INTERNATIONAL IT ISSUE

THE STAR NEWSPAPER

Thursday December 8, 2011

Newer economies allow more high tech freedom at work

PERSONAL BOUNDARIES: Workers sitting at cafe tables in an office building in Boston. First world employees are more concerned with the work-life balance than workers in up-and-coming economies. - Reuters

LONDON: Employees in fast-growing economies have more freedom over the technology they use for work than their counterparts in developed countries, and are more likely to see corporate provision of devices as a perk, according to a study.
The so-called consumerisation of IT - the migration into the workplace of technology that employees use at home - is a global phenomenon but far more pronounced in China and Brazil than in Britain, France and the United States, the study found.
While 59% of employees in China said they could influence the choice of device they used for work, in Britain the figure was just 27%, according to the survey by market research firm TNS commissioned by PC maker Dell.
Two-thirds of workers in China were keen to use the same device for work and personal use, but just 29% in Britain were happy to do so. Workers in developed economies were more concerned to keep work and private life separate.
Britons, French and Brazilians were least likely to be able to relax after work hours - 46% in each country said they could not. This was less of a problem in the United States, where 35% reported issues, and Mexico with 36%.
Overall, the private sector was found to be more open to consumer technology choices than the public sector, and small businesses more flexible than large enterprises.
"The developing world is much more aspirational about technology, sees it as much more than just a corporate tool, and has much more enthusiasm," said Stephen Murdoch, who heads Dell's large-enterprise and public-sector business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
"That pervaded everything. We thought there would be much more interest from the more mature working environments. It was partly about being able to draw the line between work and home life," he told Reuters.
The consumerisation of IT is eroding the large corporate customer base that technology providers like Microsoft and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion enjoy, to the benefit of Apple, Google and others.
As consumers become more tech-savvy and have more gadgets at home, they are less likely to tolerate the choices of IT managers, which are often made for reasons of convenience and cost-effectiveness and are slow to respond to market trends.
The study found that 43% of employees globally said IT problems were a regular frustration. Those in large enterprises, media-sector employees and younger workers were most likely to report such frustrations.
The study also found that 43% of employees around the world felt pressure to work longer hours, with just three out of five saying they could get their work done in regular 9-to-5 office hours.
More than half of those surveyed said they were free to download software to keep up with the latest technology. Mexico with 82% of employees and China with 79% led the way, while in Britain only 37% said they were allowed.
TNS Global conducted 8,360 20-minute interviews for the study in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Australia, China and India in October of this year. - Reuters

INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGY NEWS

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES

December 15, 2011, 8:30 pm

Please Stop Sharing

By TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

Last week, there came from the dispiriting clutter of the nation’s capital an extraordinary tale of our times. It concerned aides to Representative Rick Larsen, Democrat of Washington, who broadcast via Twitter how cool it was to be sitting in the seat of power at midday while drinking Jack Daniel’s and watching Nirvana videos on the taxpayers’ dime.
For good measure, these Aides Gone Wild sent out a couple of bad mots about their “idiot boss.” Within an hour of hearing about the indiscretions, which had continued for months on personal, not Congressional, Twitter accounts, the boss fired all three young people.
The moralists had a field day, complaining about the low standards of the millennial generation. No wonder they can’t find jobs!
But there is only one difference between the knuckleheads of yore — me, for example — who did numerous stupid things between the onset of puberty and a late adolescence lasting to nearly 30, and those Twit-iots of the 21st century.
And that is technology. Facebook, Twitter, cell phone text messages and palm-size appliances yet to sprout from Apple’s labs allow all of us to be banal in real time.
“I’m a moron, Siri,” I can tell my new iPhone 4S robo-assistant. “Please share with everyone.”

Let the counterrevolt begin; the shying of America would be a welcome thing. Sure, social media tools have helped foster revolutions (Egypt, Tunisia), while releasing butterflies of free speech in police states (Iran). And it’s great to get baby pictures from that distant relative living north of Nome.
But enough with the everyday shared thoughts, those half-hatched word products that could use more time in vitro.
People I once admired, even looked up to — smart, literate, funny folks — have gone down several notches in my estimation after they decided to reveal their every idiotic observation via Twitter.
From one (I’ll protect him here, even if he won’t do the same thing for himself by going silent for a day), a man known for daring urban design ideas, came these recent insights on his Twitter account:

Stuck in traffic. OMG, this light is long!
Just had the best burrito of my life!
Saw my first deliveryman on a Segway — how cool is that?

