Business Objects update adds stability, data source support

IDG News Service - SAP has unveiled a new version of its Business Objects BI (business intelligence) software suite that features support for more than 140 data sources and the promise of more stable deployments.

Business Objects 4.1, which was announced Monday, follows the 2011 release of version 4.0. That product slipped well past its original release date, but even with the additional time, many users reported stability issues.

"It wasn't where we wanted it to be," said Jason Rose, vice president of BI product marketing, in an interview. But in the intervening period, SAP made "some significant changes" in the Business Objects development organization with a focus on improving quality and stability, he said.

Along with a number of feature packs, those changes have helped increase customer satisfaction, Rose said.

Now SAP is hoping that with the arrival of 4.1, customers still running version 3.1 will make the leap and upgrade. Most of Business Objects' customers remain on earlier versions, with some 6,500 on 4.0, according to Rose.

New features in 4.1 include support for more than 140 data sources, including Amazon Web Services' Elastic MapReduce and Hadoop Hive. "We're really making the platform big data-ready," Rose said.

The release also brings new SDK (software development kits) and APIs (application programming interfaces) for partners, including one that allows them to create more advanced visualizations. "It's going to be huge for the partner community," Rose said.

Adoption of 4.1 may also be helped by a feature that supports the use of Desktop Intelligence, or DeskI, a popular tool among some users, but for which SAP is no longer providing new updates. While that policy remains in effect, release 4.1 of the Business Objects suite includes a Desktop Intelligence Compatibility Pack that allows users to view DeskI documents.

The update also features a range of improvements for viewing reports and dashboards on mobile devices; connectivity with SAP's HANA in-memory database; and integration with Jam, SAP's social collaboration software.

SAP is expected to discuss the Business Objects release further during the ASUG SAP Business Objects User conference this week in Anaheim, California.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Can BYOD lift the IT support burden?

Computerworld - BYOD is kaizen.

The three or four of you who completely understand what I just said will have to forgive me while I explain myself to the others.

You probably associate the concept of kaizen with the quality initiative known as continuous improvement, but the literal meaning of the Japanese word is "good change."

Computerworld - BYOD is kaizen.

The three or four of you who completely understand what I just said will have to forgive me while I explain myself to the others.

You probably associate the concept of kaizen with the quality initiative known as continuous improvement, but the literal meaning of the Japanese word is "good change."

And when I say that BYOD is kaizen, I mean that I see good change for IT. Yes, I know that a lot of people worry that letting employees use their own PCs and other devices at work will be a drag on IT because it will complicate support issues. But what I routinely see is companies taking solid steps away from IT support burdens with BYOD, making their organizations more efficient and employees more effective in the process.

This fits in beautifully with the kaizen concept. After all, Masaaki Imai, the father of kaizen, said, "You don't need to spend much money to improve something. Look around and your common sense will show you simple ways to rationalize your everyday work."

When it comes to BYOD rationalizing your everyday work, the first thing that's necessary is making sure that you have a clear understanding of what BYOD means for your organization and that everyone else is on the same page. Will you accommodate any version of Windows, plus the Mac OS, or can you narrow it down to, say, Windows 8 PCs and Macs? Spell it out.

Macs are a great place to start a BYOD initiative, though, because they're popular with employees and will let you test the limits of your dependencies on the Windows OS in your environment. Supporting Macs will force you to simplify and standardize the services people will access and can help jump-start new initiatives like moving to more cloud-based apps.

But just how broad should your commitment to support new platforms be? For IT to benefit from BYOD, it has to limit its own involvement in support. It's critical that IT think through the boundaries for the BYOD program, and once they are set everyone in the organization must understand exactly what the limits are. For example, you'll want to consider these things:

What will employees be responsible for? At the start of your BYOD program, the technical orientation of participants needs to be pretty strong -- at least until the tracks are well worn and you amass enough internal experience and stored knowledge in a place where others can find it, and acquire technology capabilities to efficiently expand the program. Make the lines of responsibility as clear as you can. For example, IT might decide to provide advice and guidance for setting up access to the corporate email system, the secure access gateway, remote desktop services and similar things, but it should not be on the hook for supporting an employee's computer itself or the OS and applications installed on it.

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10 security tips for customer support and service

CSO - What every company hopes dearly to avoid is the customer facing security incidents especially those involving compromise of customer information. While the issues related to retail customer information usually get primetime coverage, there is also the significant issue of B2B interactions with our corporate customers and partners.

Companies involved with software and system delivery projects often require customer service, sales and support staff to be deeply engaged with the customers. Often a single employee maybe dealing with multiple customers.

It is quite possible in this situation for an employee to accidentally send email with information for customer A to customer B. We're human, mistakes will happen. In my experience the more we can move to secure systems and processes, the less we need to depend on the busy employee to not make an honest mistake.

Below are top 10 tips for security organizations to implement for their support and services delivery organizations:

Move customer information out of email or local storage

Customer information should be maintained in a separate access controlled system with regular security reviews of access and usage. Customer passwords, account information etc should not be sitting in personal email accounts which can be compromised or accidentally mis-directed.

Strongly discourage storage of company data on personal accounts on public cloud systems. This cloud storage also exposes the company to high risk when such systems are hacked or compromised as in the case of Evernote earlier this year

Clearly separate out internal versus external customer content very explicitly

If you have to keep customer data in email or other local systems, and then make sure you put in as much system controls as possible to prevent accidental disclosure. If you are working on a customer issue that has an internal company thread, create separate folders for all customer communication and another separate folder for the internal thread. These separate folders ensures that you do not accidentally forward an internal thread to the customer. Mark all internal threads as 'INTERNAL'

Keep an eye on the training material and process

Employees will often create ad hoc material for one off training and sometimes will include customer data in this training material. Be very clear that no customer information is to be moved into training material at any time. Do not copy customer data into non-protected locations, spreadsheets or documents for training or other purposes. This information can be accidentally distributed to unauthorized recipients

Watch the new hires

New hires especially project managers or customer representatives may not fully get the implications of a data disclosure. They may not have enough time to understand the details of the systems before their first customer interaction, Make sure they get adequate new hire training on information security processes and data disclosure implications.

Follow a double check process

Ask employees to follow a 'double-check' process with customer communication. Every employee should check and check again all outgoing communication to the customer prior to sending. Verify that there is no confidential information going through.

Follow a simple data classification process

Mark email or documents as confidential when needed. This adds an additional layer of review.

Guard the customer data closely, even from the customer

Do not communicate customer login and password information via email to anyone including the customer. Customer staff or contractors may not be authorized to have the information/access level. Provide information based on the account setting only.

Be careful about what you sign and agree to with the customer

Do not sign any NDAs or security agreements without the approval of the Legal team

Change Customer system with caution

Some of our teams have actual access to customer systems to troubleshoot. Do not change settings or data on a customer system without communication in writing and (preferably) a backup

Encrypt hard drives

All Support and services staff should have encrypted hard drives whether they be USB sticks or laptop hard drives. Encryption reduces the risk of disclosure when the drive is lost.

George Viegas, CISSP, CISA is Director of Information Security at a leading multinational information and media company based in Los Angeles.

This story is reprinted from CSO Online.com, an online resource for information executives. Story Copyright CXO Media Inc., 2006. All rights reserved.

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