The Changing Mobile Platform

E-guide
The changing
mobile platform
landscape
The changing mobile platform landscape
In this e-guide:
In a recent blog looking at mobile technologies, Forrester
principal analyst Lorenzo Introna, wrote: “Data and the
capability to manage and share data will be the differentiators
in the future of mobility, and managing the data from the first
mile to the last mile will provide incredible insight and power.”
In reality, IT has increasingly become a heterogeneous

environment, particularly from a mobile device stand point.
Internally, people are no longer given corporate Blackberry
smartphones to connect securely to a Blackberry Enterprise
Server in order to send and receive email.
Today, end users simply ask IT for the Microsoft Exchange

server settings, and they can then use any email client to
connect to the corporate Exchange server.
Similarly, Computer Weekly has seen a shift in consumer

buying habits that has enabled Android to leapfrog iOS as the
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most popular smartphone operating system. Yet app

developers are failing to grasp this new reality.
Supporting one hardware platform over another is a sure way

to disenfranchise potential customers. And in this new reality,
people may well have an iPad running iOS, a Samsung Android-
powered smartphone and a Windows 10 desktop or a Mac. They
want to be able to run the same application across any of the
devices they own, and, where possible, even pick up where
they left off so they can start a task on the iPad, switch to
Windows at work, maybe check something while at lunch on
their Samsung phone and carry on at home on their MacBook.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has tried to achieve this with

Office 365. While there are some compatibility issues, in that
certain functions do not work in quite the same way on the
different platforms, Microsoft has made a massive leap forward
in understanding this new reality and the role Windows, MS
Office and the Microsoft software ecosystem plays.
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Clearly not every developer has the time and resources to write
native multi-platform mobile apps. But cross-platform tools go
some way to reducing the workload, providing a common set of
functionality across all supported OS platforms.
Returning to Forrester’s Introna, one could argue that, within

the enterprise, a useful app is one that provides meaningful,
contextualised data as and when the user needs it. This may
be why Accenture’s survey of 22,500 consumers across 21
countries found more than half of the standalone smart
speaker, or digital voice assistant (DVA) owners report that
since they got their device, they use their smartphone for fewer
services. Essentially, the smart speaker provides users with the
data they need, without the need for them to reach for their
smartphones. One could argue that the smartphone apps that
users chose to replace with smart speaker
Thanks to open data and open application programming

interfaces (APIs), mobile developers now have access to a
wealth of useful services and data they can build on and add
value. The logical extension of this open access is the use of
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microservices architectures, where the mobile app orchestrates

multiple public APIs and microservices to achieve its objective.
The app may even open up its own APIs, and become part of a
wider API ecosystem, enabling another developer to build an
entirely new app on top of it.
So while there will inevitably be heated debates over which

mobile platform is better, or which one to develop for first, the
real opportunity comes when the discussion moves above the
hardware to how an app can derive value by connecting to
different business platforms and ecosystems.
Cliff Saran, technology editor
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Contents
 Cross-platform mobile app development is more viable than ever
 Transform business with microservices and containers
 Chrome OS: Why it may be time to approach desktop IT in a different way
 Okta API lead: how to secure the API economy
 PCs shape up for the digital workplace
 Mobile-first strategy rings true for jeweler
 Modern IT underlines need for zero-trust security
 Smart speakers: How to give apps a voice
 How to find the right mobility strategy for your SME
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Cross-platform mobile app development is

more viable than ever
Eric Klein, guest contributor
Endpoint diversity and the differences in developer skill sets have made it
critical that today's mobile apps have strong performance across multiple
platforms.
Employees have come to expect to use the mobile devices of their choosing for
their day-to-day workflows. As a result, organizations have had to invest in tools
to modernize the applications they have relied on for years. At the same time,
tools have emerged that can drastically simplify the process of creating
applications that run across multiple operating systems. More importantly, many
of these cross-platform mobile app development tools feature design,
development, testing and deployment capabilities within a single integrated
platform.
Developers' experience also comes into play. An organization may have a

talented roster of highly skilled and classically trained developers, or have a mix
of these folks with inexperienced developers and semi-professional developers.
Fortunately, modern mobile development vendors have seen this mix of skills
among their customers and have done well in evolving their tools. They are well
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aware that their products need to appeal to different types of developers with
varied programming experience and exposure to business productivity
applications.
Why cross-platform is becoming a reality
While products that simplify the mobile app development process continue to
emerge, the diversity of approaches also continues to evolve, making it difficult
for organizations to identify the most appropriate option. It is very important to
assess the organization's developer resources prior to deciding on app
development tools. Does the business have talented web developers, Java
developers or .NET developers? The company's device landscape and
application user experience requirements -- for instance, which devices need to
be supported and how fast and responsive apps need to be -- are equally as
important.
Building a single code base for Apple iOS, Google Android and web apps has
been possible for several years now, but what has changed is the performance
of cross-platform apps. Once Android standardized rendering engines between
the browser and the WebView, which renders websites on Android device
browsers, and Apple stopped restricting its web rendering, performance issues
became less relevant. Plus, business-grade apps don't usually require the same
level of performance of gaming or consumer-oriented apps, which typically need
to look more polished and aesthetically pleasing. Modern cross-platform tools
use common languages such as C# and JavaScript to share code across
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projects; more importantly, they integrate well with application lifecycle

management tools, such as Jenkins and Team Foundation Server.
All of these aspects are driving the ability for developers to more easily create
successful cross-platform mobile apps.
Tools for cross-platform mobile apps
Organizations should explore these approaches to benefit from cross-platform

mobile app development:
Businesses can use tools from vendors such as Alpha Software, Capriza, Kony,
Microsoft, PowWow Mobile, Sapho and ViziApps to develop cross-platform
apps. These products are typically proprietary but also take advantage of open
source components to augment their features.
Another approach is to use JavaScript to write hybrid apps -- web apps that are
wrapped in a mobile browser runtime with native plug-ins -- or progressive web
apps (PWAs). Open source hybrid frameworks such as React Native,
NativeScript and Ionic allow developers to use their existing .NET and C# skills
to compile native Android or iOS apps. They also offer the ability to
simultaneously deploy completely native iOS and Android apps. The main
drawback of this category of tools is that developers still need to understand
native development if they are going to create any complex UI functionalities.
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Cross-platform pros and cons
Cross-platform mobile app development tools offer the native look and feel for
both iOS and Android that organizations want. Developers can also include
platform-specific modules -- such as status bars, navigation or access to native
elements such as the camera and contacts. (Some may need developers to
write them from scratch depending on the framework.) Most products offer a
singular development experience and are an ideal option for generic database-
reliant apps.
Cross-platform mobile app development can also be advantageous for

application maintenance, because developers or IT staff who find bugs in a
common code base only need to fix them once. At the same time, the pace at
which mobile operating systems are evolving can be a complicating factor and
require apps to be re-written if an update to the OS isn't compatible with an
existing app.
Finally, web apps rely on third-party platforms and plug-ins for access to native
features, which can complicate the mobile app development process by
requiring developers to rely on more resources. Plus, web apps and PWAs are
not visible in public app stores, so organizations lose this channel to deliver and
promote apps to employees. Still, these cross-platform apps offer some benefits
comparable to native apps, such as offline access and the ability to send push
notifications. PWA support is strongest on Android, but the capability on iOS will
improve.
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Depending on the organization's device diversity, businesses will be well served

by investing in a combination of tools that facilitate a traditional code-focused
approach to cross-platform mobile app development that allows developers to
use their skills in JavaScript, C# and C++. Investments should ensure that the
deployment can also accommodate browser, containerized web, hybrid or
native apps, using modern integrated development environments and editors
with cross-platform capabilities.
Next Article
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Transform business with microservices

and containers
Cliff Saran, managing editor
The history of computing is punctuated by a set of seismic shifts in enterprise IT

architectures.
Monolithic, highly integrated applications moved to integrated software stacks

and N-tier architectures. Distributed computing has also gone through several
incarnations. There have been multiple attempts at standardising inter-
application communications, such as remote procedure calls on Unix,
distributed object model, common object request broker architecture and web
services. All have tried to promote code reuse, and publish and share
application programming interfaces (APIs) in a bid to avoid programmers having
to “reinvent the wheel”.
Since the mid 2000s, thanks to the growth of JavaScript on servers and Java
application servers, service-oriented architecture (SOA) emerged as the new
enterprise integration champion. Like its predecessors, this blueprint for
distributed computing was engineered before the era of cloud-native computing.
Companies built in the cloud have taken a very different approach, based
around the idea of containers and loosely coupled microservices.
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Now, thanks to the success of Docker and Kubernetes, more businesses are
looking at deploying containers. The reason for the popularity of this approach is
that it helps businesses develop cloud-native applications, which can be
delivered quickly to power digital transformation initiatives.
Forrester’s Now tech: enterprise container platforms, Q2 2018 report notes:

