2013-The Rebirth Of CA?

John Rakowski

“If you are in the tech business, you need to be willing and able to change”

This statement was made by Michael P Gregoire, CA Technologies’ (CA) new CEO and it pretty much summed up the vibe at CA World 13 this week. I have to admit, as I sat with my fellow Forrester colleagues, Eveline Oehrlich, Courtney Bartlett, Peter O’Neill and Glenn O’Donnell, waiting for the opening keynote I had thoughts in my head of the CA of old. These were formed during my time as an enterprise management consultant in which I saw CA make numerous, good acquisitions but struggle to keep their promises of integration and simplicity – two key ingredients for good enterprise management solutions. To be fair, this has not just been a problem for CA though, as many of the other large solution providers in this space have tripped over the same hurdles.

But, times are changing and the IT Management market is experiencing a renaissance with innovative new solutions that aim to accelerate I&O professionals adoption of Business Service Management (BSM). BSM until now has been a utopian dream but with the increased complexity of IT, from a people, process and technology perspective, means that this now has to become a reality for enterprise IT organizations. Encouragingly, some solution providers in this space are rising to the challenge and judging by the vision and energy portrayed by CA execs over the course of CA World 13 – CA could end up being one of the front-runners of the pack.

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AP’s Twitter Hack: This Isn’t About Twitter’s Security Protocols, It’s About Yours

Nick Hayes

Let’s put it this way: social media and security don’t work together very well today. Marketing professionals who see social media as a vital communication channel view security as a nuisance, whereas Security pros view services like Facebook and Twitter as trivial pastimes that expose the business to enormous risk. The problem is, when it comes to social media, these two facets of the organization need to come to terms with each other – and this was clearly on display Tuesday when the Dow Jones briefly plummeted over 100 points due to false Tweets from AP’s hacked Twitter accounts that indicated President Obama had been injured by explosions at the White House.

This recent breach signifies two things: 1) the potentially damaging impact of social media is real and growing, and 2) companies today aren’t doing enough to mitigate the risks.

As social media becomes a legitimate source of news and information, the implications for inaccurate or inappropriate behavior continue to grow. Damaging or disparaging comments on Twitter (whether intended or not), can have a real impact on your business and the way customers view your company and brand. Companies need to do more to protect their organization from social media risk because:

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US Tech Market Will Grow By 6.2% In 2013 And 6.8% In 2014, As Improving Consumer Spending And Housing Offset Government Cutbacks

Andrew Bartels

No one would claim that the US tech market is booming.  With Europe still mired in recession and debt problems, US economic growth looking soft, and business and consumer worries about the US government raising tax rates and cutting Federal spending, it is not surprising that businesses and governments are being cautious in their purchases of technology goods and services.  But we think the fear is overblown.  Forrester's forecast for the US tech market in 2013 and 2014 -- published today as "US Tech Market Outlook For 2013 And 2014: Better Times Ahead" -- projects a 6.2% rise in 2013 and a 6.8% growth in 2014 in US business and government purchases of computer equipment, communications equipment, software, IT consulting and systems integration services, and IT outsourcing.  Adding in slow growing telecommunications services pulls growth down to 5.7% in 2013 and 6.1% in 2014. That may not be a boom, but it is certainly not a bust.

While CIOs are cautious in their tech buying -- and in the case of the Federal government, actually cutting back -- that caution has and will show up mostly in reduced spending on computer and communications equipment (with the exception of tablets).  CIOs will be most aggressive in software, especially for SaaS apps, analytics, and mobile apps. IT outsourcing will see good growth in 2013 as the result of 2012 selection decisions, while IT consulting and systems integration will come on strong in 2014.  Business and government purchases of telecommunications services will continue to grow at a slower rate than the overall tech market.  

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Why the Samsung Galaxy S4 is important to watch for Fraud Management professionals?

Andras Cser

Well, we just saw Samsung launch its latest ubergizmo with tons of interesting features, like pause video playback at the blink of the eye. However, there is an important hardware feature of the Samsung Galaxy S4 to note here: finally a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip is embedded in the device (something that Apple left out of the iPhone 5), making it useful for mobile payments, building access control, and lots of other security uses. Issuers, payment services providers and trusted services managers have long been dreaming of mobile phones with NFC chips: not having to send plastic credit cards with EMV chips (or magstripes in the US) but being able to personalize the credit card right on the phone reduces card management costs, improves end user  satisfaction. There is nothing new here. But here's where NFC finally in a mainstream mobile phone can revolutionize fraud management:

1) GPS verification. So if you use it to make a card present transaction by touching your phone NFC credit card to a PayPass or other proximity based credit card reader, the payment authorization platform can immediately know where you are, correlate it with the riskiness of the location (country) and use your location to build a risk score. 

2) More factors and better capabilities for payment authentication. Instead or in addition to asking for a PIN code for transaction authentication, the payment processor can contact your registered phone and - based on risk - can ask for a PIN code signature, or secondary authentication like facial recognition or biometric retina vein recognition to authorize a higher value transaction.

3) Linking the NFC chip to an eWallet. This will be easier than ever before. If the NFC chip is initialized to be a credit card, the eWallet application can check for the presence of it and maybe even use it in a card present transaction. 

