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COMPUTERWORLD THIS ISSUE | 01.13.2014 [
VOL. 48, NO. 1 $5/C0PY ]
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Computerworld.com
Editor in Chief §
Scot Finnie
Executive Editors
siilllr
Ellen Fanning (features and design),
Julia King (events)
Managing Editors
-\
fill
Johanna Ambrosio (technologies).
Sharon Machlis (online), 1111 .1111
. . :..
Ken Mingis (news).
\ SjiSiips isiiiis
Bob Rawson (production)
Assistant Managing Editor ' \ liiiill illlpii!
Valerie Potter (features) ipilliiii
Director of Blogs
..:
Joyce Carpenter
CM^gP^ilN
Art Director
April Montgomery
Senior Reviews Editor
Barbara Krasnoff I ■ ■am31
KfiISM*lf t. CLOUD APPS
Features Editor 's{' X V; • ■. ■ // la CONUNDRUM
Tracy Mayor
News Editors
iflU
Mike Bucken. Marian Prokop
National Correspondents
Julia King, Robert L. Mitchell
Reporters
COVER STORY
Sharon Gaudin. Matt Hamblen.
Gregg Keizer, Lucas Mearian.
Giving Gamification a Go
Patrick Thibodeau,
Jaikumar Vijayan
Editorial Project Manager
12 Think gamification is just a gimmick? NTT Data, SAP and Accenture beg to differ,
Mari Keefe
and they’ve got the ROI to back up their stance.
Associate Online Editor
Rebecca Linke
Office Manager Cloud Apps Who Decides
Linda Gorgone
Conundrum What Tech to Buy?
Contributing Editors
Jamie Eckle, Preston Gralla, 18 Cloud-based security services are multiplying, 21 When it comes to purchasing hardware,
JR Raphael
with new offerings from startups and traditional software and services, IT knows best. Right?
vendors alike. But cost and customization can be Maybe not, say today’s specialized
deal-breakers for big companies. procurement pros.
Phone numbers, email addresses
and reporters' beats are available
online at Computerworlcl.com
HEADS UP | 2 IT pros may on Healthcare.gov. 17 Critics : Vaughan-Nichols sees some
(see Contacts link at the bottom
of the home page). find self-employment on the are sure to both pan and praise ; lessons for IT in Microsoft’s
Letters to the Editor horizon. I Japan has a firm Microsoft's choice of CEO. • Windows 8 fiasco.
•
Send to letters@computerworld. goal for exascale computing. I •
com. Include an address arid phone OPINIONS | 11 Bart • DEPARTMENTS I 8 The
4 Global exchanges unite to
number for immediate verification. Perkins expects 3D • Grill: Newly minted CIO
Letters will be edited for brevity fight cyberthreats. I An heir
printing to be IT’s next big l Tammy Bilitzky I 24 Security
and clarity. to Unix has yet to emerge. •
challenge. I 26 Preston : Manager’s Journal:
News tips
NEWS ANALYSIS Gralla says Apple is no friend • Siccing MDM on personal
[email protected]
6 A top CMMI rating didn’t of rebels when profits are • devices I 28 Career
Subscriptions and back issues
help developers avoid snafus on the line. I 32 Steven J. : Watch | 31 Shark Tank
[phone]. [email protected]
Reprints/permissions
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THINKSTOCK
Fresh
Insights
Headsllp
New
Trends
Great
Ideas
SUPERCOMPUTERS
Japan's Firm
Exascale Plan
Stands Apart
Japan’s plan to deliver an exascale
supercomputer in six years sets that
country apart in the race to build these
massive systems.
Japan’s Riken Advanced institute for
Computational Science, which houses
that nation’s largest computer system,
said it will lead Japan's exascale pro¬
gram, with “successful development of
the exascale supercomputer scheduled
for completion by 2020.”
An exascale system “will be a great
boon for science and technology, as
well as industry,” said Kimihiko Hirao,
director of the Riken Institute, in a
statement.
For its part, the U.5. is aiming to
deliver an exascale system in the “early
IT CAREERS
2020s,” a Department of Energy of¬
TSelf-Employment: The Next Big IT Trend ficial said in November.