“Container-centric, microservice-oriented, dynamically orchestrated cloud-native
technologies help firms create highly differentiated apps and services that
create compelling customer experiences. They’ve quickly become important
elements of digital business transformation as they promise to speed software
delivery and improve scale, resiliency, flexibility and implementation.”
Moving to an agile approach with containers
Red Hat OpenShift is one of the major enterprise container platforms identified
in the Forrester report. Global information analytics business Elsevier is among
the companies using the Red Hat product as it digitises its business.
Like many organisations, Elsevier began with an SOA and used containers as a
way to make software development more agile.
Tom Perry, director of software engineering at Elsevier, says the company

began with a traditional SOA, which did not support the business very well.
“When I joined in 2015, we were using a half-baked SOA architecture. It was not
very structured and it was proprietary,” he says.
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This meant it was difficult for the software teams at Elsevier to build reusable
components, which slowed down the pace of change. “We had a monolithic
application – a jack of all trades – and it was a big move any time you wanted to
adapt it,” Perry adds.
At the time, the company was in the process of changing from selling content to
selling services on top of content. As well as the shift in the business, Elsevier
was also shifting its approach to IT, closing its datacentre and moving on to the
Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud instead.
Perry says he wanted an architecture that would work with how the business
was evolving. “Instead of looking at how applications interact, we wanted data
access across end-to-end business processes,” he says. To achieve this,
Elsevier needed a loose coupling between internal and software-as-a-service
(SaaS) systems such as Salesforce.
Given that container platforms are constantly evolving, Perry says Elsevier
initially tried Red Hat Fuse to start migrating from SOA to more of a hybrid
container architecture. However, he says: “We could see where things were
going, but the technology was no way near mature enough for the enterprise.”
As well as the technology constantly evolving, Elsevier also had to go through a

learning curve. One of the lessons learnt from the company’s initial attempts at
deploying containers was that the APIs and services being exposed required a
lot of security. “We should have decoupled security,” Perry adds.
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If Red Hat Fuse was not going to work, what else? While it is possible to build
complete enterprise cloud platforms from open source components such as
Kubernetes, Perry points out that Kubernetes is just the bit in the middle. “You
need to build services around Kubernetes,” he says. Elsevier wanted a single
product, so it selected the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. “We got an
all-in-one platform, which allows us to pick up our code and deploy it to another
platform,” adds Perry.
The first system to use the new platform was the company’s marketing and
advertising system, which used both on-premise software and SaaS. Describing
the setup, Perry says: “We looked at providing access to enterprise data and
exposing a set on enterprise API for future reuse.”
Unlike the company’s attempt with Red Hat Fuse, he says the architecture is
based on microservices running in containers. These only perform logic
functions, so there is no additional security overhead to worry about. ”We use
an API gateway to manage security so the services do not need to care about
security,” Perry adds.
Lessons learned
Beyond his experience with integrating security into the APIs, Perry believes
containers are not suitable for all types of applications and workloads. “It is not
always the right choice to use containers,” he says.
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An example of when not to use containers includes when attempting to run an

application server or database server in a container, which will involve
monolithic code. According to Perry, there are no big benefits gained by trying
to containerise these monolithic applications as heavyweight services.
Another takeaway from the use of containers at Elsevier is that not every part of
the business is ready for cloud-native computing. Agile development
methodologies are often associated with a cloud-native approach to application
development.
Although Elsevier has starting using agile approaches in some of its

development projects, Perry adds: “There are different speeds across the
organisation. Some services can work in an agile way, but others, like our
Oracle eBusiness Suite, cannot.”
Allocating cost is another problem area for IT, in Perry’s experience. “We
haven’t quite cracked how we apportion cost in the area of integration across a
shared function,” he says.
Challenges of compliance
DevOps generally goes hand-in-hand with agile software development

methodologies, giving teams freedom to develop and deploy code quickly. But
in a cloud-native architecture built of containers running microservices, speed
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and agility are not without risks, according to Jonathan Hotchkiss, head of cloud
service reliability engineering at money lending service, WorldRemit.
As the company built out its serverless payment system using microservices,
the ability to understand everything that was going on became increasingly
difficult, says Hotchkiss. “Unless done correctly, money is wasted doing DevOps
because systems are built and forgotten about, or code is scaled up beyond its
ability using the cloud,” he says, meaning that, in effect, that code is not written
to scale efficiently
He says the company’s original platform began as a classical web e-commerce

architecture using a monolithic database. “It was not the best architecture for
scalability so we started to pull out parts and develop them as microservices,
using the Azure PaaS [platform as a service],” he adds.
Unfortunately, WorldRemit was unable to fully document all the microservices

being developed. This was partially down to team culture. The company’s
software development teams were transient, with teams lasting between 18 and
24 months. “No one team had a full idea of all the microservices. We didn’t
know how it all worked,” adds Hotchkiss.
WorldRemit selected Dynatrace to provide one dashboard, which provided an

AI-driven topological view of the all components of the system. “When
something is broken, Dynatrace highlights what is and is not good and gives us
an intelligent answer of why there’s a fault,” says Hotchkiss.
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Balancing compliance with giving DevOps teams the freedom to work effectively
is always a challenge. As WorldRemit found out, without some level of control –
such as the need for teams to document their work thoroughly – cloud-native
architecture can quickly become unmanageable.
Strict enforcement of corporate rules, procedures and policies can limit

flexibility, but sometimes it may be better to encourage the use of preferred
tools and frameworks using best practice communities.
For instance, Porsche Informatik has established communities of engineers who

promote best practice that are then fed back into the DevOps teams.
Porsche Informatik tries to make its tools and frameworks as easy to use as
possible so they become the first choice for DevOps teams.
The debate about what is the right enterprise IT architecture has moved beyond
private, public and hybrid clouds to the need to run multiple clouds.
Open source software is free, but many businesses are happy to pay for
support. This model tends not to scale well, however, making wider deployment
expensive. We weigh up the options.
Going cloud native Speaking at the New Relic FutureStack event in London,
James Governor, co-founder of analyst RedMonk, discussed how cloud-native
architectures changed how applications are debugged. At the time, he said:
“[We must] build applications in a way they can be effectively managed. We are
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moving to an environment when we have to debug in production, which requires

observability.” According to Governor, tracing, logging and application
performance monitoring (APM) are being harnessed to deal with problems in
production code. From the businesses Computer Weekly has spoken to, it
seems they are learning how to develop in a world of serverless computing,
microservices, containers and DevOps. If Governor is right, more businesses
will need to adapt to begin testing code across their live production
environments. As WorldRemit found, it is necessary to understand how
microservices are evolving in the business. And while tooling and the
programming languages and frameworks that developers adopt may well come
down to personal choice, having key members of the DevOps team involved in
best practices – as is the case at Porsche Informatik – can help to cement
preferred standards and tools in projects.
Next Article
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Chrome OS: Why it may be time to

approach desktop IT in a different way
For almost two decades, the dominant desktop operating system in enterprise
IT has been Microsoft Windows.
Windows remains cemented in the enterprise mindset, even though user or

client-side computing is a world apart from the desktop IT of the late 1990s.
The combined installed base of Android and iOS far exceeds that of Windows-
based PCs. Browser-based and mobile app-based enterprise
applications are also commonplace, due to the maturity of software as a service
(SaaS) in business.
Yet the majority of older enterprise applications are designed for Windows
users, and desktop administrators have spent years fine-tuning the
management of the Windows estate.
Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows 7 on 14 January 2020,

but many businesses still rely heavily on it. They have yet to shift to Windows
10.
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There is therefore an opportunity for IT to ask a difficult question: “Is there

anything better out there?”
Windows alternatives
Mac OS is clearly the most direct rival, and Apple has managed to ride on the
success of the iPhone with a range of premium laptops that look far smarter
than many corporate laptops.
But Mac OS X is derived from the Berkeley Software Distribution