Not very, actually. Where did this compulsion for light confession come from? In part, surely, from narcissism, a trait as ancient as our species. But at least Narcissus could only stare at his own reflection until it killed him. Imagine that handsome Greek with a text finger as itchy as say, that of former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, the saddest of the digital exhibitionists.
So I cheered the news from my colleague Jenna Wortham this week that the march of Facebook into every facet of our lives has slowed at last. Of course, with 200 million active users in the United States, Facebook has won the war. It’s all over but the arguing among corporate overseers about how to divvy up our private information for profit. But some brave souls refuse to submit. Hurray for the holdouts!
The most encouraging part of the story were the comments from young people who went cold turkey, saying they realized that Facebook had made them less close to, even alienated from, their friends. The imperative of Facebook — maximum exposure of the personal “brand” — is by itself a form of poison to lasting relationships. It’s hard enough trying to stay close to say, five good friends. Why have surface relationships with a hundred of them?
The fear of those newly proclaimed social-media-phobes is that people will say they disappeared, or that, without regular screen updates, they don’t even exist at all.
But they’ll never vanish — the online graveyard is an oxymoron. Among the haunting consequences of Facebook and Twitter use is the immortality of ill-chosen words and personal pictures. And for that reason, alone, parents now have to give their children “the talk.” No, not about sex. Kids already know enough from the Internet to advise Casanova. The talk is about privacy, and the importance of children keeping to themselves things that could harm them later.
Need I remind everyone that human resource departments have no problem finding captioned pictures of job applicants sharing, um, lingerie reviews from their junior year in college? Cyberspace never forgets.
I hope that those three former staffers fired by Larsen will be given a fresh start somewhere, especially because their Google reputations will follow them forever.
Plus, public displays of stupidity happen at the highest levels. When Sonia Sotomayor was nominated to be the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Newt Gingrich immediately tweeted that she was a “racist,” and should withdraw her name. He was following that paragon of unfiltered verbiage, Rush Limbaugh.
Gingrich later took his “racist” comment back, saying he’d acted in haste. Of course he wants it back. There are 50 million Hispanics in the United States, and they are the nation’s fastest-growing minority. But no matter how many appeals to Hispanics Gingrich tries to make, his digital tattoo can never be erased.
In his youth, Gingrich married his high school geometry teacher. If Twitter existed then (and given Gingrich’s promiscuity with the language, you know he would have tweeted hourly), he most likely would not be the Republican frontrunner today.
The best advice I’ve heard of late is from the actor George Clooney. “I don’t tweet, I don’t go on Facebook,” he said in a profile. “I think there’s too much information about all of us out there. I’m liking the idea of privacy more and more.”
Easy for him to say. He’s famous. But oh, how he wouldn’t crave a bit of the most precious commodity of the digital age — anonymity.

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

THE NEW YORK TIMES

December 1, 2011

Cloud Computing as a Threat to Older Tech Companies

By QUENTIN HARDY

| December 1, 2011, 10:33 am 9 Comments

 

George Frey/Bloomberg NewsServers at the headquarters of Novell Inc.

