Tuesday 5th December, 6:30 p.m.
Withers Solicitors, 12 Gough Square, London EC4A 3DW

This event was in association with Withers and Computing.

Ian Stobie, Research editor from Computing, Rod Sweet, Editor from Business & Technology, Ben Hammersley, Internet Correspendent from The Times, gave their views on what they predicted would be Hot in the IT industry.

Peter Sondergaard, Group Vice President from Gartner, gave his presentation on what he thought would happen in the next decade.

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Wednesday 15th November, 6:30 p.m.
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, 130 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1V 8HH

This event was in association with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Hummingbird.

Gareth Metyard from Hummingbird talked about how software was now able to bring together different sources of information onto one customisable screen, from email, documents, information feeds etc.

Geoff Smith from Cap Gemini Ernest & Young, talked about how they had merged the two companies Knowledge Managements and how that the insights gained have transformed their views of Knowledge Management in the business.

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Wednesday 18th October, 6:15 p.m.
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, 130 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1V 8HH

This event was in association with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young .

Event review by Alastair Duggin:

Three speakers presented their views on different aspects of project management.

Andrew Taylor, MD of CMG, Digital Division gave some statistics on project failures and success based on research work he has undertaken.

In a recent survey of IT project failures, it was found that :-

• 18% objectives & requirements were unclear
• 12% business requirements changing
• 16% lacked business commitment
• 7% Poor planning

Andrew suggested that projects will be harder for e-business/commerce
He recommended that projects be broken down into smaller areas.
For "traditional" systems delivery was often 2 years. With e-projects, delivery is now 3 months, typically.
The most stunning failure statistics were :-

• < 1% of development projects succeed
• only around 30% of data conversion projects succeed.

"Change is the natural environment and MUST be accommodated"

Mike Shapland, System Development Manager of Friends Provident provided information on an award-winning project to use a web-based approach to provide stake-holder pensions.

The initial drive came from a government directive to reduce margins for these pensions to below 1% (half the industry norm)

A target of 3 months was sent for the delivery of this new concept. To achieve this target, the following requirements were identified:-

• Faster decision-making
• Instilling belief in the team
• High-level backing
• Cross-divisional project
• Had to eliminate processes, or automate those that were needed.

The main issue to be addressed was time to process application forms, 80% of which were wrong.
Staffing was 1 staff for 350 members which was improved to 1 for 550.
The target set was 1 staff for 5,000 members.

To achieve this, some of the tactics adopted included :-

• Twice-weekly walk-through with Project Director
• Green-field thinking.
• Strong focus on deliverables
• Issues/disagreements resolved as necessary
• Communicate a "can-do/will-do" attitude
• Team protected from outside pressures
• Use of new technology
• Use of contractors for new skills
• Integrated processing ….. Internet => Workflow => Mainframe Systems
• Use of pre-populated application forms

IFA (Independent Financial Advisor) has responsibility for data-editing to get 100% accuracy.
Give enquiry facility via web, rather than call centre
Customers’ self-service capability with reduced work for IFA

The main point from this case study is "Re-engineering is a MUST!"

Bob Pond, Principal Consultant of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young outlined some principles of project management.

• One owner responsible for delivery of the products
• The first plan will move, but the client must come along with it
• Get Steering Group on board
• Confirm clear inter-dependencies
• Communicate to explain effects of changes
• Need team attitude to understand what others do
• For quality, "touch and feel" what has been reported, ie dig-around
• Client wants simple documentation, rather than detailed specs
• Need clear acceptance criteria

Project Managers need

• To have organised and structured approach
• To be clear and consistent communicator
• To have strong planning skills
• To have team-building skills
• To have leadership and motivation skills

E-commerce projects present extra challenges

The main point from this presentation for project management is "a large dose of common sense"

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Tuesday 19th September, 6:15 p.m.
Withers Solicitors, 12 Gough Square, London EC4A 3DW

This event was in association with Axent, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Withers.

Event review by Alastair Duggin:

This was another popular E-business event, with 4 speakers , focusing on security.

Andrew Beard, Senior Manager, PriceWaterhouseCoopers gave an outline of Cyber Crime.
Andrew presented analogies with paper-based crimes which to highlight similarities and differences. He then presented examples of crimes committed via electronic means.