(BSD) Unix kernel. It is a traditional operating system, designed to provide
a platform with an extensive set of services to support fat client applications,
akin to the Windows system, albeit with a different user interface and kernel.
Google has taken a very different approach. It began in 2011 with the release
of Chrome OS, a Linux-based operating system that relies on cloud-based
applications with the Chrome browser as its primary user interface.
There is no real concept of local applications and local storage. The idea is that
everything is accessible online. Chrome OS is designed to run browser-based
applications as efficiently as possible. The experts Computer Weekly has
spoken to believe it not only achieves this, but surpasses the web experience
on fat client operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS.
But as IT distributor Tech Data points out, Chrome OS is not limited by the
availability of network connectivity. “Chromebooks work offline as well as online.
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Enabling offline mode will keep a document available in local storage allowing
you to continue to work. You simply synchronise to the cloud as soon as the
internet connection is restored,” Tech Data explains.
Why Chromebook running Chrome OS is secure in the enterprise
Chromebooks use the principle of “defence in depth” to provide multiple layers

of protection, so if any one layer is bypassed, others are still in effect, says Paul
Nicholas, business manager, Google, Tech Data. They provide the following
security features built-in:
 Automatic updates: The most effective way to protect

against malware is to ensure all software is up to date and has the latest
security fixes. This can be difficult to manage on traditional operating
systems, with many software components from many suppliers, all with
different update mechanisms and user interfaces. Because they manage
updates automatically, Chromebooks are always running the latest and
most secure version.
 Sandboxing: On a Chromebook, each web page and application runs in
a restricted environment called a sandbox. If the Chromebook is directed
to an infected page, it can’t affect the other tabs or apps on the computer,
or anything else on the machine. The threat is contained.
 Verified boot: Even if malware manages to escape the sandbox, the
Chromebook is still protected. Every time the Chromebook starts up, it
does a self-check called verified boot. If it detects that the system has
been tampered with or corrupted in any way, typically it will repair itself
without any effort, taking the Chromebook back to an operating system
that’s as good as new.
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Data encryption: When using web apps on a Chromebook, all important

data is stored safely in the cloud. Certain kinds of files – such as
downloads, cookies and browser cache files – may still be present on the
computer. The Chromebook encrypts this data using tamper-resistant
hardware, making it very difficult for anyone to access those files.
 Recovery mode: If anything goes wrong with a Chromebook, you can
simply push a button or use a quick keyboard combination to enter
recovery mode and restore the operating system to a known good
version.
Source: Paul Nicholas, business manager, Google, Tech Data
Google traditionally targeted the education sector and a number of hardware

companies sold low-cost Chrome OS laptops, but it has now changed
tack. There are now Chromebooks at every price point.
Google itself has released a high-end Chromebook that competes in terms of

price and sheer elegance with the very best ultrabook laptops that Apple,
Microsoft, HP, Dell and Lenovo have to offer.
Cloud changes things
So, with the advent of cloud-based storage and the fact that many enterprise
software publishers now offer SaaS, could now be the time to consider Chrome
OS as a viable desktop operating system for the enterprise?
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“As long as you use the right applications, it is the right tool – it does one job,
which is run a web browser,” says Mark Ridley, group technology officer at
Blenheim Chalcot. “Chrome OS doesn’t have all the power of Windows or Mac
OS, but this limit makes it simple to roll out.”
Ridley pioneered the use of Chrome OS when he was CIO at recruitment firm
Reed. He believes the operating system provides a secure environment, making
it a good choice when regulatory compliance is a top priority.
“The attack surface of Chrome OS is much smaller than Windows. Chrome OS

is tied so closely to the hardware, the way the device boot is protected, and
the fact that you can leave everything in the cloud, means the threat
from data loss is significantly less. A Chromebook device running Chrome OS is
constructed to be so single-minded that your security exposure shifts to
the security of the cloud services you connect to.”
Over the past 18 months, Computacenter has seen a surge in demand for
Chrome OS.
“Windows 7 is nine years old, so it is not a contemporary user interface any

more,” says Paul Bray, chief technologist for digital workplace technologies at
Computacenter. “We see a hybrid world, where Mac OS and Chrome OS are
interchangeable.” These generally sit alongside Windows in the enterprise.
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Reflecting Ridley’s experience, Bray says Chrome OS is being used in very

specific use cases, particularly among the IT leadership team, suggesting that
IT chiefs are looking seriously at Chrome OS as a viable enterprise operating
system. “Google has broken out of the shackles of being just in education,” he
says.
There is now a Chromebook at every price point. While the manifestation of

Chrome OS has actually been at the low end of the market, premium devices
tend to offer better build quality and robustness that enterprise customers
regard highly.
One of the big changes is manageability, says Bray. “The high-end devices also
provide better fleet management, such as the management capabilities built into
HP and Lenovo Chromebooks. Google and Airwatch also provide good
management capabilities.”
For instance, at Dell EMC World last year, VMware and Google announced an
expanded partnership focused on accelerating Chromebook adoption. This
expansion includes VMware Workspace ONE support for Chromebooks,
enabling secure identity-based single sign-on (SSO) to any app on
Chromebooks, including cloud services, internal web apps and virtual Windows
apps and desktops.
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“We have customers with quite progressive strategies to exploit Chrome OS,
where they can unlock web and cloud apps. The benefits are ease of use and
simplicity,” says Bray.
Being primarily a browser-based operating system, Chrome OS is intuitive to

use, according to Bray.
Time for change
In the late 1990s, research published by analyst Gartner identified massive

waste in desktop IT. At the time, Gartner estimated that the average running
cost of an unmanaged PC was $8,000 per year. To tackle this huge drain on
budgets, IT leaders made desktop IT management a priority, leading to a
locked-down Windows environment.
But with the consumerisation of IT during the late 2000s, people felt corporate
IT – and in particular their work computer – was inferior to the slick devices they
used in their personal lives. Mobile device management evolved as the
industry’s answer to balance the management requirements of corporate IT with
the flexibility of allowing workers to use their own devices to access corporate
systems.
Today, layer upon layer of technology has built up to support an increasingly

complex Windows desktop computing environment. But while many corporate
applications remain locked to the Windows environment, some of the most
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popular – such as Office 365, Concur, Workday and Salesforce – are cloud-
based SaaS products, which implies they can be run in a browser or as an app
on Android or iOS.
“We have been on a web journey for 15 years, but the enterprise is still heavily
dependent on Windows. The Chromebook and Chrome OS is a symbol of
operating system diversity,” says Bray.
Think differently
With Windows 10, Bray sees an opportunity for IT to rethink desktop IT

management, and this rethink should include a serious conversation about the
viability of browser-only apps on Chrome OS.
Computacenter uses the term “evergreen computing” to describe how, with

Windows 10, it is no longer the responsibility of desktop IT administrators to
keep PCs up to date. That responsibility now rests with Microsoft, and its
Windows update programme, which rolls out security patches and new
Windows features automatically.
“From a management perspective, when we broaden the conversation of

evergreen Windows 10, Chrome OS is a viable alternative and has a low
overhead,” says Bray.
Chrome OS is still quite marginal, he says, but he admits it does have a certain
appeal.
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And while, in the purest sense, use of Chrome OS should ideally be solely
browser-based, it can be extended. The latest Chromebooks even allow users
to download Android apps from the Google Play store. Users can access a full-
blown Windows environment via Chrome RDP, which provides a plug-in virtual
desktop infrastructure (VDI); accessing Windows file shares and remote
terminal emulation is possible; and there is even an interactive developer
environment from Cloud9 on Google Play for developing Amazon Web Services
(AWS) apps collaboratively.
For IT departments that need to run line-of-business Windows applications

locally on their PC, Crossover from Codeweavers may be an option. It is built on
the open source portability library Wine and offers a library of Windows
applications that have been verified to run.
There will always be people who need masses of local storage, powerful
processors and vast amounts of memory. A high-spec MacBook Pro,
HP ZBook or Dell XPS mobile workstation will cater for their needs. But in this
always-connected world, it is now entirely feasible to use the cloud-
optimised Chrome OS operating system to stream feature-rich, compute-
intensive applications onto a Chromebook.
As to which Chromebook to choose, there are now options from sub-£200

devices with around 30GB of SSD and 2GB RAM, to a top-of-the-range £1,600
Google Pixelbook with 512GB of SD storage, 8GB of RAM and a Kaby Lake i7
processor, which makes it a full-blown mobile workhorse.
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“Heavy users with more than 12 tabs open will see a benefit. High-definition
video use will be better with a faster processor. SSD storage, while previously
not as important, will now bear more relevance as people download and store
Android apps,” says Paul Nicholas, business manager, Google, at Tech Data.
Next Article
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Okta API lead: how to secure the API