The International Data Corporation, whose technology analysis and predictions influence a lot of corporate purchases, foresees the creation of a new high-technology industry in the convergence of mobile devices, social networking, and cloud-based computing and data storage. As a result, the company says in a new study, many industry giants will scramble to sustain relevance, and some upstarts will achieve leadership positions or be purchased.
Frank Gens, IDC’s chief analyst, who led the study, said, “The incumbents are facing a huge transition.”
Spending on the new technologies will reach nearly $700 billion, or about 20 percent of the $3.5 trillion in hardware, software, and services spent on information technology worldwide, IDC said. As a great deal of spending in the sector goes toward maintaining older systems, such a share for relatively new technologies is surprising. Spending on the new technologies is growing six times that of traditional computer servers and personal computers, IDC said, and by 2020 will be 80 percent industry growth.
Much of the new development will also take place in emerging markets such as China, IDC said. It predicted that 28 percent of overall spending, and 53 percent of the industry’s growth, would come from outside the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. By mid- 2012, China is expected to be the world’s second largest consumer of information technology, eclipsing Japan.
If the IDC predictions bear out, the technology industry is in the midst of perhaps its fastest-ever transition. Earlier transitions, like the move from mainframe and mini computers to personal computers and client-server technologies, led to the rise of giants like Oracle and Microsoft, and the downfall of older stalwarts, like Digital Equipment Corp. and Wang Laboratories.
This time will be no different, Mr. Gens said, adding: “Hewlett-Packard will be challenged. Microsoft, Intel, SAP, RIM, Oracle, Cisco, Dell – they are all facing the next transition, competing to be around in 2020. At least a third will fade away.”
Among the notable claims in the forecast, IDC said that spending on hardware, software and services in cloud computing systems alone will be $60 billion in 2012. The growth rate in this sector is about four and a half times that of the industry overall. About $36 billion of that was projected spending for companies providing cloud services to businesses, from companies like Amazon.com, Salesforce.com and Google, and the balance will be from “arms dealers,” supplying things like servers and networking gear. Amazon, which does not formally break out how much it makes from selling corporate computing services over the Internet, will make over $1 billion in that business next year, IDC said.
Mobile devices, which earlier this year outshipped personal computers worldwide, will in 2012 generate more revenue than PCs for the first time, IDC said. Shipments of mobile devices will outstrip PCs by two to one, and 85 million mobile applications, or apps, will be downloaded. More money will be spent on mobile data networks than on networks tethered by lines.
The rapid transition to mobile, driven by an explosion of tablet computers, will challenge both traditional computer software companies like Microsoft and beneficiaries like Apple, which is seeing the dominance of its iOS operating system challenged by the open source Android operating system developed by Google.
“By 2013 we’ll know who the leaders are,” Mr. Gens said. “Android will be there, iOS will be there – will Windows 8 put Microsoft there? By the end of the year we’ll know if putting a PC operating system onto mobile was a good idea.”
Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which IDC said would take 20 percent of the tablet market in 2012, will be a particularly successful device. While the Fire runs on Android, Google has no involvement with the product. Mr. Gens called the Fire “a phenomenal content device,” which he predicted Amazon will produce in larger formats that will make it more useful for business functions like creating and sending data in a couple of years.
The increasing number of people and machines online will additionally create an explosion of digital data. IDC said that the amount of data stored in 2012 would increase 48 percent from 2011, to 2.7 zetabytes, or 2.7 billion terabytes. By 2015, the firm said, the total will be 8 zetabytes.
These changes will likely prompt incumbents rich in cash but possibly challenged in relevance to acquire newer companies, Mr. Gens said. “IBM, Microsoft and Oracle all have to be cloud providers,” he said. “Microsoft needs a content and media cloud, like Netflix,” he said, adding that “smaller independent service providers like NetSuite, Workday, Taleo, and Success Factors will get bought up in the next six to ten months.”

INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGY NEWS

THE NEW YORK TIMES
PUBLISHED 17 DESEMBER 2011

Rules to Stop Pupil and Teacher From Getting Too Social Online

Stephen Morton for The New York Times

Lewis Holloway, a schools superintendent in Georgia, has imposed a strict social media policy.

By JENNIFER PRESTON

Published: December 17, 2011

Faced with scandals and complaints involving teachers who misuse social media, school districts across the country are imposing strict new guidelines that ban private conversations between teachers and their students on cellphones and online platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

Jennifer Pust, who teaches in California, believes social media can be useful educational tools.