Researchers in the European Union,
meanwhile, are developing an ARM-
HE TECH INDUSTRY is seeing a shift Research firm Computer Economics has based exascale system and have set
toward a more independent, con¬ observed a similar trend. Over the past two a delivery goal of 2020. That goal,
tingent IT workforce. And while years, there has been a spike in the use of though, doesn’t have the stake-in-the-
that trend might not be bad for re¬ contract labor among organizations with IT ground clarity of Japan’s.
tiring baby boomer IT professionals, it could operational budgets of more than $20 million, And China, currently home to the
mean younger and midcareer workers need according to John Longwell, vice president of world’s fastest supercomputer accord¬
to prepare to make a living by going solo. research at Computer Economics. ing to the Top500 ranking, is believed
Around 18% of all IT workers today are The last time there was a similar increase to have set 2018-2020 as a time frame
self-employed, according to Emergent Re¬ in the number of contract workers was in for exascale delivery, but it has not
search. This workforce is growing at the rate 1998, a period marked by the yet made an official
of about 7% per year, faster than the growth dot-com boom and a flurry of announcement.
rate for independent workers in the overall remediation work in the run-up COMPUTERWORLD.COM An exascale system
workforce, which is 5.5%. Around 1 million to Y2K, Longwell said. could handle a quintil-
people are self-employed IT professionals. The difference now, said Longwell, is that lion, or a million trillion, floating point
“Everyone is trying to figure out how to be the use of contract or temporary workers operations per second. That’s about
more flexible and agile, cut fixed costs and is being driven not by a boom but by “a 1,000 times faster than a 1 petaflop
move to variable costs,” said Steve King, a reluctance to hire permanent workers as the system. The fastest systems in use to¬
partner at Emergent. “Unfortunately, people economy improves.” day are well under 50 petaflops.
are viewed as a fixed cost.” Patrick Thibodeau - PATRICK THIBODEAU
-
2
COMPUTERWORLD JANUARY 13, 2014
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HEADS UP
Burst
BETWEEN THE LINES
By John Klossner
Worldwide spending on
IT products and services
Too YoUN&eR v/oRkebs, you change will grow by
Ws fReQuewttT, You waht To . %
1
i WP-EPeNpeK/r, you pokj Y wamt To re
T\et> POW^ BY THE tfoufrSYVje Structure
TUe Benefits $tawuty of
in 2014, to $3.8 trillion.
fvLL-TiMe Wokk.
WF DON T
OPERATING SYSTEMS
Unix Is Fading,
But Its Successor
Has Yet to Emerge
Unix at long last may be on the road
to obsolescence, but it’s still not
dear what will replace it.
Gartner reports that its clients are
o5r^f*
planning to migrate away from Unix.
And while some may take two, three
or even five years or more to wean
themselves off of the venerable op¬
erating system, the end is in sight.
CYBERSECURITY
That said, Gartner analysts - and
TExchanges Unite to Combat Cyberthreats the research firm’s clients - are
struggling to identify the operating
system or other technology that will
he world federation of exchanges, exploits involved distributed denial-of-service replace Unix in the data center.
a trade group representing 57 stock, attacks designed to disrupt service. The obvious candidates are Linux,
futures and options exchanges, has Nasdaq suffered a glitch last year that result¬ Windows and mainframe operating
established a committee to address ed in an unprecedented trading halt for several systems, but there are others. The
cybersecurity for global markets. hours. Though the outage was later traced to OpenStack cloud computing plat¬
The WFE’s Cyber Security Working a connectivity problem between an exchange form, the Hadoop big data frame¬
Group will be made up of security executives participant and Nasdaq’s Securities Industry work and emerging cloud operating
from some of the world’s largest exchanges. Processor system, it served as a reminder of the systems are increasingly popular
Members will collaborate on a framework for havoc a cyberattack could wreak. choices for organizations building
sharing threat intelligence and information The working group will initially focus on massively scalable, big data cloud
about attack trends, attack mitigation, security establishing communication channels and environments, says Gartner analyst
best practices, standards and technologies. building trust among the members, said Mark George Weiss.