economy
Adrian Bridgwater, guest contributor
This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by
Keith Casey in his capacity as API problem solver (yes, real job title) at identity
management specialist company Okta.
Okta's technology is used by developers to put a pre-architected layer of

authentication into software applications used on traditional desktop, web or
mobile environments.
Casey writes below as follows...
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the cornerstone of our ‘always

on, always connected' world. There are now more applications and services
fueled by ever increasing partner integrations than ever before and APIs are the
glue to ensure these connections are seamless.
They drive integrations, sharing capabilities and driving revenue across the
business landscape. So much so that APIs have shifted from the domain of just
developers to a mainstay of board level conversations.
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Some of the world's largest companies have monetised their API offerings,
propelling business revenues in the process. Salesforce reportedly generates
50 per cent of its revenues through APIs, eBay nearly 60 per cent and Expedia
a whopping 90 per cent.
Smooth sailing on stormy seas?
Yet it's far from smooth sailing. Developers have often built with a feature-driven
mindset, where functionality has taken precedence over security, but in today's
security landscape where vulnerabilities and threats lurk at every corner, this
must be turned on its head. Put simply, the growth of APIs needs to be matched
with the mindset of securing them.
The fear over API security is not unwarranted.
Privacy and security issues stemming from API development is continuing to

rise, so much so that according to Gartner, by 2022 the largest source of data
breaches will arise from this. But without a deliberate, focused effort to protect
these systems, even that timeline seems optimistic.
There are a number of approaches to API security that businesses

take. Unfortunately, the most common is to trust end users either
deliberately by having minimal security or implicitly by assuming
no one will find the API. But, unqualified trust does not equal
security in any circumstance, even for internal APIs. We live in a
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Zero Trust world where not treating API security seriously will
leave companies open to being the next Equifax. Developers
should approach APIs in the same way they would for web
interfaces and applications to protect company data and IP.
To many, API keys are the answer. They provide additional security to
selectively trusting end users and have the additional advantage of being fast
and easy to implement. But, they allow all or nothing access, which may expose
sensitive data to any developer that has your keys. We need to be smarter and
only grant access to the things someone needs to accomplish the task at hand.
Taking protection further
One of the more advanced ways to protect an APIs' infrastructure is an API

Gateway.
With a full access management solution to complement it, API Gateways can be
extremely valuable. But, when used alone, API Gateways do not give
businesses full context on the user and how much we should trust them. They
lack the ability to differentiate between a user on the trusted computer at their
office versus a suspicious mobile device on the other side of the world. For
example, using an HR system's API to download holiday history contains a very
different risk to using that same API to change direct debit information.
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There is another approach that businesses should add to the mix

– the industry standard, OAuth 2.0. It works like a hotel check-in
experience; so key cards provide access to an application.
Specific access tokens, granted by an Authorisation Server upon
proof of identity, allow access for the specified user to a specific
subset of resources, with an automatic expiration.
OAuth is a more complex approach but allows far greater flexibility and
consistency – an unquestionable benefit in the world of security. It's important to
remember, however, that OAuth 2.0 is still not a complete solution for securing
APIs because it does not address how to protect the API's infrastructure itself.
Just like any other system in our infrastructure, we have to defend our API from
malicious users and poor software regardless of how they approach it. A great
lock on the front door isn't sufficient if we leave the windows open.
Unified approach
In practice, clearly no security option is entirely failsafe, and each will come with
an element of risk management. However, to create the most sophisticated
solution for high security use cases, we recommend an API Gateway using
OAuth.
The complementary technologies combine to create a powerful API access

management solution that can limit particular OAuth scopes to specific devices,
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a specific network or group membership. More importantly, a security team can

manage policies like this outside the API Gateway, while centrally logging
access requests, grants and policy changes. Numerous data breaches have
been caught by observant network security teams so the more we can capture
this data centrally, the better protected we are.
Better solutions can help bring APIs out of the realm of ‘shadow IT', and back to
known, trusted systems and patterns. But remember: no solution is perfect, and
today's trusted partner may become tomorrow's compromised system.
We need the flexibility to adjust, respond, and protect our systems based on the
full context of the user and their goals. Only then can we take full advantage of
this ‘always on, always connected' world in safe, secure ways.
Next Article
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PCs shape up for the digital workplace

Stephen Kleynhans and Federica Troni, guest contributors
The workplace is evolving as enterprises work to engage with their employees

and customers in new ways. This digital workplace initiative has driven new
demands for functionality, mobility and connectivity to enable users to be more
productive and engaged.
For many, smartphones have replaced PCs as the truly personal device, and
are commanding most of the attention from software providers and
customers.However, PCs continue to be the primary devices that most
businesses rely on for day-to-day operations, and still offer the richest options
for interaction and functionality. The rise of the digital workplace is forcing a
renewed interest in modernising the PC fleet, and is spurring an increase in
sales.
Indeed, business PC shipments grew by 3.3% in 2017 after two consecutive

years of decline in 2015 and 2016.
New levels of performance
Today’s enterprise PCs are thinner and lighter, with new levels of performance
and connectivity. Manufacturers are addressing long-standing issues with
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labour-intensive setup and complex, costly operations as modern management

approaches, introduced with smartphones,become feasible.
At the same time, PC reliability has continued to improve, driving longer

replacement cycles and giving rise to an increasingly ageing base of
devices.PCs are often considered a legacy technology – one that is essential to
performing many tasks, but not necessarily the first stop for new applications
and users. As enterprises develop and launch their digital workplace
programmes, they need to look at endpoints as key technology to support users
in their work styles and promote collaboration and mobility. It is a good idea to
conduct a holistic user requirement analysis – which looks into mobility,
collaboration and autonomy versus security and work style –to help design work
spaces and select the right type of device for the right type of user.
Notebook PCs
Notebooks are the dominant PC device used in enterprises. Users like the
flexibility offered by their portability, and performance and feature trade-offs
when compared to desktops are mostly things of the past. Notebooks tend to
carry a slightly higher purchase cost than desktops, and wear and tear results in
generally shorter lifespans, typically three to three-and-a-half years. However,
for most knowledge workers, the increased productivity the devices enable
outweighs these issues.As companies have moved to Windows 10, two-in-one
devices have gained traction. In 2017, these devices commanded 34% of the
professional notebook market. Organisations are selecting them for mobile
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professionals, executives and within the context of digital workplace

programmes.The level of refinement with these devices makes the latest round
of systems more acceptable to a broader range of users. Ultimately, the
flexibility offered by the convertible design will win out and replace the traditional
clamshell notebook, but this will be a three-to five-year evolution, at the earliest.
Business buyers prefer convertible designs, and we see about 70% to 80% of
premium ultra-mobile PCs in that form factor. The detachable form factor is
used more frequently for smaller screen sizes, such as 12in, and most suppliers
stopped offering any 10in or 11in models of notebooks/hybrids. In 2018, even
thinner and lighter two-in-one devices have been arriving, including always-
connected PCs using ARM processors.
Desktop PCs
Desktops are no longer the default devices for office workers, often relegated to
either deskbound workers (call centre, clerical) or those requiring higher-
performance devices without mobility (engineers, creative professionals). Small
form factor desktops now constitute most enterprise purchases, and ultra small
form factors are increasingly common. These smaller devices ship and install
easily, and no longer command a significant price premium compared with large
minitower devices. PC makers are also packaging them with specific hardware
extensions and software for use as turnkey devices in conference rooms and
other collaborative settings. Even smaller than the micro form factor are the so-
called “compute stick” PCs, which are full PCs packaged into a USB or HDMI
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dongle. These mostly power digital signage and kiosks, but are not yet part of
mainstream PC coverage.Price and procurement.
After a flurry of new form factor options emerged during the lead-up to Windows
10, modern PCs have settled into a handful of relatively familiar designs
spanning both mobile and desktop devices. These designs have refreshed the
PC, but have not fundamentally changed it. The market remains challenging for
PC suppliers, which continue to struggle to maintain margins in a highly
competitive environment. This has resulted in good deals for many enterprise
purchasers, who now often see discounts on list prices that hover between 45%
and 55%.Meanwhile, the perception of stability has led many enterprises to stop
closely examining the technical details of the systems they are buying, often
moving the process from the IT organisation to a procurement group. As a
result, the enterprise PC market is shifting from a conversation about technical
specifications to a focus on procurement models and lifecycle servicing options.
The growing interest in both leasing hardware and new PC (or device) as a
service offerings from the major PC suppliers reflects this shift. Given the
collection of devices that employees will increasingly have at their disposal,
enterprise customers should consider how the role of the PC will evolve over
the next three to five years and adjust their procurement strategies accordingly.
IT leaders must determine how new technologies will shape the next generation
of usage models by aligning these technologies with user requirements and
workplace scenarios. They must evaluate suppliers based on their ability to
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match the organisation’s unique requirements rather than simply on their ability
to provide commodity hardware.
Move to ‘as a service’ model
In recent years, we have seen resurgent interest among companies in leasing

