Thursday, February 20, 2014

Istanbul-based Finansbank Manages Risk and Security Using HP ArcSight, Server Automation

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast on how a large Turkish bank uses HP server tools for rapid applications deployment while ensuring heightened security.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the HP Discover Podcast Series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing sponsored discussion on IT innovation and how it’s making an impact on people’s lives.

Gardner
Once again, we’re focusing on how companies are adapting to the new style of IT to improve IT performance and deliver better user experiences, and business results. This time, we’re coming to you directly from the HP Discover 2013 Conference in Barcelona.

We’re here the week of December 9 to learn directly from IT and business leaders alike how big data, mobile, and cloud, along with converged infrastructure are all supporting their goals.

Our next innovation case study interview focuses on Finansbank, an Istanbul-based bank, and how they better manage risk. To learn how, we’re joined by Ugur Yayvak, Senior Designer of Infrastructure at Finansbank in Istanbul. Welcome.

Ugur Yayvak: Thank you.

Gardner: Tell us a bit about your organization and how you're operating in terms of keeping compliance and risk issues in check?

Yayvak
Yayvak: Finansbank is one of the largest banks in Turkey and it has more than 12,000 employees and 600 branches in the country. Banking is a competitive world in Turkey, and for compliance we have to be rapid. We have to do things faster. And security is a big deal for us.

Gardner: And what sort of challenges have you had in terms of managing your systems in order to keep up with their compliance and regulatory issues and needs?

Yayvak: Because we’re a bank, we need to obey the payment-card industry (PCI) and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) rules. To accomplish this, we had to create some scripts to check the data on the servers. It takes lots of time to do compliance reporting. Security is a must for the servers, because of attacks. We need to be compliant and secure and we need to move fast on the server side.

Gardner: And so as you began to look for solutions to these problems, how did you come up with a solution? Where did you go for help?

Compliance and integrity

Yayvak: First of all, we needed a compliance and integrity-check solution. We did a proof of concept (POC) with three different vendors and we checked for performance, compliance, tool support, ease of use, reporting tools, and the support that the vendor would give us. After all that, we chose HP Server Automation.

Gardner: Tell us a little bit about that process. How long have you been using HP Server Automation software?

Yayvak: We’ve been using it for six months. Three months was for the implementation process, but during implementation, we created our first rules. We did some basic agent rollouts on the servers. Now, we have 90 percent coverage on all of our UNIX servers on the Server Automation site.

Gardner: Have you been experimenting with other HP products, perhaps something around service management for ongoing operations?

Yayvak: We’re using Service Management and also the ArcSight tool. We integrated Server Automation with the Service Management, ArcSight, and also Operations Orchestration to do our jobs in less time.

Gardner: What have been some of the results that you’ve seen since you've been implementing these solutions? What have you been gaining in terms of better control and how are your auditors viewing this rollout?
With the help of the Server Automation, it’s very simple and we can get the results in much less  time.

Yayvak: We’re creating monthly reports for our audit teams, and it takes less time. With the help of Server Automation, we’ve scheduled our jobs and the audit rules and reports that we want to share with our audit teams.

It takes much less time than it did before. Also, with the help of the scripts, the daily system administration tasks are very easy. Previously, we were doing everything by hand. With the help of the Server Automation, it’s very simple and we can get the results in much less  time.

Gardner: As you gain more automation for your configuration and your servers, does that offer you some advantage if should you choose to migrate to a new platform or even to a different type of hosting environment?

If there is an opportunity to take this beyond just operations into transformation, should you want to move your servers to a co-lo or a managed service provider or even a cloud provider?

Yayvak: We don’t have a plan, but maybe after using this product, we might.

Looking to the future

Gardner: What about the future? Do you have plans to move further, perhaps using ArcSight? Are there other security benefits that you have in mind?