The policies come as educators deal with a wide range of new problems. Some teachers have set poor examples by posting lurid comments or photographs involving sex or alcohol on social media sites. Some have had inappropriate contact with students that blur the teacher-student boundary. In extreme cases, teachers and coaches have been jailed on sexual abuse and assault charges after having relationships with students that, law enforcement officials say, began with electronic communication.
But the stricter guidelines are meeting resistance from some teachers because of the increasing importance of technology as a teaching tool and of using social media to engage with students. In Missouri, the state teachers union, citing free speech, persuaded a judge that a new law imposing a statewide ban on electronic communication between teachers and students was unconstitutional. Lawmakers revamped the bill this fall, dropping the ban but directing school boards to develop their own social media policies by March 1.
School administrators acknowledge that the vast majority of teachers use social media appropriately. But they also say they are increasingly finding compelling reasons to limit teacher-student contact. School boards in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia have updated or are revising their social media policies this fall.
“My concern is that it makes it very easy for teachers to form intimate and boundary-crossing relationships with students,” said Charol Shakeshaft, chairwoman of the Department of Educational Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has studied sexual misconduct by teachers for 15 years. “I am all for using this technology. Some school districts have tried to ban it entirely. I am against that. But I think there’s a middle ground that would allow teachers to take advantage of the electronic technology and keep kids safe.”
Lewis Holloway, the superintendent of schools in Statesboro, Ga., imposed a new policy this fall prohibiting private electronic communications after learning that Facebook and text messages had helped fuel a relationship between an eighth grade English teacher and her 14-year-old male pupil. The teacher was arrested this summer on charges of aggravated child molestation and statutory rape, and remains in jail awaiting trial.
“It can start out innocent and get more and more in depth quickly,” said Mr. Holloway, a school administrator for 38 years. “Our students are vulnerable through new means, and we’ve got to find new ways to protect them.”
Mr. Holloway said he learned of other sexual misconduct cases when consulting with school administrators around the nation about social media policies. While there is no national public database of sexual misconduct by teachers, dozens of cases have made local headlines around the country this year.
In Illinois, a 56-year-old former language-arts teacher was found guilty in September on sexual abuse and assault charges involving a 17-year-old female student with whom he had exchanged more than 700 text messages. In Sacramento, a 37-year-old high school band director pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct stemming from his relationship with a 16-year-old female student; her Facebook page had more than 1,200 private messages from him, some about massages. In Pennsylvania, a 39-year-old male high school athletic director pleaded guilty in November to charges of attempted corruption of a minor; he was arrested after offering a former male student gifts in exchange for sex.
School administrators are also concerned about teachers’ revealing too much information about their private lives. As part of a policy adopted last month in Muskegon, Mich., public school employees were warned they could face disciplinary charges for posting on social media sites photos of themselves using alcohol or drugs. “We wanted to have a policy that encourages interaction between our students and parents and teachers,” said Jon Felske, superintendent for Muskegon’s public schools. “That is how children learn today and interact. But we want to do it with the caveat: keep work work — and keep private your personal life.”
New York City, the nation’s largest school district, has been at work on a social media policy for months, and expects to have one in place by spring. In the meantime, controversies over social media erupt regularly, like one earlier this month over a Bronx principal whose Facebook page included a risqué picture that was then posted in the hallways of her school.
Richard J. Condon, special commissioner of investigation for New York City schools, said there had been a steady increase in the number of complaints of inappropriate communications involving Facebook alone in recent years — 85 complaints from October 2010 through September 2011, compared with only eight from September 2008 through October 2009.
What worries some educators is that overly restrictive policies will remove an effective way of engaging students who regularly use social media platforms to communicate.
“I think the reason why I use social media is the same reason everyone else uses it: it works,” said Jennifer Pust, head of the English department at Santa Monica High School, where a nonfraternization policy governs both online and offline relationships with students. “I am glad that it is not more restrictive. I understand we need to keep kids safe. I think that we would do more good keeping kids safe by teaching them how to use these tools and navigate this online world rather than locking it down and pretending that it is not in our realm.”
Nicholas Provenzano, 32, who has been teaching English for 10 years at Grosse Point High School in Michigan, acknowledged that “all of us using social media in a positive way with kids have to take 15 steps back whenever there is an incident.” But he said the benefits were many and that he communicated regularly with his students in an open forum, mostly through Twitter, responding to their questions about assignments. He has even shared a photo of his 6-month-old son. On occasion, he said, he will exchange private messages about an assignment or school-related task. He said that in addition to modeling best practices on social media use, he has been able to engage some students on Twitter who would not raise their hand in class.
He also said social media networks allowed him to collaborate on projects in other parts of the country. Facebook offers guidance for teachers and recommends they communicate on a public page.
Some teachers, however, favor a sharply defined barrier. In Dayton, Ohio, where the school board imposed a social media policy this fall, limiting teachers to public exchanges on school-run networks, the leader of the teachers union welcomed the rules. “I see it as protecting teachers,” said David A. Romick, president of the Dayton Education Association. “For a relationship to start with friending or texting seems to be heading down the wrong path professionally.”

INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGY NEWS

THE NEW YORK TIMES
 PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 20, 2011

Looking to Streamline Airport Security Screenings

IATA

A rendering of a proposed checkpoint that would assign passengers to a lane based on their estimated level of risk, with the least risky entering at right. Most people would use the middle; the left lane would be reserved for enhanced inspections.

By NICOLA CLARK and JAD MOUAWAD

Published: December 20, 2011

Travelers in the midst of another holiday season of shuffling shoeless through seemingly interminable airport security lines may find it difficult to imagine a future where screenings are not only speedy but thorough.
 

The three levels of a security check: “enhanced” for the closely watched, “normal” for most people and “known traveler” for those who belong to a prescreening program. 