PCs rather than purchasing them. This reflects a desire by many CIOs to move
to an “as a service” model, in which they pay per user, per month. Leasing
enables IT organisations to return to a three-year lifecycle without having to
budget for a massive capital outlay every few years. For large organisations,
however, leasing can be more expensive on a monthly basis than just borrowing
money to buy PCs. Leasing for more than a three-year term is almost always a
poor financial deal, because a lifecycle of four or five years, especially for
desktop PCs, is more than adequatefor many companies.
Another emerging alternative is PC as a service (PCaaS), also referred to as

“device as a service” –not to be confused with desktop as a service (DaaS).
PCaaS offerings expand on PC leasing by wrapping lifecycle services
(configuration, imaging, deployment, extended warranty) into a single per-
month/per-seat charge. The initial market offerings are maturing, but pricing and
conditions remain fluid as providers experiment to understand how to make
these programmes viable. All the majorPC manufacturers, large enterprise
resellers and managed workplace services providers currently offer some sort of
PCaaS option, although variations in features and target customers
abound.Going forward, there is likely to be an increase in both leasing and
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PCaaS offerings, although, together, they will probably not make up more than
50% of the enterprise market through the planning horizon.
This is an excerpt from Gartner’s “ Market guide for enterprise desktops and
notebooks, 2018” by analysts.
Next Article
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Mobile-first strategy rings true for jeweller

Christian Annesley, guest contributor
The era of digital business has changed the retail sector perhaps more than any
other. Today’s online shoppers quite literally have information at their fingertips.
A few clicks on their smartphone is all it takes to find the best price or the right
product with the best overall review rating.
This technology-led story reaches into every aspect of how the omni-channel
retailer operates. Not just those front-end merchandising and marketing
innovations, but back-end systems and stock management that enable sales
and fulfilment options that no one was thinking of offering even a decade ago.
How do customers today differ from customers in years past? In its How to
transform your retail store report, published in July 2018, analyst group
Forrester picks up on four elements of the retail transformation:
1. Consumers are always connected.

2. Consumers are ever quicker to see value in new technology.
3. The line between physical and digital retail experiences is blurring.
4. Digital has fundamentally altered consumer expectations across all
touchpoints.
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The report says retailers can benefit by taking into account the way digital
consumers shop. “Digital store associate devices and consumer self-service
tools will add value in the retail store by providing personalised assistance to
customers in the context of their shopping journeys,” it notes.
Consumers increasingly appear to view their mobile devices as trusted advisers
while shopping in-store and expect to get the information or services they want
in-aisle, especially via their mobile devices. They might well be validating the
prices and information they find in-store – or buying from a competitor’s website.
Shoppers who start out by researching a potential purchase online or on their

smartphone may be taking a different journey to their shopping – a detailed and
considered investigation of options leads to an informed, often personalised
purchase further down the line.
Jeweller Taylor & Hart is a small retailer that is delivering a mobile-first
experience to provide an enhanced personalised shopping experience in-store
and online.
The area immediately around Hatton Garden has been the centre of London’s
jewellery trade since medieval times. Today there are still nearly 300
businesses in Hatton Garden that are in the jewellery industry and more than 50
shops, making the area the biggest cluster of jewellery retailers in the country.
Jewellery sales have traditionally been based on buyers making a considered

face-to-face purchase – especially when picking out an engagement ring, which
has always been a mainstay of this global business.
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But in 2013, a different kind of jewellery and engagement ring business was
launched with disruption on its mind. At first it was called Rare Pink, but in 2016
it rebranded as Taylor & Hart. It is still relatively small today, with turnover of a
few million and fewer than 50 staff, but it is making headway on its own terms,
resolutely aiming at customers who want a personalised ring design. Chief
executive Nicolay Piriankov says it is this personalisation that primarily defines
the business, alongside its use of technology and the internet.
“The technology is the great enabler of what we are trying to do, of course, but
the end goal is to offer a personalised, convenient, emotionally rewarding
service that is also cost-effective,” he says. “Using the internet as our smarter
shop window is what makes that possible.”
Change the rules
And so Taylor & Hart has approached the marketplace with a mindset to change
the rules for buying a ring, and Piriankov says mobile has become key to its
success.
“With the desktop site there are more distractions,” he says. “But the phone
lends itself to delivering a tighter process for the would-be customer. You can
validate elements as you go along and deliver trust cues, such as features,
reviews and rewards more seamlessly.
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“We started off thinking that mobile was relatively important but not stand-out
crucial, because we thought few individuals would use a phone to buy an
engagement ring. But what we immediately found with our first-launch
responsive website was that half the traffic was mobile, so we rebuilt the site to
be mobile-first and to work hard as our primary funnel for leads.”
Building a mobile-first shopping experience for engagement rings is certainly not

easy, says Piriankov. “Our first assumptions were wide of the mark, clearly,” he
says. “Engagement rings are a high-value, considered purchase, and the point
is that planning a bespoke ring is a long process and takes time.
“Mobile is perfect in this respect. It’s quite discreet to use, which is important for
lots of reasons when investigating buying a ring. So the process starts on the
phone, where lots of information can be collated and sometimes shared – and
we can go from there.”
Rather than focusing on a full mobile commerce offering, Piriankov says: “Our
customers spend a lot of time in the planning phase, and then often want
reassurance as the time to purchase gets closer. So we have pivoted to reflect
this, moving from a full e-commerce offer to mobile as a lead generation tool. It
looks and feels like e-commerce for those who want to buy online, but for many,
the final act will be a visit to our London showroom.”
This is something Taylor & Hart has worked on since it fully embraced mobile,
and conversion rates have improved as a result, with 12% of site visits leading
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to enquiries, compared with 6% recorded for the early versions of the mobile
site.
Optimised for Google search
Ensuring the site is optimised for Google search is also key to the success of
the mobile-first approach. “There was an element of thinking about Google
when we upgraded the site and went mobile-first,” says Piriankov. “That’s
because we knew that Google is placing more and more emphasis on mobile-
ready sites, and we certainly didn’t want to be penalised.”
Taylor & Hart has also begun using analytics to decide how well the site is
working. “We are a niche outfit, but even with 15,000 unique visitors a month
and a couple of thousand customers, you get to do a lot with analytics,”
says Piriankov. “We do A/B testing and look at other small variations in our
marketing mix to see what works. We have a large enough base of activity to
get a feel for things even when the quantitative data isn’t quite delivering.”
Piriankov says Taylor & Hart’s business model for today is to meet its
customers online, then engage through platforms such as WhatsApp and
the London showroom.
Excited about bots
Piriankov is excited about how bots could help customers discover engagement
rings. “Facebook opened up its API [application programming interface] to
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Facebook Messenger and we have created a Messenger bot to help us engage

and learn about a new customer’s interest in steps,” he says. “This means that
by the time a customer reaches us through the bot, he or she is already a
qualified lead. That’s a big step forward.”
The challenge for the business at all times, says Piriankov, is to keep track of its
acquisitions costs in relation to customer lifetime value. “We are getting better at
measuring lifetime value, and our repeat business is strikingly good, so we are
headed in the right direction,” he says. “Our systems are set up and optimised
nicely right now, but they will also continue to evolve. The tech isn’t standing still
and nor can we.
“We will also bolster our offer with more showrooms in the not-too-distant future.
It’s not all about the tech – face-to-face still matters.”
At the last count, Taylor & Hart had sold more than 2,000 unique engagement
rings, lifting its revenues from £250,000 in its first full year of trading (2014) to
more than £2m in 2017, with further growth coming through.
In the online retail world, price is often regarded as the primary factor
influencing a customer’s purchase decision, and Piriankov says the positioning
of Taylor & Hart’s business, and its use of technologies, is carefully calibrated.
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“Conventionally, online competition in jewellery is a race to the bottom on price,”