Founding members include Nasdaq OMX, Graff, Nasdaq’s chief information security An IT manager at a financial
the New York Stock Exchange, the Toronto officer and chairman of the panel. Key topics services firm, who asked to remain
Stock Exchange, Germany’s Deutsche Boerse, will include the mechanics of sharing threat anonymous, said Unix runs many
the Saudi Stock Exchange, the Singapore information in a way that doesn’t trigger of his company’s core systems and
Exchange and Brazil’s BM&FBovespa. antitrust concerns, break confidentiality rules he doesn’t expect his employer to
The initiative comes at a time of heightened or violate regulatory controls. abandon it anytime soon.
concern about cyberthreats to major exchang¬ Longer-term goals include devising ways to But he did agree that data center
es. In July, the WFE released survey results combat cyberthreats on an international scale architectures could undergo a ma¬
showing that more than half of all exchanges and figuring out how best to communicate jor shift. “The whole cloud OS is go¬
reported suffering a cyberattack during the industry concerns to regulators, Graff said. ing to shake everything up,“ he said.
previous 12 months. The most common Jaikumar Vijayan - PATRICK THIBODE-AU
-
4 COMPUTERWORLD JANUARY 13. 2014
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careful and measured development processes.
That said, when initiatives based on
CMMI processes run into problems, defend¬
ers often blame management and decision¬
making. In general, questions about CMMI
rarely come up when a project fails. But when
a project succeeds, CMMI often gets credit.
CMMI was developed some 25 years
ago with the backing of the Department
of Defense and the Software Engineering
Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Its
process models are designed to help keep
development projects on track.
The ACA project operated as a federally
funded research and development initiative
until it was shifted to the CMMI Institute
about a year ago. The institute is a private, for-
profit enterprise owned by Carnegie Mellon,
and the move raised some user questions.
Getting CMMI certification is not simple
NEWS ANALYSIS
or cheap. There are five levels of process
maturity that together could take 10 years
to achieve. Fulfilling the requirements for
CMMICred Didn’t Help
each level can cost a company thousands of
dollars and may require dedicated personnel.
Certifications require appraisals by indepen¬
Healthcare.gov Project dent experts, and periodic reappraisals.
Though the CMMI seal of approval is
often a requirement of government software
development contracts, the private sector has
The biggest software failure of 2013 is proof that hiring
mixed views of its value.
a developer with a top CMMI rating doesn’t guarantee that Joel Basgall, the CEO of Geneca, which
has helped build healthcare exchanges for
a project will succeed. By Patrick Thibodeau
C
private companies, says he has never had
a client who insisted on following CMMI
methodologies. “We compete more on what
we can do, and how we do it, as opposed to
GI FEDERAL, the lead contractor for Healthcare.gov, is the fact that we have a process,” he said.
a veritable black belt in software development. In 2012, Basgall argues that government agencies should pick develop¬
it became only the 10th company in the U.S. to earn the ers based on who has the best chance of success and drop the
highest possible Capability Maturity Model Integration CMMI requirement. “[Every software development vendor] will
rating for software development. have a process — nobody can function without one,” he said.
But even with that top CMMI score, CGI couldn’t ensure that CMMI supporters, however, argue that the process wouldn’t
the rollout of the Affordable Care Act website would be trouble- have lasted for more than 20 years if it had little or no value.
free. The problems with Healthcare.gov prompted the project Kirk Botula, CEO of the CMMI Institute, says the develop¬
overseer, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, ment process is now widely used in the private sector and has a
to call for fresh help from Google, Red Hat and Oracle. strong following overseas — especially in China and India.
Though CGI Federal got a black eye from the Healthcare.gov “You can learn [software development] through trial and error,
rollout, CMMI didn’t come under fire, and no one has said that which is how most folks do it,” said Botula. “Or you can benefit
it should. Project requirements were changed late in the develop¬ from best practices, from proven approaches, and use it as a road
ment cycle, warnings weren’t heeded, and the time allotted for map to align your business goals to your operational capability.
testing was cut short. Those actions are all anathema to CMMI’s [CMMI] is a consistent way of doing that.” ♦
We compete more on what we can do, and how we do it, as opposed to the fact
that we have a process,
joel b^< m ceo. geneca
6 COMPUTERWORLD JANUARY 13. 2014 LUCIAN MILAS A N / FOTOLIA
NEWS ANALYSIS
Eight weeks later, Apple
co-founder Steve Jobs stepped
in as interim chief executive;
he became the permanent CEO
$£jji§ two and a half years after that.
" '
Microsoft already appears
to have lost the CEO candidate
favored by Wall Street — Alan
Mulally. The Ford CEO, who
took himself out of the running
last week, was one of several
people who have been touted as
a possible successor to Ballmer,
57, who abruptly announced his
retirement in August.
Others include former Nokia
CEO Stephen Elop and current
Microsoft executives Tony Bates,
Kevin Turner and Satya Nadella.