But Kenneth Dunlap, director of security at the International Air Transport Association, a global airline lobbying group, suggested just such a situation, seemingly straight out of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Total Recall.” In it, travelers would stop only briefly to identify themselves before entering a tunnel where machines would screen them for metals, explosives and other banned items as they walked through.
Such a vision may remain just that, a relic from a 20-year-old movie. But with global air traffic approaching 2.8 billion passengers a year and growing steadily about 5 percent a year, industry executives and security experts say a fundamental rethinking of today’s security checkpoints is inevitable.
What is less clear, however, is when — and to what degree — technology, regulation and public acceptance may come together to create nuisance-free security screening worldwide. Moreover, critics of the current system, including aviation security consultants, airport executives and passenger advocacy groups, say the innovations may not be any more likely to thwart a determined terrorist than today’s systems.
As to the air industry group’s idea, “it is a concept that has been growing in popularity,” said Norman Shanks, an aviation security and airport management consultant near London. “Technically, it is feasible. But practically, it’s fraught with problems.”
There is little disagreement over the need for vigilance at airports. But after the British authorities uncovered a plot in 2006 to bomb passenger planes bound for the United States using liquid explosives and an attempt in 2009 by a Nigerian man to ignite a bomb hidden in his underwear, new security measures have proliferated, stretching checkpoint wait times.
According to the airline group, airport checkpoints globally cleared an average of just 149 people an hour in 2011, down from 220 people an hour five years ago. At peak travel periods like Christmas, the number of passengers cleared has slowed to as few as 60 an hour at certain airports.
Many of the technologies that would be needed to drive a reliable walk-through security checkpoint are still laboratory prototypes. Others, like full-body scanners, biometric identification and various liquid and conventional explosives detection systems and even infrared lie detectors, are already in use or being tested in airports. But public concerns about privacy and the potential health effects of repeated exposure to X-rays, for instance, have led many governments to tread carefully.
“With any new technology, you get a certain amount of ‘What is this about?’ ” Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, said in an interview. She said that the 500 or so body scanners in place at more than 100 airports in the United States had recently been equipped with software that generated a generic outline of passengers to protect their privacy. And while she played down the potential health risks linked to certain types of body scanners that use X-ray technologies, she acknowledged that “there is always a certain reticence when radiation is involved.”
To many security experts, however, improving both waiting times and security has less to do with rolling out sophisticated new machines and more with gathering information about passengers before they even arrive at the airport.
In the United States, the Transportation Security Administration has begun to shift to a more “risk-based” method of screening airline passengers, with the premise that the overwhelming majority of travelers pose no threat, yet must still be screened.

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

THE NEW YORK TIMES

December 8, 2011, 9:43 amMergers & Acquisitions

I.B.M. to Buy DemandTec for $440 Million

By EVELYN M. RUSLI

8:50 p.m. | Updated
I.B.M. said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy DemandTec, a Web-based enterprise software company, for $440 million in cash.
DemandTec, a provider of analytics software for retailers, is at the intersection of two trends in enterprise technology: the growth of cloud-based services and data analytics.
The rise of these markets has spurred deal-making in recent months. On Saturday, SAP of Germany announced plans to buy SuccessFactors, a human resource management service, for $3.4 billion. And less than two months ago, Oracle agreed to buy RightNow Technologies for $1.43 billion.
In each case, the buyers offered big premiums to shareholders. I.B.M. is paying $13.20 a share, 56.6 percent above DemandTec’s closing price on Wednesday. SAP agreed to pay 52 percent above SuccessFactors’ closing price on Friday.

“The combination of DemandTec and I.B.M. will help marketing and sales executives in retail and other industries drive more revenue and increase profitability,” Craig Hayman, an I.B.M. general manager, said in a statement on Thursday.
The rise of the Web and the boom in digital data are altering business behavior. Increasingly, companies are shifting their focus to cloud computing, in which information is stored online, and becoming less dependent on software installed at a company site. Businesses are also turning to services that can help them sort the huge volume of data that courses through their servers and the Web.
As the enterprise software industry evolves, mature technology giants, like I.B.M. and Oracle, are rapidly building businesses or buying small to medium-size companies to address the shifts.
“It’s amazing that I.B.M. didn’t do this deal earlier,” said Navil Elsheshai, an analyst for Pacific Crest Securities. “There will be increasing consolidation in this space.”
In the last five years, I.B.M. has been an eager acquirer of data analytics companies, spending about $14 billion. In the summer, it bought Algorithmics for $387 million and i2 for an undisclosed amount. Algorithmics specializes in risk analytics software for financial businesses, while i2 helps government, insurance and retail clients assess security threats.
DemandTec’s software collects real-time data from the Web and in stores to help retailers identify trends and make better pricing and marketing decisions. The company, which is based in San Mateo, Calif., will be folded into I.B.M.’s software group.
For its most recent quarter, which ended Aug. 31, DemandTec recorded an increase in revenue, to $22 million, and a net loss of $4.4 million.
Given the premium that I.B.M. is paying, shares of DemandTec surged 56 percent to close at $13.15 on Thursday. I.B.M.’s shares fell 1.3 percent to close at $191.58 amid a downturn in the overall market.
The DemandTec transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2012.