Some of the alarming facts mentioned:

• 90% of credit card frauds are not detected.
• A recent Distributed Denial of Service attack caused losses estimated at £1.5 billion.
• American Express & Discover are replacing 300,000 credit cards whose credibility had become suspect.

In developing secure systems, one must have a framework for information security. Security should be part of the design and not an add-on. Monitoring and testing of the configuration should be an on-going process. Cyber-simulation is a recommended practice.

David Love, Strategic Security Specialist of Computer Associates provided a description of The Threat.
David started by making the significant points:

• That it is the business process that needs to be protected, not just the IT!
• For effective and secure business, one must ensure that the right person gets the right information at the right time.
• To be a threat, there must be both a risk and a vulnerability. Financial fraud was the most dangerous and has very high growth.

Cyber terrorism is, however, a very real threat, both commercially and nationally.

He pointed out that warnings about the DDoS attack were given well in advance of the actual attack. The attack resulted in a severe reduction in confidence in trading.

Also that the Love Bug virus contained features that did not activate, leaving a target for future virus-writers. If, or more likely, when this target is achieved, severe damage will be caused.

David defined the issue as the need to invite people in to do legitimate business, not to keep them out. This requires excellent prevention and detection to keep out the wrong people. The requirement is for artificial intelligence for detection to implement policy-based security.

David Butler, Senior Security Analyst of Axent Technologies provided an overview of some e-business security solutions.

In implementing your security policy, you should remember that 75% of attacks are by "insiders". Attacks may come from partners, attackers, web-servers or tele-commuters.

The approach is to secure the perimeter and then test … frequently. He reminded that an attack on infrastructure servers results in a slow-down of the network or even its loss, whilst an attack on the application server can result in shutting-down your business. An attack on information servers could result in loss of information, valuable or otherwise.

Lyn Barkow, Lawyer of Withers posed the question on liabilities that a company, which suffered a security breach, may have to its clients.
Main points discussed were:

• Statutory duty, such as the duty to keep data confidential under the Data Protection Act 1998, where failure can lead to damages being paid.
• Contractual duties, which may be minimised by carefully drafted exclusion clauses and limitation clauses.
• Liability in Negligence, where one has the duty of care, a breach of which may well result in damages.

The easier hacking is to prevent, the more liable you are if you don’t!
Security is not an afterthought; consider it from Day 1.
Always remember that the e-world is a dynamic scene, so frequent review of security is necessary.

A Question and Answer forum, followed by excellent refreshments, concluded this event.

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Wednesday 9th August, 6:15 p.m.
200 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8XZ

This event was in association with ITN

Event review by Dalim Basu:

At this event, the attendees were given an ITN brochure '27 ways we deliver'. Three sections were headed 'Exceptional people', 'Continuous innovation' and 'Forward thinking'. During this event we were given insights into these and many other aspects of this leading news organisation.

From the time we entered the famous glass-fronted building with its vast and impressive central atrium (seen by millions of viewers as the background to innumerable TV news interviews), attendees commented on the dynamic "It's happening here and now" environment at ITN.

The presenter and main 'guide' for our exciting two hours at ITN was Keith Cass (Head of Communications and IT). Keith was helped by Ted Taylor (Director of Technology), Ian Auger and Lucy Avery.

Our event came at an exciting time for ITN - just after the launch of ITN's around-the-clock news channel, and the launch of ITN news services on Palm Pilots and Orange WAP phones.

But it wasn't always like this.... Keith and Ted took us back in time, recalling the 'clatter' of typewriters in the newsrooms even until the early 1980s.

Keith then took us fast-forward to see how the innovative use of IT and converging technologies have helped ITN to deliver deadline-driven newsroom scripting, production and archiving - both for TV and radio. And how in the demanding world of real-time news programming 100% reliability is required from its systems and communications networks. It's all high in this high-tech world - high-visibility, high-speed, high-volume, high quality - and of course high availability 24 hours a day!

Keith presented aspects of how ITN people use innovative IT systems to help meet these challenges. These systems include ENPS (Electronic News Production System) with a complex supporting network architecture.

ITN has even shown that old news is good news, with a major archive sales operation supported by IT search technology.

The presentations were supplemented by tours of ITN facilities, including newsrooms, studios, galleries and master control room. It all made for a very exciting and interesting - and all too brief - evening!