Yayvak: One is to improve audit server automation, because there are some scripts that we’ve changed. Those changes that we’ve done on the servers must be audited. We also want to integrate Server Automation with ArcSight to track the changes that we’ve made. And if we’ve made an error, we will be alerted by the ArcSight server.

Gardner: Because you’re such a large organization with many branch offices, is there full centralization? Is this all happening in one data center or are you able to use this across a wider distribution?

Yayvak: Right now, we’re using our central data center, and also the disaster recovery site. But maybe later on, we can implement this for the branches to take care of the data servers there.

Gardner: That usually means some significant cost savings.

Yayvak: For sure.
We need to be compliant and secure and we need to move fast on the server side.

Gardner: Okay, is there anything here at the Discover show in Barcelona that is intriguing to you? What announcements or advances in the products capture your interest?

Yayvak: The new version of Server Automation came out this year, and we wanted to know what has changed. Also Finansbank will use lots of HP's products like Service Manager, Orchestration Manager, Operations Manager. This event was a good place to learn what has changed across these services.

Gardner: Well great. I’m afraid we'll leave it there. We’ve been talking about how Finansbank in Istanbul has been improving their server automation and bringing a better compliance and audit capability as a result. I'd like to thank our guest, Ugur Yayvak, Senior Designer of Infrastructure at Finansbank.

I'd also like to thank our audience as well for joining us for this special new style of IT discussion coming to you directly from the HP Discover 2013 Conference in Barcelona.

I'm Dana Gardner; Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of HP sponsored discussions. Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast on how a large Turkish bank uses HP server tools for rapid applications deployment while ensuring heightened security. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2014. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, February 04, 2014

HP Service Virtualization Eases Developer and Operations Lifecycle Support for Shunra Software

Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on the benefits to software development from greater use of service and network virtualization.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the HP Discover Podcast Series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing sponsored discussion on IT innovation and how it’s making an impact on people’s lives.

Gardner
Once again, we’re focusing on how companies are adapting to the new style of IT to improve IT performance, deliver better user experiences, and boost business results. This time, we’re coming to you directly from the recent HP Discover 2013 Conference in Barcelona.

We’re here to learn directly from IT and business leaders alike how big data, mobile, and cloud -- along with converged infrastructure -- are supporting their goals in new and interesting ways.

Our next innovation case study highlights how Shunra Software uses service virtualization to help its developer users to improve the distribution, creation, and lifecycle of software applications. To learn how, we're joined by Todd DeCapua, Vice President of Channel Operations and Services at Shunra Software, based in Philadelphia. Welcome, Todd.

Todd DeCapua: Thank you, Dana. It's great to be here with you.

Gardner: Let's think a little bit about this market. There are a lot of trends affecting software developers. They have mobile on their minds. They have time constraints issues. They have to be faster, better, and cheaper along the apps lifecycle way. What among the trends is most important for developers?

DeCapua
DeCapua: One of the biggest ones -- especially around innovation and thinking about results, specifically business results -- is Agile. Agile development is something that, fortunately, we've had an opportunity to work with quite a bit. Our capabilities are all structured around not only what you talked about with cloud and mobile, but we look at things like the speed, the quality, and ultimately the value to the customers.

We’re really focusing on these business results, which sometimes get lost, but I try to always go back to them. We need to focus on what's important to the business, what's important to the customer, and then maybe what's important to IT. How does all that circle around to value?

Gardner: With mobile we have many more networks, and people are grasping at how to attain quality before actually getting into production. How does service virtualization come to bear on that?

Distributed devices

DeCapua: As you look at almost every organization today, something is distributed. Their customers might be on mobile devices out in the real world, and so are distributed. They might be working remotely from home. They might have a distribution center or a truck that has a mobile device on it.

There are all these different pieces. You’re right. Network is a significant part that unfortunately many organizations have failed to notice and failed to consider, as they do any type of testing.

Network virtualization gives you that capability. Where service virtualization comes into play is looking at things like speed and quality. What if the services are not available? Service virtualization allows you to then make them available to your developers.

