Virtualisation offers great benefits and flexibility, but can also create gaping holes in corporate liability (Microsoft licensing primary concern for hosting providers). In a virtualised environment, inadequate asset information and poor software licensing policies be disastrous.

Virtualisation allows an extended number of users access to software. The IT staff in charge of the software assets are not necessarily aware of the implications of duplicating applications and it is company directors who will take ultimate responsibility. The Federation Against Software Theft and ISO 19770 software asset management standards show little sympathy for directors who disregard software licences, a crime which can now result in a 10-year jail term or hefty fine.

Only by being vigilant and instigating rigorous asset acquisition and disposal policies and recording detailed information about the software loaded, including its serial number, can any company attain real control over virtual software assets. This perhaps daunting task is made simple if the centralised asset register is used to its full potential.

With centrally stored software asset information, organisations can immediately check for unlicensed software and manage user numbers against agreed licences. Using an accurate software asset register, the IT manager can also provide the board of directors with a monthly report that proves proper licensing procedures and processes are in place.

Businesses need to be accountable for applications in virtual environments or they will shortly face physical consequences.

Karen Conneely, Real Asset Management

You imply that the Googles of the world get a free ride, yet ignore the fact they pay millions for the bandwidth they use to even reach the users that request their content with the connections they pay for. Google itself even has a pretty robust fibre network of its own that they peer with (The downside of net neutrality).

You mean that ISPs are becoming content pushers in addition to being ISPs and thus want to control and profit from all content.

Please show me how in the past decade innovation has been stifled because of the openness of the internet. The web has expanded because it is open and ISPs are not free to decide what goes where and when. Giving ISPs the ability to determine what packets go where and at what cost will stifle competition and limit entry to the web to all but the already well funded.

We will get the products and services ISPs deem OK. Those that don’t compete with the ISP’s commercial interests may well be free, but for every thing else, the ISP is likely to enter into an agreement with the owner so that it can charge us.

Quality of service is needed on a network for one reason only: the network is substandard. If the network is robust, it will take a packet and pass it as fast as it can, it won’t need to assign a priority to it. If the network is below par and congested, it will suffer and only then will quality of service come into play and benefit the consumer.

Ultimately, ISPs are dumb pipes. However, they are doing everything in their power to be content providers and distributors because that is where the money is. They cannot be good content providers if they can’t control what goes on and off their network at the speed they choose, in addition to extorting money from those they don’t own or have an agreement with.

Explain how net neutrality will kill the internet. It has been neutral up to this point and it has flourished.

Al

The top CIO issues are business issues, not IT (Deloitte outlines priorities for CIOs in year ahead). And CIOs are senior management. If IT leaders need to promote themselves to senior management, they are evidently not in a CxO role.

This kind of IT-centric, muddled thinking from one of the big four does nothing for them, nothing for IT, and nothing for British business or the economy. It has no place other than to reinforce the IT-business divide that those of us leading IT are working to eradicate. This sounds like a report aimed at IT middle management, not the CIO. Disappointing.

Steve Burrows

As more sites start to take advantage of the technology powering data.gov.uk (Berners-Lee launches government web site), it is vital that they can all share their content with each other. By providing consistent, stable and described identifiers for the real-world things that the data is about, these disparate web sites can link relevant material.

Facts, figures and ideas can only be linked properly if everyone knows the right identifiers to use.

Kal Ahmed

I agree that the severe weather has once again forced the issue of remote working back into the limelight (The politics of home working), but your article didn’t place enough emphasis on how temporary in nature most remote networking provisions remain.

You mentioned that most companies have the technology to enable home working – that is, fast broadband and access to Outlook – but today’s home working demands call for comprehensive solutions that are able to deliver more than basic email.

IT departments hesitate to provide advanced remote networking solutions for employees at home because of the perceived complexity of setting up and managing remote, router-based equipment. However, by definition, a home office should see the entire corporate network extended to employee homes – not just a few basic applications. Today, it couldn’t be easier to securely provision this access to enterprise data, video and voice applications wherever staff need them.

With snow chaos, transport strikes and potential flu pandemics, businesses need to re-evaluate the technology on offer to ensure that staff can replicate the full office experience at home whether for a day, a week, or perhaps longer.

Roger Hockaday, Aruba
Networks

Following my article on 5 November (How to fashion a winning IT team), I was challenged to explain my views on the role that IT should play in a business with regards to innovation. It was suggested that my piece positioned IT purely as a business support role.

It was opined that IT should lead innovation because it “has a wide understanding of business processes, manages change daily and is uniquely positioned to deliver innovation”, and “this potential for innovation will only be realised when IT is seen as integral to business development and more entrepreneurial IT directors emerge to lead the way.”

