computing.

The board aims to make the most of the public sector’s buying power to shape the growing market for cloud computing services.

The ECP will develop common computing procurement requirements for use by EU member states and create a common framework for cloud computing across Europe.

The ECP is also tasked with stimulating the migration of public IT to the cloud by resolving barriers to cloud computing adoption in the public sector.

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Google among firms hit in Pakistan hack

Technology firms including Google, Apple, eBay and Yahoo were among almost 300 companies whose websites were hit by a hack attack in Pakistan.

The attack, which exploited vulnerabilities in domain name systems (DNS) to redirect traffic, targeted sites with Pakistani domain names, such as .com.pk, .pk and org.pk, according to the BBC.

Visitors to the targeted sites were redirected to a web page with a picture of two penguins walking across a bridge with the slogan “Pakistan Downed”.

Although the attacks targeted websites, and not the networks of the companies involved, services such as Google’s Gmail were temporarily unavailable in Pakistan.

The motive for the attack has not been confirmed, but some reports have speculated that it was aimed at highlighting weaknesses in the organisation that administers .pk web domains, known as PKNIC.

Technology blog ProPakistani said it had received an email from the hackers explaining how they carried out the attack.

The hackers claimed that PKNIC’s servers were vulnerable to Boolean-based blind SQL injection, time-based blind SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) and “sensitive directory disclosure”.

Image: Thinkstock

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Apple drags more devices into patent battle with Samsung

The number of devices that allegedly infringe patents held by Apple and Samsung continues to grow, with Apple adding six more products to its case against its South Korean rival.

The rival companies are fighting cases against each other in more than 10 countries, each accusing the other of violating patents.

In August, a US court awarded Apple $1bn in damages against Samsung, after ruling that several of Apple’s software and design technologies had been infringed.

However, Samsung has appealed against the ruling and has called for a retrial.

But in a separate case brought by Apple in February and countered soon afterwards by Samsung, the rivals are adding claims scheduled to be heard in a Northern California District Court in March 2014. Both claim the other is infringing eight mobile device patents.

Just days after Samsung alleged that Apple’s iPad mini and the latest version of the iPod Touch infringed eight of its patents, Apple has asked the court to add Samsung’s Galaxy S3, the Galaxy Note 2, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 Wi-Fi, the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, the Galaxy Rugby Pro and the Galaxy S3 Mini, according to US reports.

The Galaxy S3 Mini is yet to be released in the US, while the other five devices have been released in the past two months.

“Apple has acted quickly and diligently to determine that these newly released products do infringe many of the same claims already asserted by Apple,” the company said in the filing.

Samsung has not commented on Apple’s latest move, but its decision to add the iPad mini to its complaint followed a court order that Apple must disclose details of its patent-sharing deal with HTC.

Samsung asked the courts to order Apple to reveal the information because it was “almost certain” the deal covered some of the patents at the centre of its dispute with Apple.

Some analysts said the order to give Samsung access to details of Apple’s deal with HTC may have a big effect on the legal battle between Samsung and Apple.

If there are similarities between the two disputes, analysts believe it will give Samsung an advantage in any future negotiations with Apple.

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Poor design hampers gamification in the enterprise, says Gartner

By 2014, 80% of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives, primarily because of poor design, according to Gartner.

Brian Burke, research vice-president at Gartner, said: “Poor game design is one of the key failings of many gamified applications today.”

Gamification is the application of game applied to non-game contexts to improve audience engagement. It can include customer engagement, employee performance, training and education, innovation management and personal development.

Burke said applications fail to focus on the competitive and collaborative elements of gamification, instead concentrating on obvious game mechanics, such as points, badges and leader boards.

“Organisations are simply counting points, slapping meaningless badges on activities and creating gamified applications that are simply not engaging for the target audience. Some organisations are already beginning to cast off poorly designed gamified applications,” Burke said.

The real challenge is to design player-centric applications that focus on the motivations and rewards to fully engage players., said Gartner. Virtually all areas of business could benefit from gamification as it can help to change behaviour, develop skills and enable innovation, said Gartner.

“As gamification moves from being leveraged by a limited number of leading-edge innovators to becoming more broadly adopted by early adopters, it is important that CIOs and IT leaders understand the underlying principle of gamification and how to apply it within the IT organisation,” said Burke.

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Barclays Bank to give thousands of staff iPads

Barclays is rolling out 8,500 Apple iPads across branches to improve interaction with customers.

Shaygan Kheradpir, COO at Barclays’ retail and business banking division, told Computer Weekly earlier this year that the company was planning numerous mobile developments for staff and customers.

Barclays looked at different tablets before deciding on the iPad, which will now be rolled out across the UK.

A Barclays spokeswoman told The Register the devices will assist branch staff when interacting with customers to improve the customer experience.

“We investigated a number of different tablet options and in this instance, we concluded that iPads were the best solution for their specific needs. We are now starting to use these across Barclays branches in the UK,” she said.

Barclays is not the first British bank to standardise on Apple devices. In 2010 Standard Chartered announced plans to migrate thousands of staff from the Blackberry to the iPhone.

The bank initially moved 15,000 staff but with 75,000 staff in total it is expected to go further.

Standard Chartered said the move is a response to a change in technology with a long-term vision to back it up. It said the iPhone is a way to develop in-house mobile applications, cut costs and enhance employee satisfaction.

The project saw the first major UK corporation standardise on the iPhone smartphone to support mobility to its employees.

Todd Schofield, global head of mobility at Standard Chartered headed up the project. He told Computer Weekly in 2010 that the strength of the iPhone is its App Store, as well as its dual capability for staff at home and at work.

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Video interview: Why develop for Windows 8?

In this interview, Anand Krishnan,  director, developer & platform group, Microsoft UK speaks about Windows 8 development.

He says: “We’re making a big shift to becoming a devices and services company.” He believes Microsoft is on the edge of a revolution to redefine the idea of a device.

“It used to stand for phones and tablets. But we are walking into a world where a device is just a computer.”

As Computer Weekly has previously reported, Windows 8 represents a departure from how applications are currently developed. “To truly take advantage of the new UI, you will need to redevelop applications,” he adds.

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