In the early stage, where Shunra has been able to really play a huge difference in these organizations is by bringing network virtualization in with service virtualization. We’re able to recreate their production environments with 100 percent scale -- all prior to production.

Getting back to the idea of innovation, some people are seeing these as innovations of a test environment. When we think about the value to the business, now you’re able to deliver the product working. So, it is about the speed to market, quality of product, and ultimately value to your customer and to your business.

Gardner: And another constituency that we should keep in mind are those all-important operators. They’re also dealing with a lot of moving parts these days -- transformation, modernization, and picking and choosing different ways to host their data centers. How do they fit into this and how does service virtualization cut across that continuum to improve the lives of operators?
Service virtualization and network virtualization can benefit them is by being able to recreate these scenarios.

DeCapua: You’re right, because as the delivery has sped up through things like Agile, it's your operations team that is sitting there and ultimately has to be the owners of these applications. Service virtualization and network virtualization can benefit them by being able to recreate these in-production scenarios.

Unfortunately, there are still some reactive actions required in production today, so you’re going to have a production incident. But, you can now understand the network in production, capture those conditions, and recreate that in the test environment. You can also do the same for the services.

We now have the ability to quickly and easily recreate a production incident in a prior-to-production environment. The operations team can be part of the team that's fixing it, because again, the ultimate question from CIOs is, “How can you make sure this never happens again?”

We now have the way to quickly and confidently recreate incidents and fix it the first time, not having to change code in production, on the fly. That is one of the scariest moments in any of the times when I've been at the customer site or when I was an employee and had to watch that happen.

Agile iterations

Gardner: As you mentioned earlier, with Agile, we’re seeing many more iterations on applications as they need to be rapidly improved or changed. How does service and network virtualization aid in being able to produce many more iterations of an application, but still maintain that high quality?

DeCapua: One of our customers actually told us that -- prior to leveraging network virtualization with service virtualization -- he was doing 80 percent of his testing in-production, simply because he knew the shortcomings, and he needed to test it, but he had no way of re-creating it. Now, let's think about Agile. Let's think about how we shift and get the proven enterprise tools in the developer’s hands sooner, more often, so that we can drive quality early in the process.

That's where these two components play a critical role. As you look at it more specifically and go just a hair deeper, how in integrated environments can you provide continuous development and continuous deployment? And with all that automated testing that you’re already doing, how you can incorporate performance into that? Or, as I call it, how do you “build performance in” from the beginning?

As a business person, a developer, a business analyst, or a Scrum Master, how is it that you’re building performance into your user scenarios today? How is it that you’re setting them up for understanding how that feature or function is going to perform? Let's think about it as we’re creating, not once we get two or three sprints into use and we have our hardening sprint, where we’re going to run our performance scenario. Let's do it early, and let's do it often.
Get the proven enterprise tools in the developer’s hands sooner, more often, so that we can drive quality early in the process.

Gardner: If we’re really lucky, we can control the world and the environment that we live in, but more often than not these days, we’re dealing with third-party application programming interfaces (APIs). We’re dealing with outside web services. We have organizational boundaries that are being crossed, but things are happening across that boundary that we can't control.

So, is there a benefit here, too, when we’re dealing with composite applications, where elements of that mixed service character are not available for your insight, but that you need to be able to anticipate and then react quickly should a change occur?

DeCapua: I can't agree with you more. It’s funny, I am kind of laughing here, Dana, because this morning I was riding the metro in Barcelona and before I got to the stop here, I looked down to my phone, because I was expecting a critical email to come in. Lo and behold, my phone pops up a message and says, “We’re sorry, service is unavailable.”

I could clearly see that I had one out of five bars on the Orange network, and I was on the EDGE network. So, it was about a 2.5G connection. I should still have been able to get data, but my phone simply popped up and said, “Sorry, cannot retrieve email because of a poor data connection.”