he says. “That’s not our model, of course. We are more like the mattress brand
Casper or the furniture brand Made.com in our individuality and positioning.
“We want our customers to talk about getting a custom ring rather than saying
they bought online. That’s the difference. You could say we are not an online
brand at all, but first, second and third a custom-made brand. That’s who we
are.”
Next Article
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Modern IT underlines need for zero-trust

security
Warwick Ashford, security editor
Modern IT environments with high levels of interconnectivity, little segmentation

and increased use of third-party services are raising the risk of data breaches,
according to the head of virtualisation-based security firm Bromium.
“Organisations need to consider adopting a zero-trust approach, applying

security right down to the application level,” Ian Pratt, co-founder and president
of Bromium, told Computer Weekly.
Bromium’s core micro-virtualisation technology that was developed to enable

users to open any executable file, document or web page without fear, has been
evolved to enable organisations to wrap critical applications within hardware-
enforced virtual cages, so that even if the network, device or third-party partner
is compromised, high-value assets are still protected.
However, Pratt emphasises the first step in applying a zero-trust approach to

security should not be about acquiring any new technology.
“The zero-trust model is about following good, time-honoured security practices

that every organisation should be encouraged to follow to reduce the attack
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surface by identifying what things companies care most about and treating them
differently.
“The zero-trust model is not enabled by any particular technology or

applications,” he said. “It is about moving away from the traditional model of
trying to keep the bad guys out at the perimeter, while having lax controls
internally.”
Virtual private network
Without investing in new technology, Pratt said organisations can do things like
putting the corporate network outside the firewall and forcing all users to
connect through a virtual private network (VPN) to get away from the traditional
setup that once things get onto the corporate network, they can move freely
“So many of the problems that we have today stem from the fact we do not have
appropriate segmentation or isolation, which dates back 30 years to the days
when multiple users logging into the same machine was the big new thing in
computing.
“But now we are in this world where users are running all sorts of applications
on their machines,” said Pratt. “Those applications have been downloaded from
a multitude of different sources across the internet and even browsing to a
website is resulting in code from that website running on your machine.”
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The problem is that from an operating system concept point of view, all of that
just gets lumped together as running as the user, so there is no fine-grained
segmentation of permissions to do things.
“Even at the machine level, as soon as you get system privileges on the
machine, you have full control over that machine and represent anything it can
do on the network. The networking protocols we have also date back 30 years
and there is nothing to identify the particular application or authority associated
with that application.”
Privilege escalation
As a result, if an attacker succeeds in exploiting a bug in an application, Pratt

said that instead of being limited by the permissions associated with that
application, it ends up running as the whole user. “Then with privilege escalation
it ends up with the power of the whole machine on the network.
“That’s what makes breaches so much worse: attackers have that ability to
move laterally and access all of the data on the machine and possibly all the
data a legitimate user can access on the network.”
Trying to fix all the bugs in the applications to stop these compromises of the
applications from occurring or the escalation of privileges on the operating
system is “basically futile”, said Pratt.
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“So you have got to look at other ways of doing the containerisation. On the end
point, that might be virtualisation, and from a networking point of view, wanting
to try and take micro segmentation approaches by identifying individual
applications and controlling the authority of the network flows associated with
that application to limit the impact of the compromise of the application.”
At the most basic level, Pratt said zero-trust is about isolating things to reduce
the trust associated with each of the things that are being isolated by giving
them access to only the resources that are needed.
“The primary focus has been on the network, because that is the one where,
using traditional technologies, you can make the most progress on quickly, but
ultimately control needs to be extended into the endpoints, servers and clients
using containerisation approaches.”
In terms of technology offerings that support a zero-trust approach, Pratt said

most suppliers are offering something that sits on the network that is aimed at
controlling flows across the network.
“But ultimately it is about wanting to do it in endpoints, including the server and

the client systems you are using to access them, and identifying individual
applications and individual roles of users so you can associate the authority
required by that particular application and role so that you can enforce that right
the way through the network to the server that you are talking to.
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“It is a far more fine-grained authority you are trying to achieve, but that is the
real goal of zero-trust architectures.”
However, for any organisation looking to move to a zero-trust approach, Pratt

said the first thing to do is to think about what they are actually trying to protect.
“Identify the crown jewels by going through the whole process of working out
what is the most important data to protect and whether you are protecting it
against theft, misuse or destruction. Once you have identified those assets you
care about the most, it is then a case of designing an architecture where you
treat those things differently.
“The next step towards zero-trust might be to take the file server that is holding
that information off the standard corporate network and putting it on its own
isolated network or putting a terminal server or VDI [virtual desktop
infrastructure] session in front of it so that the application accessing that data is
running on that terminal server and users are accessing it remotely over an ICA
[independent computing architecture] or RDP [remote desktop protocol]
session.”
Two-factor authentication
As a follow up to that, organisations may want to implement another level of

authentication using a two-factor authentication method because the data is the
most important data they have.
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“After that, it is just a case of applying these kinds of principles repeatedly to

reduce the amount of stuff that you have to trust to be working to achieve a
given security aim.
“You just keep applying that iteratively, and eventually you will get to the point
where can start treating the corporate network as though it were public Wi-Fi,
where you require the machines to individually authenticate themselves and for
the traffic to go over a VPN between strongly-identified laptops using hardware
elements such as a trusted platform module (TPM).”
While a zero-trust approach has obvious security benefits, the main reason
most organisations have still to move to that model or have not done so sooner,
said Pratt, is that it is easier and more convenient to put everything on the same
network.
“Whenever you try to move to more fine-grained permissions model you are
always running into things that break because you had not realised you needed
to associate a given permission with a given task, but you have to be prepared
to work through that.
“If you are moving to more fine-grained model, there is always going to be some
work associated with it. You have to understand what flows of information are
and what the process workflow is within the company, for example.”
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Protecting the most important assets
The key thing is to identify what matters most and then work outwards from
there, said Pratt. “It should be obvious to the business that the most important
assets should be protected.
“You have to do it around what the business need is and the business assets
that you are protecting rather than coming in with a particular security policy that
you want to implement because even if it’s a good idea, that is not the way to
build a business case to get it done.”
Most organisations are trying to make things better, but security teams are often
overwhelmed with the scale of the problems they have and the number of alerts
all of the existing tools are generating.
“The often have no idea whether they are false positives or true positives and
no time to investigate all the alerts to find out. Organisations are trying to do the
right thing. It’s all about giving them appropriate resources and also finding good
security professionals, which is something all organisations are struggling with.”
While a zero-trust approach will not stop all security incidents, Pratt said it
means that when they do occur, they will be contained.
“You still have got a problem if somebody clicks on a malicious link in an email
and gets their endpoint system owned, but at least the attacker can’t move
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laterally and get access to the crown jewels, which buys you time to deal with
the issue on the compromised endpoint.”
Next Article
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Smart speakers: How to give apps a voice

Research from Gartner shows that about a fifth of people in mature markets are
voicing a question to their smart speaker at least once a week.
However, the same study reveals that 10% admit they have stopped using the
devices. “The drop-off rate is quite high,” says Annette Jump, research vice-
president at Gartner. “This is very similar to wearables. Consumers try a device,
and either it does not do enough for them or it does not recognise their voice. Or
they can only link to a Google email account or the user does not have a smart
home.”
While being able to speak to a device offers a lot of convenience, there are
personal boundaries in what people will ask, she notes. This is one of the
challenges businesses need to take into account when assessing how to go
about developing a voice assistant app.
“Using voice control on a smartphone is location-specific, while at home people

will ask the device to play music, control smart home devices and ask about the
weather,” says Jump.
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Amazon Echo smart speakers use in-built voice recognition software Alexa to
connect to apps called “skills” that add third-party functionality.
But Jump asks: “While Alexa has 10,000 skills, how many are actually useful?”
According to analyst Rethink, voice functionality is like Apple’s AppStore,

whereby it acts as a route to market for services, and those services will pay a
percentage of revenue brought to market via voice.
Rethink says Amazon Alexa wants as many services (skills) as possible to build
momentum.
“Later, we believe it will be in a position to charge services for a service delivery

skill where it is proactive – for instance, offering a cheap taxi ride from Uber to
take you to work because it senses it is raining, and asking for some of the Uber
payment,” says the analyst.
The voice user interface is a growing area of interest, according to Accenture.