Unless you work for an IT services company, IT is a support department. If you work for a retailer, then in addition to IT, the HR, finance, marketing and operations functions are also support groups to the buying team, as that is the one that selects then procures the goods that the firm resells. Where is the shame in being a support function?

If we accept that we are a business support function, why does this preclude us from being thought leaders in the use of technology to further the aims of our business? I contest that (in a non IT services business) it is appropriate for IT to “lead the way”. Many technology-led strategies fail as they don’t deliver what consumers want.

I would challenge the comment that IT has “such a wide understanding of business processes”. Technologists do not like business processes. Business analysts like business processes, and these guys should be positioned within a “business change” unit, not the IT team per se – preferably reporting to a change director, CIO or CEO.

As for the insinuation that IT “manages change daily” any more than other departments, the changes we manage are within a set of technical and environmental parameters, just as they are for the operations director and the commercial directors. They need to be just as responsive to changes in these parameters as I do as IT director.

And why are IT directors in a unique position to deliver innovation? If we are technology-led in our innovation, we can add to the list of fantastic technical solutions looking for a problem – WAP, anybody?
Why does IT need to be better or worse than any other department in a successful business? Surely we should be content to ensure that we add maximum value as a support function and as a peer member of the business development team?

Graham Benson, IT director, M&M Direct

Like many, I worked from home for a few days during the recent bad weather. We do not have an issue with employees doing this and promote it as part of flexible working (The politics of home working).

The main issue I found was not to do with technology or my employer. As for many people, especially those with a young family, the problem was having a suitable working environment. Not everyone has the luxury of a dedicated study, so working wirelessly at the kitchen table is the only option.

My young children, who were also unable to venture out because of the weather, made it impossible to concentrate as they constantly wanted attention. Try conducting a business call while a two-year old is screaming to be picked up by their father. My wife was there, but it was not an ideal situation.

So I am not sure whether it is purely a case of politics, technology and health and safety, as the home environment itself can be extremely distracting.

Douglas

The French and German governments’ calls for users to find an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) amid apparent security risks, could prove fruitful for UK IT-aware businesses (Europeans say “ditch Internet Explorer”).

Not only will the warning provoke a greater level of conscientious thought for IT security, but it could also act as a catalyst for businesses wishing to maximise on services optimised for this technology.

For most businesses, protecting IT security is paramount, especially for organisations working in a virtualised environment. In light of the IE6 security risks, could this be the time to get ahead of the game and upgrade to Microsoft IE8, or other browsers such as Firefox or Google Chrome, as suggested?

Such a move is simple and allows businesses to not only reap the benefits of the new technology and prevent a potential security issue, but also receive additional functions when selecting tailor-made business applications designed to work with the most up-to-date technology and can provide the advantages of this to the business.

Nick Thompson, DCSL Software

The Greater London Authority’s initiative to make more data about public services available to citizens is great news (Boris Johnson opens up public databases), but just having the data available is not enough.

With information being supplied by different councils, there is a danger that the tags used to identify each piece of information are not consistent, making the provision of accurate search results very difficult.

The use of common identifiers will make it easier to find relevant information by bringing together all data about a particular topic.

However, to make all of this knowledge as useful and useable as possible, information about each identifier needs to be published and aggregated. Facts, figures and ideas can only be linked properly if everyone knows the right identifiers to use. For example, if a citizen conducts a search for “rubbish collection”, the site will provide a list of all pages that match the identifier for rubbish, but if another council uses a different tag for related services such as recycling, this information might not be displayed.

While the Greater London Authority is making all of this information publily available, it needs to ensure that each piece of data is using a common, agreed identifier for core subjects. It is only by being able to correctly use these identifiers that the full potential of this data will be unlocked.

Kal Ahmed

We are seeing various technological advances across fashion retail – such as virtual mannequins in a similar way to Atos Lombardini (E-retailers strive to maintain momentum).

The problem is not so much technical as a lack of any agreed standards. It is hard to be sure that a size 12 in one high-street chain is the same as in another. To get agreement on standard sizing of virtual clothes on avatars is a big challenge. It is also easy to imagine brands being tempted to “tweak” their software to make their garment look better than another brand’s.

A more immediate and practical technological development is where customers see a style they like online and can then click through to see if it is available to try on at the local store. Perhaps the garment in store is a different colour, but they can still see if it fits. This may sound like an obvious capability, but surprisingly only about one in five sites offers this option, often because the web site does not have good integration into the head office retail system.

An automated and fast interface with all other systems is very important and can be easily overlooked when thinking about an e-commerce system.

Sam Jackson, Prologic