I started thinking about it some more, and as I was engaging with other folks today at the show, I asked them why is it that the developer of the application found it necessary to alert me three times in a row that it couldn’t get my email because of a poor data connection? Why didn’t it just not wait 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds until it did, and then have it reach out and query it again and pull the data down?

Changing conditions

This is just one very simple example that I had this morning. And you’re right, there are constantly changing conditions in the world. Bandwidth, latency, packet loss and jitter are those conditions that we’re all exposed to every day. If you’re in a BMW driving down the road at 100 miles per hour, that car is now a mobile phone or a mobile device on wheels, constantly in communication. Or if you’re riding the metro or the tube and you have your mobile device on your hands, there are constantly changing conditions.

Network virtualization and service virtualization give you the ability to recreate those scenarios so that you can build that type of resiliency into your applications and, ultimately, the customers have the experience that you want them to have.

Gardner: Todd, tell us a bit about Shunra and your application-performance engineering solutions?

DeCapua: So, application performance engineering (APE) is something that was created within the industry over a number of years. It's meant to be a methodology and an approach. Shunra plays a role in that.

A lot of people had thought about it as testing. Then people thought about it as performance testing. At the next level, many of us in the industry have defined it is application engineering. It’s a lot more than just that, because you need to dive behind the application and understand the in’s and the out’s. How does everything tie together?
Understanding APE will help you to reduce those types of production incidents.

You’d mentioned some of the composite applications and the complexities there -- and I’m including the endpoints or the devices or mobile devices connecting through it. Now, you introduce cloud into the equation, and it gets 10 times worse.

Thinking about APE, it's more of an art and a skill. There is a science behind it. However, having that APE background knowledge and experience gives you the ability to go into these composite apps, go into these cloud deployments, and leverage the right tools and the right process to be able to quickly understand and optimize the solutions.

Gardner: It's fairly obvious to me, but I do get this question from time to time. Why aren’t the older scripting and test-bed approaches to quality control good enough? Why can't we keep doing what we've been doing?

DeCapua: This question is very often asked of me, too. In the United States recently, October 1 of 2013, there was a large healthcare system being rolled out across the country. Unfortunately, they used the old testing methodologies and have had some significant challenges. HP and Shunra were both engaged on October 2 to assist.

Understanding APE will help you to reduce those types of production incidents. All due to inaccurate results in the test environment, using the current methodologies, about 50 percent of our customers come to us in a crisis mode. They say, “We just had this issue, I know that you told us this is going to happen, but we really need your help now.”

They’re also thinking about how to shift and how to build performance in all these components -- just have it built in, have it be automatic, and get the results that are accurate.

Coming together

Gardner: Of course HP has service virtualization, you have network virtualization. How are they coming together? Explain the relationship and how Shunra and HP together go to market?

DeCapua: To many people's surprise, this relationship is more than a decade old. Shunra’s network-virtualization capability has, for a long time, been built in to HP LoadRunner, also is now being built into HP Performance Center.

There are other capabilities that we have that are built into their Unified Functional Testing (UFT) products. In addition, within service virtualization, we’re now building that product into there. It’s one that, when you think about anything that has some sort of distribution or network involved, network virtualization needs to come into play.

Some people have a hard time initially understanding the service virtualization need, but a very simple example I often use is an organization like a bank. They’ll have a credit check as you’re applying for a loan. That credit check is not going to be a service that the bank creates. They’re going to outsource it to one of the many credit-check services. There is a network involved there.

In your test environment, you need to recreate that and take that into consideration as a part of your end-to-end testing, whether it's functional, performance, or load. It doesn’t matter.
In your test environment, you need to recreate that and take that into consideration as a part of your end-to-end testing, whether it's functional, performance, or load.

As we think about Shunra, network virtualization and the very tight partnership that we've had with HP for service virtualization, as well as their ability to virtualize the users, it's been an OEM relationship. Our R and D teams sit together as they’re doing the development so that this is a seamless product for the HP customer to be able to get the benefit and value for their business and for their customers.