No matter who gets the job,
whether an insider, an outsider,
a dark horse or even a returning
Bill Gates, fireworks are likely.
The Mulally candidacy alone
caused Microsoft’s stock to
swing. Those in the financial
Microsoft announced in August that CEO Steve Ballmer would i tire within the next 12 months,
settingoff a wave of speculation about who would si ce dhim.Whih the comp ny hasn’t nan, ;d community who lauded Mulally
a new CEO yet, it’s likely that some pundits will pan the choice while others will a plaud it. for the business and organiza¬
tional acumen they saw in the
turnaround he engineered at
Ford were quick to sell Microsoft stock when he
Ballmer’s Successor
backed out.
Even so, the hiring of any outsider would
likely trigger a loud outcry from some Micro¬
Will Get Cheers, Jeers soft insiders and followers who contend that an
engineering-driven company can’t be managed
by someone who lacks direct experience in its
eccentricities and disparate parts.
If past CEO hirings at major tech companies are any IBM was hit with such criticism 20 years ago
after hiring Louis Gerstner to take over a tech
indication, Microsoft's choice of CEO will be dubbed a
giant with a mailbag of problems. Critics cited
N
dud by some and brilliant by others. By Gregg Keizer Gerstner’s lack of experience running a tech
company and scoffed at his work at RJR Nabisco
and American Express.
A couple of months after his appointment, Ger¬
O MATTER WHO MICROSOFT NAMES as its third chief stner responded to critics of his acknowledged lack of the “vision
executive early this year, the pick will have experts and thing” by saying, “The last thing the company needs is a vision,”
tech leaders questioning the sanity of the board, the adding, “It needs a series of tough-minded, market-driven strate¬
person who took the job or — throwing caution to the gies.” In the end, Gerstner was credited with rescuing IBM and
wind — everyone involved. That’s just how it works. transforming it into the profitable services vendor it remains today.
CEO choices, especially at a company like Microsoft, don’t And insiders haven’t always worked out at major tech vendors.
please everyone. There are as many opinions on the causes of any In 1992, Digital Equipment’s choice of insider Robert Palmer
large company’s problems — and how to fix them — as there are to succeed co-founder Kenneth Olsen as CEO was praised by
people capable of typing on a keyboard or tapping a tablet. analysts who lauded the new top exec for successfully driving the
Here’s one such opinion: “Let’s face it, the current business company’s Alpha processor business. Within four years, DEC was
model doesn’t work, and you can’t tweak it to improve it.” That’s gone, sold at a fire sale price to Compaq. Palmer got the blame.
what Dataquest analyst Kimball Brown said to The New York So whoever Microsoft chooses, expect analysts, bloggers,
Times in July 1997 just after Apple tossed out CEO Gil Amelio, pundits — and yes, reporters — to chime in with free, and at
and began looking for a replacement. times free-from-reality, suggestions or demands. ♦
7
REUTERS / BRENDAN McDERMIO COMPUTERWORLD.COM
Tammy
Bilitzky
This newly minted
CIO plans to focus
on scalability and
automation.
Hometown: Chicago
Family: Married, with three adult
sons and an adult daughter
Do you have a gadget you can’t
give up? My Samsung Galaxy S4
What’s on your reading list?
The Sports Gene: Inside the Science
of Extraordinary Athletic W
Performance, by David Epstein
What’s your favorite book?
HEN TAMMY BILITZKY became CIO at New York-based Data Conversion
Thinking, Fast and Slow,
Laboratory last March, it was her first time in a CIO role, and it was
by Daniel Kahneman
DCL’s first time filling that post. Bilitzky, who had worked in senior-level
Do you read paper books technology jobs at other companies, says the move offered her a lot of new
ore-books? “Both. I shouldn't opportunities. “Whats really great about that is you don’t fall into old habits. You’re really
say that, but l do." coming in fresh, objective and able to make the right assessments for the company,” she
says. “It’s an opportunity you don’t get in many firms.” Here she shares more of her views
If you retired tomorrow,
on IT management.
what would you do? Spend more
time with family and working
What was your biggest fear upon becoming a CIO? My fear was not maximizing the
with charities.
unique opportunity to define and execute the right technology strategy. Technol¬
ogy is what makes and breaks this company, and running the technology in a
8
COMPUTERWORLD JANUARY 13, 2014