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Kinabalu Challenge 2009

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In a previous post from almost a year ago, I focussed on the opportunities that are available to you as graduates within Capgemini.  Based on recent activities, I think it only fair that I revisit the subject.

Back in June 2008 I took part in the BTC Challenge, a Dragons' Den style competition where we pitched an idea to revolutionise the way we stream video to portable devices.  On the back of this, our team was given the opportunity to pitch this idea to the COO of a major UK Broadcaster, highlighting at the time just how many opportunities are available and how much faith the company has in its graduate community.

This year, senior management have agreed to fund one team of four graduates from the BTC to enter the Kinabalu Challenge 2009, a gruelling eight day race to the 4,100m summit of Mt. Kinabalu in Borneo.  As part of the challenge we have been tasked with raising £10,000 for the Prince's Trust and Raleigh, two charities focussed on inspiring young people with the self-belief and confidence they need to get involved with their communities, turn their lives around, and help to build a society where people work together and social mobility is real!

It's safe to say that the next four months will be extremely busy in the quest to reach £10,000, and we've already got a lot planned to help us achieve this goal. Take a look at our website detailing past and future events, monitoring our fundraising progress and keeping you updated on sponsorship, our training programmes and everything in between - http://www.borneoforthis.com/

If what I have written has inspired you to do something great for disadvantaged youths, get on to the Raleigh website, watch the video, sign up, and remember; it really does change people’s lives!

£1,633 and counting - sure do have a long way to go…

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New Joiner, New Blogger!

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As we are entering the summer, I am currently closing 3 months in Capgemini. Yep, I am a newbie! I am Christina Chrysomallidou (long surname I know), a new BTCer and I am very glad to be given the chance to post my views on the Business Technology Blog. My aim is to provide information about any key technology updates that you can find useful and valuable.

First things first, I would like to talk a little about my educational background. After finishing my bachelor studies in Computer Sciences, I decided that I wanted to learn more about how technology is / should be applied in business environments. Therefore, I did my postgraduate studies in the field of Information Systems and Management. The most important lesson that I took from that course was the value of interaction and communication in all technology projects, small or big, simple or complex.

The next step was of course, to see how technology is applied in action. I joined Capgemini because I believe that technology can help enterprises to improve their performance and to be sustainable and effective. Moreover, I liked Capgemini’s motto ‘Collaborative Experience’; it shows how important in this company is the value of interaction, team working and communication.

So, what about my current project? I am involved in a really interesting initiative which deals with the Innovation Management Process in Capgemini. More specifically, I have the chance to listen to very interesting and innovative ideas brought forward from Capgemini people and see how these ideas are being implemented, either internally (improve our procedures) or externally (deliver to our clients).

Why is innovation important? In the current market conditions, many technology (and not only) enterprises face the dilemma of investing in innovation. People will argue that innovation is a luxury when you are striving to achieve financial robustness. However, innovation can help deliver better services to your clients and be differentiated from your competitors. Innovation can help reduce costs and improve the internal processes. In a summary, innovation can help companies sustain their business performance in the long term. To add more views in these, here are some very interesting articles from Forbes and BusinessWeek, discussing the issue of ‘Innovation during a Recession’.

I hope that you will find my current and future blog posts interesting.
So, until next time then! 
 

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Complex Event Processing and Enterprise

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What is complex event processing? For the uninitiated let me start by scratching the surface of some theoretical computer science as an introduction. The solvability of computationally complex programmable algorithms in software design is governed by the ability to benchmark them against non-deterministic polynomial (NP) time, polynomial (P) time, or the grey fuzzy cloud of the unknown complexity known as NP-Complete. This school of thought, however, is well known and there’s even a prize of one-million-dollars for the person who can derive a proof providing evidence to show that solvable problems in complexity class P are equal to those in class NP – i.e. P = NP. But what has this got to do with a corporate enterprise? And what has computational complexity got to do with complex event processing?

Let’s consider the current state of the economic downturn as an example. The repercussions of the subprime mortgage crisis across the Atlantic come through in short bursts, we’d typically experience ripples which were for the most part predictable – such as those coming through the conservatorship of the Federal National Mortgage Association (you’ll probably know of them as ‘Fannie Mae’) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (again, commonly known as ‘Freddie Mac’). But as the big corporate names started to fall – such as AIG (acquired by US Federal Government), Lehman Brothers (bankruptcy), and Merrill Lynch (acquired by Bank of America) – the ripples were coming through stronger and at an accelerated pace. Now as we are in the midst of a global recession, the volatility and shear unpredictability of the economy means for business to stay afloat they must remain competitive in preparation for the upturn. In order to do so, enterprises must operate with an agility to respond proactively to oscillations in the economy, helping them to address the challenges in a rapidly evolving economy.

Fundamentally, tackling unpredictable events – such as rapid changes during a recession – is about quantifying the impact of such an event and thus being able to derive a weighted approaching to prioritising the processing of events in the least disruptive manner. A common approach to this is to conceptualise an event, more specifically to recognise the hallmarks of an event and to better understand what the repercussions could be. This forms the basis of complex event processing. More formally complex event processing can be explained as “a technique that helps discover complex, inferred events by analysing and correlating other events”.