Gardner: Let's talk a little bit about what you get when you do this right. It seems to me the obvious point is getting to the problem sooner, before you’re in production, extending across network variables, across other composite application-type variables. But, I’m going to guess that there are some other benefits that we haven't yet hit on.

So, when you've set up you're testing, when you have virtualization as your tool, what happens in terms of paybacks? Not just the obvious ones, but it seems to me that this becomes a strategic benefit, influencing your business in terms of your overall performance, not just your application's performance.

DeCapua: There are many benefits there, which we have already covered. There are dozens more that we could get into. One that I would highlight, being able to pull all the different pieces that we've been talking about, are shorter release times.

TechValidate did a survey in February of 2013. The findings were very compelling in that they found a global bank was able to speed up their deployment or application delivery by 30 to 40 percent. What does that mean for that organization as compared to their competitor? If you can get to market 30 to 40 percent faster, it means millions or billions of dollars over time. Talk about numbers of customers or brands, it's a significant play there.

Rapid deployment

There are other things like rapid deployment. As we think about Agile and mobile, it's all about how fast we get this feature function out, leveraging service virtualization in a greater way, and reducing associated costs.

In the example that I shared, the customer was able to virtualize the users, virtualize the network, and virtualize the services. Prior to that, he would never have been able to justify the cost of rebuilding a production environment for test. Through user virtualization, network virtualization, and service virtualization, he was able to get to 100 percent at a fraction of the cost.

Time and time again we mention automation. This is a key piece of how you can test early, test often, ultimately driving these accurate results and getting to the automated optimization recommendations.

Gardner: How about getting started for organizations that have been doing traditional testing? Perhaps they’ve been using some HP products but they’ve been resisting going the full service virtualization monty, if you will. Any suggestions about skills, organization, how do you get started?
Let's start with that small scale, doing it right, and delivering that speed, quality, and value.

DeCapua: The most fun piece for me is that you actually need to do something. I can't tell you how many times I get started, and people say, “Yeah, this is a great idea. Yeah, it's wonderful.” They walk out of one of the session at HP Discover and they say, “Yes, I love it. Yeah, I've got my next three things that I need to do.”

It’s more than a tool. It’s really about the people. How is it that you can get this vision? Maybe it starts with one simple business case. Let's go through what that business case is to help me to understand what's the value to your organization. Can we calculate out some return on investment (ROI)? Can we get to what is the break-even point of this investment?

I hate to start talking about business and I hate to start talking about metrics. But as we look at the history of innovation, or what it means with the new style of IT, being able to improve IT performance, delivering the better user experience, and ultimately, who is paying the bill -- it's the business. So, if we can't deliver better business results, this is all for naught.

To get started, there are a number of different pieces that I recommend. But rather than create this huge strategy and everything else, what I would recommend doing is -- I hate to use the term “minimum viable product,” but really that's what I hear when I am in the smaller startup organizations.

It's, “What is that minimum viable product? How can we deliver the most value with the least investment in the shorter period of time, show that incremental value, and then start expanding it more?” It could be expanding it to other teams. It could be expanding it into the other business units, and then it could be going to the entire enterprise. But, let's start with that small scale, doing it right, and delivering that speed, quality, and value.

Gardner: Before we wrap it up, I’d like to just look a bit into the future. Things have been moving so rapidly. What comes next in terms of software productivity? Where should organizations be thinking in terms of vision?

Slow down

DeCapua: I see Agile, mobile, and cloud. There are some significant risks out in the marketplace today. As organizations look to leverage these capabilities to benefit their business and the customers, maybe they need to just slow down for a moment and not create this huge strategy, but go after “How can I increase my revenue stream by 20 percent in the next 90 days?” Another one that I've had great success with is, “What is that highest visibility, highest risk project that you have in your organization today?”