“We are seeing an explosion in interest in voice assistants due to the launch of
Amazon Alexa and Google Home. The technology is now ready for mass
adoption,” says Emma Kendrew, artificial intelligence (AI) lead for Accenture
Technology.
She says voice assistants provide a much more natural experience for the user.
Accenture has found that the use of voice interaction for talking to a machine is
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more natural among digital natives, and it is they who tend to be driving demand
for new apps and smart speaker devices.
This is encouraging businesses to experiment with voice, says Kendew.

“Customer-facing industries are leading on this. Financial services are also
experimenting with specific use cases, such as using a voice assistant as a
mortgage advisor,” she says.
“Organisations are interested in how to transform customer experience and are

looking at where voice assistants should and shouldn’t be used.”
Getting started with voice
Kendew says it is very important to design voice assistants with the user in
mind. As these new technologies become available, organisations need to think
about what is the right way to use them to achieve their objectives.
But where should they start? Bill Kingston heads up Elixirr Creative, an agency
which has built a number of voice-based apps. “With Alexa,” he says, “you can
use an existing framework to turn an RSS into a skill, or take the custom skill
route. The question is, is it worth developing a custom skill?”
In Kingston’s experience, it is usually better to start with an existing feed and

see how well it works, then decide whether to invest in developing a custom
app.
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However, businesses can find that retrofitting an existing app with voice
assistance may not work particularly well. Such an Alexa skill can be a bit one-
way, according to Kingston, which might not fit the natural feel everyone is
striving for.
Enterprise software company Unit 4 has developed an intelligent assistant

called Wanda, which uses natural language queries. The company has
developed a proof-of-concept voice assistant using Microsoft Cortana.
Claus Jepen, chief architect at Unit 4, has overseen the project. “Old rules-
based interactive voice response applications are not beneficial to anyone,” he
says. “We paid lot of attention to ensure Wanda understands complex
sentences.”
He says one of the greatest technical challenges is the ability to infer meaning
in a conversation – a human trait that is very hard to program.
As an example of a piece of dialogue that the voice assistant should be able to

handle in a human way, Jepen says: “If you ask, ‘Please give me revenue
results’, a human would automatically assume that infers the latest results. But
often a voice assistant will only work programmatically and will need additional
contextual information. For instance, Alexa would probably ask the user to
clarify what they wanted, asking, ‘What results would you like?’.”
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Since it is pretty easy to develop a simple Alexa skill based on an existing app,
Jepen says a lot of people are getting involved, but they are not sure what to do
with it. “Unless you put a lot of effort into designing the dialogue and handling
context without having to get the user to restart the conversation, you end up
with nothing,” he warns.
A good voice interaction requires specialist skills, says Jepen. “You need
conversational designers, just as you have user interface designers. But we
don’t know how well the voice assistant works until we get real users.”
While testing its Wanda assistant, Unit 4 collects conversation snippets that fail
to provide the human tester with an appropriate conversational response.
“When the Wanda assistant can’t figure out what the user wants, we pull out the
dialogue and upload it back into the training,” says Jepen.
In effect, Unit 4 teaches Wanda to respond correctly. It is machine learning.
Testing is a lengthy process, according to Elixirr Creative’s Kingston, and even

getting voice analytics back takes time.
“People won’t necessarily interact with an Alexa skill in the same way. After you
have tested with six or seven users on the same theme, you get a good idea of
what works,” he says. For instance, voice analytics can be used to identify
where people pause in their interaction with Alexa, which can help developers
work out how to make the interaction more like a conversation.
Page 59 of 72
So creating a seamless conversation flow with a voice assistant is not easy,

especially as the assistant must attempt to do something useful.
“Voice experiences will consume a significant amount of our time completing

everyday duties in the coming years due to their time-saving benefit,” says Lee
Mallon, managing director of Made for Voice, a company specialising in voice
assistant software for the enterprise.
“These experiences must respect the user’s attention by solving their problems
as quickly and in the fewest words possible. In one of our voice experiences, we
found a 20-30% engagement drop-off by adding just two additional words to a
three-word sentence response.”
Going forward with voice
Neither Google nor Amazon have not stopped at voice assistants. Amazon now
offers a screen on its Alexa Show device.
“What is starting is combination of voice interaction with screen interaction –

blending two channels into one seamless flow,” says Accenture’s Kendew.
Combining a visual user interface with voice opens up new opportunities for
customer interaction, such as providing an intelligent kiosk at an airport or
shopping centre.
Page 60 of 72
From the conversations Computer Weekly has had, one thing is clear: there are
two main voice platforms and they are very different.
“The user journey is very different on the Amazon Alexa platform in comparison
with the Google Assistant platform, with Alexa requiring users to ‘subscribe’ to
skills that interest them, like our own daily briefing skill,” says Rob Fricker,
product manager at Time Out. “Once subscribed, you ask Alexa, ‘What’s my
daily briefing?’, and it replies with Time Out’s top three things to do in the city
today.”
Gartner’s Jump believes Google Assistant has the more complete voice
interface, when compared with Alexa. Being linked to a Google account, Google
Assistant gives users access to their calendar, so it can tell them more and
prompt them to do things. But as with Alexa, she says there are lots of times it
says, ‘I don’t know’.
Elixirr Creative’s Kingston agrees. “Google Assistant has so much data, it is

probably a step ahead,” he says.
There is not going to be one overall winner, and as Unit 4 has shown,
in business there may be an opportunity to make use of Cortana on Windows
10.
The experts Computer Weekly has spoken to recommend that businesses look
at voice user interfaces. These are not quick wins or just another channel to
Page 61 of 72
market. A truly compelling voice interface needs time and effort to develop and
test, and teams will need dialogue experts, just as they now have user interface
experts.
Time Out speaks
Time Out recently launched a conversational app on the Google Assistant,

designed to provide a personal touch to keep the conversation going. Rob
Fricker, product manager at Time Out, explains how the app was developed.
“One of the most interesting things about the process was the conversation
design – it’s something we were all completely new to,” he says.
“We built the app on Google’s Dialogflow, which uses natural language
processing to understand voice input. We spent a lot of time thinking about the
different paths conversations might take and how to address questions the
assistant might not know.
“This included watching people in conversation with each other when one was
acting as a computer – it’s funny how polite people are when they think they’re
talking to a computer. We also measured how people interacted through various
iterations which was crucial to determine the kind of questions people might ask
the app.
“User testing throughout the development cycle also helped set expectations of
the functionality the app should be able to perform, and we were able to
Page 62 of 72
prioritise certain features based on this feedback and learnings that users would
benefit from more.”
Next Article
Page 63 of 72
How to find the right mobility strategy for

your SME
Rene Millman, guest contributor
When budgets are tight, as they are for most small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs), having a mobile strategy may seem an extravagance.
However, most businesses use a mobile device in one way or another, so
maximising their usefulness is a must.
According to the Office of National Statistics, (ONS) the amount of people

regularly working from home has risen to 4.2 million in the last decade and it’s
expected that half of the UK’s workforce will be working remotely by 2020.
Furthermore, the latest figures from the Department for Business, Innovation &
Skills (BEIS) say that 16.1 million people work for SMEs – 60% of all private
sector employment in the UK.
According to Myles Leach, managing director at voice-over-IP (VoIP) firm Nfon

UK, it stands to reason that SMEs are and will continue to be affected by this
change in working trends: “Employees need and want to have the opportunity to
work flexibly. But crucially it benefits the SME. It saves on office space and
costs,” he says.
Page 64 of 72
“Operations can continue when a site is shut because of bad weather or for
maintenance. There will invariably be fewer staff ‘sick days’ as they can still
work during school holidays and when children are ill.”
Bringing mobile into SMEs and bring things up to date
What works for one SME won’t necessarily work for another, but before
adopting a mobility strategy it’s important to look at what’s already in place, to
determine where changes need to be made. According to Andres Richter, CEO
at cloud ERP specialist Priority Software, in a survey his firm carried out of 500
UK senior decision-makers, over a third did not have the correct technology to
support mobile working, and 43% couldn’t perform business-critical functions on
a mobile application.
“If the company already has business software applications in place, they
should see if their vendors already offer mobility tools. For example, many
modern ERP systems now support mobile application generators which allow
users to create a range of applications from their mobiles and use them to
perform core business processes no matter where they are. These can be
created in a matter of minutes, and don’t require high levels of IT expertise,
perfect for SMEs looking to enhance their mobility strategy using existing
technology,” he says.
Jon Wrennall, chief technology officer at cloud software supplier Advanced,

says that SMEs should look to place employees at the heart of their mobile
Page 65 of 72
strategy, “empowering them to use mobile technology to streamline their tasks