And finally... there's good news for the many people who did not succeed in getting one of the twenty places available for this event. Keith and Ted are happy to consider a 'repeat performance' - so watch out for next year's news!

This Event was Fully Booked.

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Wednesday 5th July, 6:30 p.m.
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, 130 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1V 8HH

This event was in association with Brokat and Nokia and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

Event review by John Ryan:

Continuing with the North London Branch’s very successful ‘Events on the theme of E’, this event focused on mobile aspects of E-Commerce. We looked at current and future uses of mobile commerce, along with some of the limitations faced when rolling out mobile services.

Andrew Steggles (Channel Marketing Manager of Nokia) talked about the drivers for mobile commerce. He felt that e-business would soon become as important as the creation of money, and the mobile phone in the near future would become an "electronic wallet".

Andrew showed statistics predicting that by 2003 more people would be accessing the web via portable handsets than personal computers.

Jeremy Daalder (Project Leader from Brokat) described the need for an e-services platform (middleware) that would act as the glue between the mobile device and the back office applications from which the mobile device obtained information. He explained how we could receive salary details and authorise payments from our phones. Jeremy also gave an example of how an online bank successfully launched their web site using Brokat’s Twister e-services product.

Stuart Clelland (Principal Consultant, Technology Management Group, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) talked about the mobile device becoming a "Mobile Point of Sale" MPOS, by allowing users to carry out transactions and receive information e.g. special offers on theatre tickets. Stuart also talked about some of the problems encountered by businesses when rolling out M-commerce services, including slow access speeds and incompatible applications being used for M-commerce services. He also showed a fascinating multimedia presentation of a WAP phone in operation.

It was interesting to see that only five of the 70 event attendees had WAP-enabled mobile phones with them. We believe the five have only as yet used their phones for voice calls and text messaging – we presume they are cost-conscious and/or responsible for paying their own bills!

Despite the fast growth and huge interest in WAP, to date this is obviously still an emerging technology – one with a great future!

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Wednesday 7th June, 6:30 p.m.
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, 130 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1V 8HH

This event was in association with Predictive and Shop Creator and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

Event review by Dalim Basu:

This was another very popular E-Business event, focusing on start-up needs for software tools, techniques and guidance.

When a small or medium-sized organisation decides it needs to get into e-business, build an e-commerce web-site, what can you do to make it happen? At this event, we considered this and related issues.

Our presenters were John Wright, Managing Director of network & communications specialist consultancy Predictive; Chris Champion, Marketing Director of award-winning web-site product manufacturer Shop Creator; and Stuart Curley, Technical Architect at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

As usual, many of the around 100 attendees stayed on long after the end of the event for drinks and informal discussions with presenters and others, getting the extra benefits of 'networking' which have become so much valued by people attending our events.

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Wednesday 17th May, 6:30 p.m.
London Business School, Sussex Place, Regent's Park, NW1 4SA

This event was in association with Microsoft.

Event review by Alastair Duggin:

Gurprit Singh, eSolutions Practice Manager, Microsoft Consulting Services, talked to 20 people after the AGM about Biztalk.

Gurprit started by stating the 21st century business imperatives :-

• Embrace the global marketplace.
• Reduce process cycle time
• Make better decisions faster
• Manage & share knowledge effectively
• Leverage dynamic business relationships

He then went through the history of data communications to show where the next generation of services, developed using the web, fits in. The next generation will use standard messages and XML. HTML provided presentation of web pages, whereas XML provides programmability of web services.

Electronic Data Interchange which requires the use of VANs has been used successfully in the past for business-to-business dealings, but was expensive, complex and had become the domain of larger enterprises.

Microsoft’s BizTalk is to "automate business process integration using Internet-standard protocols and formats". As an aside, Gurprit pointed out that investment in B2B was 5 times that in B2C and he expected this ratio to double.

The capabilities of the BizTalk Server were outlined :-

• Management of trading partner profile
• Integration, eg EDI interoperability
• Automated document interchange
• Rich management and analysis

Gurprit then outlined the status of the product today and some of the next steps in development.

Marks and Spencer was briefly outlined as a case study, where POS transactions were wrapped in XML forwarded via BizTalk server to CICS, S390 and NT services, the latter being for OLAP so that the company could find out much more rapidly what was selling around the chain of stores.