So how does complex event processing relate to IT within the corporate enterprise? With corporate software architecture developing into a service-oriented architecture, and that coupled with the rapid adoption of radio frequency identification, event processing is well suited to fit in enterprise information systems in terms of facilitation of event aggregation into high-level actionable information, and improving the responsiveness. And as you can see, complexity in IT isn’t just about overcoming the challenges of building complex software systems by designing efficient algorithms – it’s also about understanding what happens when minor ‘events’ come together to cause a major complex event, and how best to tackle these in a methodical order.

I’d be fascinated to hear your thoughts on this, and to hear of any examples of complex event processing occurring at your workplace.

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Delivered!

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Tuesday morning and just pulling into Birmingham, two more stops till I am in Sheffield and on time. I am off up there to meet one of my stakeholders that I have been working with for the last 5 months as we have just finished rolling out a new information platform for them.

The project has not really been a typical project in any aspects. If I had to write down the skills I have used over the past five months it would go onto another page. It developed me as a consultant so much that my team leader has seen me change as a person far more than expected over the period of the project. I have been working with all parts of the organisation, from business change consultants in Capgemini Consulting through to developers in our outsourcing unit.

Working with the variety of people that I am doing has also been a great opportunity for me to decide on a career path post the BTC. I have been on the BTC for roughly 22 months now and had such a varied experience of roles, the exact reason for me joining the BTC. I have learnt something from every role and it’s only now that I have this experience that I can look to hone my skills and look to transition out of the BTC and into another Business Unit.

This is a decision I have to make, but it will really only be the first decision I have to make. As time goes on other opportunities will come up, and in the fast paced environment that we are in I imagine that my career won’t just be a straight ladder to my goals, it will be a climbing frame where there are lots of paths to the top.

This will be my last blog post on here as I move aside for another writer to take my place and allow the opportunity for a new BTC’er to take you through their thoughts as their career progresses.

New Email:
“sorry Ben – off sick today so not going to be able to make the meeting this afternoon.”

Flexible is something you have to be in a role like this, I still need to achieve my target for the day so better get back onto it...

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Smartphone - smart choice or security risk?

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Over the past couple of years there has been an increase in the use of smartphones like the Blackberry or iPhone. People tend to use them for receiving email, internet browsing as well as making phone calls. But are they susceptible to security breaches?

Barack Obama - a self confessed Blackberry addict - was forced to switch to a Windows based Sectera Edge Smartphone when he became US president, since apparently there is something lacking in the security of the everyday blackberry. However he will be able to get his hands on the so-called 'BarackBerry' (Blackberry 8830 International) with its enhanced security that meets the National Security Agency standard very soon. So if the US government seem to think that Blackberrys are not secure enough should regular users worry? Possibly not - I guess my latest mail to my friends is not an issue of national security, but client sensitive information is obviously a worry for any business. So should we be thinking twice about what we send over our smart phones?

A recent BBC News article suggested that once a certain amount of the population share smartphones with the same operating system then widespread mobile phone viruses will start to spread. I suppose it is similar to the first computer viruses that only infected Windows based operating systems, rather than the Apple Mac. Once sales get to a level which scammers believe will be of benefit to them then we may see many more viruses affecting unsecured smartphones.

What do you think? Is security such a buzz word these days that everyone is overly sensitive to its use?

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SOA in the 'Trough of Disillusionment'

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In my previous post I discussed what appeared to be the demise of distributed computing, when in reality it had been subsumed into the whirlwind of hype that is cloud computing.  Building on ideas and repackaging them as revolutionary concepts is not a new thing in IT, and cloud computing is the latest example of this.  Another good example, and what I will be discussing in this post, is the effect distributed computing has had on another industry shaping concept - Service Orientated Architecture.
 
SOA takes the notion of distributed computing, focussing primarily on sharing of hardware services, and extends it to software in the form of shared services.  A shared infrastructure in a 'grid' format is used to support a range of software services which execute simple reusable business tasks, such as ‘Get Data’, ‘Store Data’ or ‘Print’.  Using this example, a business requirement such as ‘the system should be able to retrieve a file, store it locally and print a physical copy’ can be satisfied by linking the three individual services together. 

Hanging a number of fine grained (helper services performing simple tasks such as ‘Store Data’) and coarse grained services (long running services that often orchestrate a number of other fine grained services) together will perform the end to end functionality required by a single project; mixing and matching this pool of reusable services enables you to perform the functionality of multiple projects.  To improve flexibility of the end solution and facilitate this ‘pick and choose’ pool of reusable services, each service should be loosely coupled, maintainable, adaptable and extendable, allowing for easy bug fixing and future enhancements without having to worry about users of a service.
 