and minimising the chances of departments working in siloes”.
He adds that SMEs can use the cloud to help facilitate mobile working, which
enables users to work on the move and still have all the real-time information
they need at their fingertips.
“The cloud is a key driver in making mobile strategies success but implementing
such a strategy is often seen as a bold move as some SMEs lack confidence in
adoption and don’t understand the positive role it can play,” says Wrennall.
“SMEs should therefore look to take incremental steps. For example, they can
trial mobile technology will a select set of employees who can then share
feedback with those that aren’t yet familiar with it. It also enables SMEs to
assess areas for improvement,” he says.
Device and service choice
Wrennall said that when it comes to devices and service choice, not everyone is
familiar with mobile devices. Some will be more receptive to changing their
working practices, while others might not.
“SMEs should give more support to those that need it and educate them on the
benefits of mobile and the cloud. They should work closely with staff to find out
their pain points, as this will determine what devices and services they choose
to implement,” he says.
Page 66 of 72
He adds that a move to a mobile strategy should be considered with the same
level of due diligence as any other significant investment within a business.
Before choosing what device or service to adopt, SMEs must consider how a
transition will impact their staff and customers as well as choose a provider that
can illustrate a clear and structured pathway for moving staff and data to mobile
technology as smoothly as possible.
“Device and service providers must be able to show they are going to be a long-
term value adding partner and that they’re in it for the long haul,” says Wrennall.
Organisations would be well advised to use just one type of device or at least
minimise the number of unique hardware/software configurations,” according to
Jack Zubarev, president at Parallels, a supplier of desktop and application
virtualisation software.
“The cost of delivering and supporting applications simply increases with each
unique device/software combination. Further device replacement and refresh
will become far less expensive if one can standardise not just on device vendors
but on the specific configuration(s),” he says.
“But then again, most organisations do not have the luxury of this
standardisation as employees bring their own devices. In this case universal
remote delivery of applications to any device, will likely provide the most cost-
effective solution and isolate software delivery from underlying device
hardware.
Page 67 of 72
Making mobility secure
SMEs are in as much danger from cyber criminals as larger enterprises. David
Emm, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, says that if SMEs
overlook mobile security, they run the risk of leaving a big gap in their security
defences. He adds that his firm detected 5,730,916 malicious installation
packages, 94,368 mobile banking Trojans and 544,107 mobile ransomware
Trojans in 2017.
“One of the dangers is that mobile technology ‘creeps’ into the business and
isn’t necessarily considered in the same way as desktop or laptop
security. Consider the BYOD [bring-your-own-device] trend, for example, where
staff use their own devices for business,” he says.
“This isn’t a bad thing per se, but it’s important that businesses include mobile in
their risk assessment, just as they would for any other technology they use: i.e.
looking at what assets they have, how are they used, how is data stored/moved,
who has access to it, who might want it and how might they try to access it
etc. In this sense, mobile security should be considered as part of an overall
security strategy.”
One of the biggest trends affecting mobile strategy and security is BYOD. “No
longer can organisations insist on a device to be used by employees,” says
Clive Longbottom, service director at Quocirca. “This is made worse by the
changes in workforce – contractors, consultants, specialists and so on cannot
Page 68 of 72
be forced to use a specific device, but can be forced to allow the organisation to
create a secure partition on their device.”
Employees at smaller companies may not realise that, when downloading an

app, where that app came from.
“Employees can search on an App Store and find any number of apps that
purport to be able to do what they want. Individuals tend not to even check to
see where the developer comes from (for example, Russia or China) and will
have no capabilities to check the traffic between their device and the backend
servers,” says Longbottom.
“By creating a secure partition, users can be prevented from loading apps on to
it, with only the company-approved apps being available to them. Sure, the
individual can still install apps on their part of the device, but these apps will not
have access to any corporate data.”
Putting best practice into your mobile strategy
Priority’s Richter says the best tip is to understand where in the business a
mobility strategy will add value. “Is it more important for your HR and accounting
team to be mobile, or your field service reps? Although the end goal should be
full mobility across the board, initially, instead of trying to do everything at once,
being selective about what parts of the business would benefit from going
mobile will increase the chances of a strategy sticking,” he says.
Page 69 of 72
Leach says that line managers must be confident that staff are aware how to
use, and are using, technologies available so that employees are just effective
at their job when out of the office.
“There also need to be clear policies for working from home, such as allocated
days and shared calendars. However, the most crucial factor to ensure a
successful mobile strategy is creating a positive culture for mobile working. Do
employees feel comfortable asking for and then working from home? Do
you trust that they will be working, or do you think that they will be swilling tea all
day whilst signing for neighbours’ Amazon deliveries?” he says.
Should SMEs worry about 5G? What does the future hold for SME mobile
strategies?
At some point in the next few years, 5G networks will begin to be

commercialised. 5G devices should be expected to consume less energy and
thus improve battery life. 5G networks will have higher data rates and lower
latency than previous mobile generations.
These new networks will come with features to give companies better mobility
and flexibility. This will be useful for SMEs with remote employees being able to
work anywhere and retain workplace-like bandwidth and connectivity.
The internet experience of 5G for field employees will be better in a number of

ways. Internet-connected vehicles and machinery can be more easily monitored
Page 70 of 72
in real-time. It should also be easier to get analytical data into management

hands to enable quicker decisions wherever employees are. These should
make an impact on a business’s productivity.
Next Article
Page 71 of 72
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E-guide

In reality, IT has increasingly become a heterogeneous

Today, end users simply ask IT for the Microsoft Exchange

Similarly, Computer Weekly has seen a shift in consumer

most popular smartphone operating system. Yet app

Supporting one hardware platform over another is a sure way

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has tried to achieve this with

Returning to Forrester’s Introna, one could argue that, within

Thanks to open data and open application programming

microservices architectures, where the mobile app orchestrates

So while there will inevitably be heated debates over which

Cliff Saran, technology editor

 Transform business with microservices and containers

 Chrome OS: Why it may be time to approach desktop IT in a different way

 Okta API lead: how to secure the API economy

 PCs shape up for the digital workplace

 Mobile-first strategy rings true for jeweler

 Modern IT underlines need for zero-trust security

 Smart speakers: How to give apps a voice

 How to find the right mobility strategy for your SME

Cross-platform mobile app development is

Developers' experience also comes into play. An organization may have a

Why cross-platform is becoming a reality

projects; more importantly, they integrate well with application lifecycle

Tools for cross-platform mobile apps

Organizations should explore these approaches to benefit from cross-platform

Cross-platform pros and cons

Cross-platform mobile app development can also be advantageous for

Depending on the organization's device diversity, businesses will be well served

Transform business with microservices

The history of computing is punctuated by a set of seismic shifts in enterprise IT

Monolithic, highly integrated applications moved to integrated software stacks

Forrester’s Now tech: enterprise container platforms, Q2 2018 report notes:

Moving to an agile approach with containers

Tom Perry, director of software engineering at Elsevier, says the company

As well as the technology constantly evolving, Elsevier also had to go through a

An example of when not to use containers includes when attempting to run an

Although Elsevier has starting using agile approaches in some of its

DevOps generally goes hand-in-hand with agile software development

He says the company’s original platform began as a classical web e-commerce

Unfortunately, WorldRemit was unable to fully document all the microservices

WorldRemit selected Dynatrace to provide one dashboard, which provided an

Strict enforcement of corporate rules, procedures and policies can limit

For instance, Porsche Informatik has established communities of engineers who

moving to an environment when we have to debug in production, which requires

Chrome OS: Why it may be time to

Windows remains cemented in the enterprise mindset, even though user or

Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows 7 on 14 January 2020,

There is therefore an opportunity for IT to ask a difficult question: “Is there

But Mac OS X is derived from the Berkeley Software Distribution

Why Chromebook running Chrome OS is secure in the enterprise

Chromebooks use the principle of “defence in depth” to provide multiple layers

 Automatic updates: The most effective way to protect

Data encryption: When using web apps on a Chromebook, all important

Source: Paul Nicholas, business manager, Google, Tech Data

Google traditionally targeted the education sector and a number of hardware

Google itself has released a high-end Chromebook that competes in terms of

Cloud changes things

“The attack surface of Chrome OS is much smaller than Windows. Chrome OS

“Windows 7 is nine years old, so it is not a contemporary user interface any

Reflecting Ridley’s experience, Bray says Chrome OS is being used in very

There is now a Chromebook at every price point. While the manifestation of

Being primarily a browser-based operating system, Chrome OS is intuitive to

Time for change