 

2012 EA Award Winners — Where Are They Now?

Alex Cullen

The InfoWorld/Forrester Enterprise Architecture Awards recognize excellent EA programs — ones that due to their business focus, and strategic yet pragmatic orientation, provide sustained value to their business. I caught up with two of our 2012 winners to find out what they have been doing in the year since their award submission. I was specifically interested in hearing:

  • Have there been changes to business strategy or IT strategy since one year ago that they’ve had to respond to? 
  • What would they say has been their greatest accomplishment over the past year?
  • The priorities for their EA programs today — changes in the scope, mission, or organization?
  • What would they say is a key learning of their EA program, or the larger IT organization about making EA effective?
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Leverage mobile payment deployment to support expanded business in China

Bryan Wang

 

In China, mobile commerce has become one of the top priorities for organizations in retail, hospitality, transportation and other services industries, given the dramatic growth of smartphone adoption and the exploding e-commerce spending. Alipay, the leading third-party online payment platform in China and sister company of the country’s largest C2C website Taobao.com, claims 60 million mobile payment users and estimates 10% of its 2012 transactions were from mobile devices.

In terms of mobile payment, mobile proximity payments and mobile remote commerce have gained momentum through early industry implementations and government support. Starting 2011, the variety of technologies and platforms available in the market has grown significantly.

Under such circumstance, many IT organizations are interested to understand more about the landscape of the mobile payment space. They are also seeking information about the multiple platforms that will be enabling them for their corporate mobile commerce strategies, especially considering that the mobile payment market landscape in China is dramatically different from other parts of the world.

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IBM Escalates The DevOps War With UrbanCode Acquisition

Glenn O'Donnell

On Monday, April 22, IBM announced it acquired UrbanCode, a small but exciting vendor based in Cleveland, OH that is focused on improving various aspects of the application lifecycle. Both IBM and UrbanCode have been increasing their marketing rhetoric to position themselves in the rapidly expanding DevOps market. On this same day, CA Technologies - at its CA World conference in Las Vegas - was loudly proclaiming its own DevOps capabilities, springboarding off its own recent acquisition of Nolio

The IBM-UrbanCode deal has already closed. Financial details were not disclosed, though the purchase price is inconsequential in the huge scale of IBM's finances.

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TechnoPolitics Podcast: Zero Trust - Your Only Hope For A Secure Network

Mike Gualtieri

Forrester TechnoPoliticsWith apologies to the late great President Ronald Reagan, "trust but verify" is outmoded advice when it comes to computer network security. So, why do so many information security professionals still think trusted and untrusted networks zones are still best practice? Most think that people are trusted or untrusted. The problem with that thinking is you never know who can or cannot be trusted. Remember wikileaks? It was an inside job.

The solution: Zero Trust - Verify Then Trust

Meet John Kindervag, Forrester Principal Analyst and a leading expert in network and information security. He says that firms must take a Zero Trust approach to network security that means "verify then trust". In this episode of Forrester TechnoPolitics, John describes the what, why, and how of the Zero Trust approach to network and information security.

Podcast: Zero Trust - Your Only Hope For A Secure Network (8 mins)

 

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Managing Application Performance In The Cloud Is A DevOps Team Effort

Dave Bartoletti

As businesses get serious about the cloud, developers are bringing more business-critical transaction data to cloud-resident web and mobile apps. Indeed, web and mobile apps that drive systems of engagement (how you interact with your customers and partners) are the reason why many companies look to the cloud in the first place. Public clouds offer the speed and agility developers want, plus the development tools they need. Once you’ve built a killer web or mobile app in the cloud and it’s in production, driving real revenue, who’s responsible for making sure it performs?

It’s a team effort. Developers have to think about performance management as they build, and IT operations teams need to design application monitoring and management into their cloud deployment processes up front. Why? Because there’s no time to do it later. You won’t have time to implement a new app monitoring solution for each new cloud app before you need to get it out to users. And once it’s out there, you need to be tracking user experience immediately.

In traditional IT, one of the reasons we could get away with limited insight into application performance was because we usually overprovisioned resources to make sure we didn’t have to worry about it. It’s easier to have excess capacity than to solve tricky performance problems – problems you might only see once in a while.

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Apple’s Healthy iPad Business

JP Gownder

Apple’s earnings call yesterday (for the quarter ending March 30, 2013) revealed that its tablet product category, comprised of iPad and iPad Mini, is extremely healthy:

  • iPad quarterly sales rose year-over-year to 19.5 million compared with 11.8 million in the same quarter last year. This represented an over 65% increase. Seasonality effects – like the holiday season in many countries in November and December – meant that sequential-quarter sales dipped (as would be expected). What It Means: The iPad was the fastest-growing product segment for Apple by far. The iPad Mini has generated a new pathway for market penetration, while the iPad continues to be the market leader in its size category.
  • International – particularly Asian – iPad sales grew quickly. CEO Tim Cook called out successes in China (where iPad sales increased by 138%) and Japan. Apple plans to double number of stores in China from 11 to 22 in the next 2 years. What It Means: Having a healthy Asian business will be increasingly important to the iOS ecosystem as it competes with Android. (In China, for example, Android tablets enjoy a strong market presence). Apple is making the right moves to bolster its sales and its ecosystem in Asia.
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