In 2007, SOA was named by Gartner as the predominant approach for building IT solutions in the coming 3-4 years.  Now, Gartner recognise that, given how fickle and fast-paced the IT industry is, SOA has passed the peak of inflated expectations and is now in the trough of disillusionment, as defined by the Gartner ‘hype cycle’ - now is the time to prove that SOA is a viable method of delivery.  Capgemini, amongst other IT Consulting companies, has shown that SOA can be used in the real world to deliver mission-critical solutions at Corus and highly available, scalable and secure solutions at ING Direct.
 
SOA, contrary to what many may say, is here to stay - proof of this can be seen by the magnitude of blue-chip vendors releasing stable design time governance SOA tools, such as Oracle Enterprise Repository, and runtime governance tools, such as IBM Trivoli Composite Application Manager.  Have you experienced SOA delivery?  If so, did it live up to expectations?

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@twitter #twitter

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In my last post I was gibbering on about using facebook for business, since that post I have dabbled in the art of twitter and I have to say I am not convinced by it... yet. I am a user of facebook and it was when my housemate came back from work one day and openly said “that Stephen Fry is a funny bloke” completely out of the blue that I found out he was referring to his twitter feed.

 

Needless to say 30min later I was signed up and following @Stephenfry, @Wossy, @chrisdjmoyles, and a few other friends on there. It’s a Micro blogging site for those no in the know. Basically people have the freedom to write up to 140 characters in the theory that people would update it more and it would be more interesting and relevant than a blog. If you are following Stephen Fry then you would defiantly agree that people do it more often (some 25 posts a day!).

 

So what are its uses? I can’t see any other than I can find out what people are doing, so add me , I will add you and we can see if this is going to enrich my life... or is it just going to be another internet fad that lasts for a couple of months?

 

On a similar note, you can add companies, and I am thinking that this could be useful, however is it just another form of RSS and distributing news? I would be interested to hear if anyone can think of some good business reasons for companies using this as a form of marketing.

 

Why not also check out http://twitter.com/CapgeminiUKgrad.

 

 

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We've got it SaaS'd!

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It’s hard to guarantee anything in IT, whether it’s the compatibility of hardware with software, the integration of third-party software with bespoke in-house applications, or the longevity of newly developed hardware technologies. One thing however is for sure, nothing’s ever a surprise!

In this post I’d like to hear your views on what you think will become of the Software as a Service (SaaS) technology. Critics of SaaS say it’s not without its limitations, such as lack of flexibility, speed of data transmission, lack of suitability for non-enterprise (niche) technology platforms, and the lack of portability and interoperability between vendors. Supporters would however remind you of its versatility (in enterprise), scalability, and cost effectiveness.

Capgemini has established a key partnership with Google on the developmental side of the Google Apps service (Google Apps Premier Edition), and it has quickly realised the potential of monetizing SaaS technology within a corporate environment.

And as I opened this post I’d like to hear what your thoughts are on SaaS. Do you think all the hype has any solid ground? Do you think SaaS will take over desktop applications? And what are your thoughts on Cloud computing, do you think SaaS is an extension of this (or vice versa)?

I’d be fascinated to hear your thoughts.
 

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Monetising the Viewstream

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Two things got me thinking recently...

1. As broadband TV/internet TV/IPTV, whichever name is the flavour of the month, becomes increasingly popular it is evident that commercial TV companies are struggling to find a model that will generate revenue from their made for the tube shows online. 

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International Women's Day

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International Women's Day (IWD) has been celebrated since the early 1900's. This year it fell on March 8th and was a holiday in around 20 countries (but not in the UK as it fell on a Sunday!). So what does this have to do with Capgemini and the BTC?

Capgemini has been celebrating IWD this week. There have been various activities, including interviews with a selection of women in Capgemini on our intranet site, e-cards to send to our colleagues and women's networking events. We have a Women's Business Network in Capgemini which holds networking evenings at various times around the year - these include guest speakers - and are a great opportunity to meet and speak to other women in business.

I was fortunate enough to attend a BTC women's networking event this week. There was a a good turnout of female BTC grads, representatives from our Enterprise Architecture business unit and senior management. It was a great chance to catch up with familiar faces and meet some new people. The evening involved listening to experiences of working in both the Architecture area and Capgemini as a whole, and a chance to have conversations with those present. What did we talk about? Well there were a range of issues from architecture through to how we should encourage more women into technology roles. (In case you wondered the general consensus of how to encourage more women into IT was to encourage role models and try to ditch the stereotype of technology being "geeky").

But what are we celebrating? We are celebrating women's achievements in society and the diversity that women bring to the workplace. IWD also celebrates the political and social achievements that women have made over the past century. There are some interesting gender facts at IWD Facts including this one: 'Women's representation in computer and information sciences workforce is around 30% globally', a topic which I have addressed in my previous post on Women and Technology. Currently Capgemini's figure is around 25%, so we still have some way to go to reach the 30% figure quoted.  

IWD is not about saying that men or women are better than each other but rather celebrating that we work together so well. So, for all you guys out there, please don't feel left out, celebrate with us, and remember International Men's Day is only 6 months away!

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