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Wednesday 12th April, 6:15 p.m.
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, 130 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1V 8HH

This event was in association with BCS BISSG.

Event review by Lyn Barkow:

Scott Singer, who is Head of IT Law at the law firm of Sinclair Roche and Temperley, managed to keep 30 overworked and exhausted people riveted to their seats from 6:30 to 9:00 pm with his presentation.

Scott managed to compress one day’s workshop into two and a half hours. He covered issues such as the protection of intellectual property (the only kind there is on the Internet!), outlining the various ways in which confidential information, trade marks, patents and business methods can be protected and made to grow. On contracts, he gave a detailed analysis of how best to shift the liability from the website to the user by carefully structuring the site and wording the contracts. On Data Protection, he discussed the new legislation and the implication of sharing personal data with countries abroad.

We did not have time to cover E-commerce and risk and look forward to inviting Scott back for the next season. We would advise you to book early because all those who were there the first time will certainly come back for more!

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Tuesday 21st March, 6:15 p.m.
Holborn Hotel, 50-60 Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AR

This event was in association with Unicom Seminars.

Event review by Dalim Basu:

The Unicom-run testing exhibition and drinks prior to the event provided interesting aperitifs for the enthusiastic audience of about 65 people who came to enjoy this well-attended event.

"Who's experienced problems when using a web-site?" asked our presenter. "In a recent survey, the answer was that everyone had!"

Our presenter was Paul Gerrard, Business Development Manager and Principal Consultant at software testing consultancy, Systeme Evolutif Ltd. Systeme Evolutif Ltd

Paul explored the reasons why Internet users may abandon an unsatisfactory web-site. Perhaps it was [1] difficult to use, [2] too slow to respond, [3] not trusted to be secure, [4] web pages broke, [5] did not process an order correctly? The problem in today's immature e-market, explained Paul, is that "speed to market comes first, quality may come second."

"A web-site is just like a retail store," explained Paul. "Anyone can come to browse, to buy. If your site gives good service, customers will come back again and again. They won't come back if the door is locked (e.g. if the site is down) or service is slow (poor performance)."

Unfortunately the risks can be high, as a web-site is also open to crooks and terrorists. Unlike 'traditional' product testing, for E-Business software testing, the risks of poor/missing/wrong functionality aren't necessarily the biggest issue. There are risks relating to new technology and to a potentially uncontrollable, infinite, unknown user base. Many of these risks are outside our control.

Corresponding to this shift in product risks for E-Business, our testing priorities differ from those of 'trad' testing. Functionality may not be the main issue, as web applications are not usually feature-rich.

Paul outlined e-testing processes, and introduced automated testing approaches and many useful types of web-testing tools.

Software testing is rarely considered an exciting topic. But Paul's enthusiasm, wealth of knowledge about his topic, interactive style and many useful tips made this fascinating event pass all too quickly!

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Wednesday 9th February, 6.30 p.m.
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, 130 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1V 8HH

This event was in association with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

Event review by Dalim Basu:

"What is the world coming to?" questioned our presenter Andy Mulholland, Chief Technical Director of Cap Gemini.

Andy guided us into the challenging new world where seemingly 'Everything starts with E', and 'there's gold in them thar hills...'

His fascinating and provocative introduction to the business and technology aspects of 'E' was welcomed by the 'full house' audience of about 150 people.

"We are what we buy!" proclaimed Andy. "Information is the new differentiator, and information is a competitive weapon!"

For example, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) will increasing be about "See me, recognise me, treat me the way I want to be treated". Andy felt that "we'll soon have digital profiles for our lifestyle, business and community." It's a very customer-focused world of choice, where successful products and services will need to be free (or the best value the customer can find), now (with very fast delivery/availability), and perfect - for the customer.

"Technology is giving us a business shift." explained Andy. "Email and the mobile phone have changed the way we communicate, and will change the way we do business - our business models." But even in the e-world not everything needs to change. There's room for both e-commerce and e-business. "E-Commerce is where you don't change your existing business model, but do introduce new e-processes. E-Business is a business which can only exist in the e-world."

"The barriers are overcome" in the new world of technology-initiated change. 'E' can "change markets and consumer expectations forever".

So what could 'E' mean for your business? Andy's advice was to the point. "Get the 'first mover' advantage. The best way to predict the future is to take part in inventing it"

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