As I look at The Wall Street Journal, and I read the headlines everyday, it's scary. But, what's coming in the future? We can all look into our crystal balls and say that this is what it is. Why not focus on one or two small things of what we have now, and think about how we’re mitigating our risk of  looking at larger organizations that are making commitments to migrate critical applications into the cloud?

You’re biting off a fairly significant risk, which that there isn’t a lot there to catch you when you do it wrong, and, quite frankly, nearly everybody is doing it wrong. What if we start small and find a way to leverage some of these new capabilities? We can actually do it right, and then start to realize some of the benefits from cloud, mobile, and other channels that your organization is looking to.

Gardner: I guess, too, the role of software keeps increasing in many organizations. It's not a tool. It's becoming the business itself and, as a fundamental part of the business, requires lots of tender love and care, right?
The more that we can think about that and tune ourselves and make ourselves lean and focused on delivering better quality products, we’re going to be in the winning circle more often.

DeCapua: You got it. The only other bit that I would add on to that is looking at the World Quality Report that was presented this morning by HP, Capgemini, and Sogeti, they highlighted that there is an increased spend from the IT budget, and a rather significant increase in spend from last year in testing.

It’s exactly what you’re saying. Organizations didn’t enter the market thinking of themselves as a software house. But time and time again, we’re seeing how people who treat what they do as a software house ultimately is improving not only life for their internal customers, but also their external customers.

So I think you’re right. The more that we can think about that and tune ourselves and make ourselves lean and focused on delivering better quality software products, we’re going to be in the winning circle more often.

Gardner: Well, very good. I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We’ve been learning about how Shunra Software is improving its network virtualization and service virtualization in partnership with HP for overall improved software-development quality. Please join me in thanking our guest Todd DeCapua, Vice President of Channel Operations and Services at Shunra Software. Thank you, Todd.

DeCapua: Thank you very much, Dana. I appreciate the opportunity, and thank you all.

Gardner: Yes, thanks to our audience for joining the special discussion coming to you from the HP Discover 2013 Conference in Barcelona. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this on-going series of HP-sponsored discussions. Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on the benefits to software development from service and network virtualization. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2014. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Healthcare Among Thorniest and Yet Most Opportunistic Use Cases for Boundaryless Information Flow Improvement

Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how The Open Group is addressing the information needs and challenges in the healthcare ecosystem.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: The Open Group.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a special BriefingsDirect panel discussion coming to you in conjunction with The Open Group Conference on February 3 in San Francisco.

Gardner
I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator as we examine how the healthcare industry can benefit from improved and methodological information flow.

Healthcare, like no other sector of the economy, exemplifies the challenges and the opportunity for improving how the various participants in a complex ecosystem interact. The Open Group, at its next North American conference, has made improved information flow across so-called boundaryless organizations the theme of its gathering of IT leaders, enterprise architects, and standards developers and implementers.

Join us now, as we explore what it takes to bring rigorous interactions, process efficiency, and governance to data and workflows that must extend across many healthcare participants with speed and dependability.

Learn how improved cross-organization collaboration plays a huge part in helping to make healthcare more responsive, effective, safe, and cost-efficient. And also become acquainted with what The Open Group’s new Healthcare Industry Forum is doing to improve the situation.

With that, please join me in welcoming our guests, Larry Schmidt, the Chief Technologist at HP for the America’s Health and Life Sciences Industries, as well as the Chairman of The Open Group Healthcare Industry Forum. Welcome, Larry. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts. The views of the panelists are theirs alone and not necessarily those of their employers.]

Larry Schmidt: Thank you.

Gardner: We’re also here with Eric Stephens, an Oracle Enterprise Architect. Welcome, Eric.

Eric Stephens: Thank you, Dana.

Gardner: Gentlemen, we have you both here because you are going to be at The Open Group Conference in February in San Francisco. We want to get into this new Healthcare Forum, but before we get into the particulars of what we can do to help the healthcare situation, let’s try to define a little bit better the state of affairs. [Register for the event here.]

So first to you, Larry. Why is healthcare such a tough nut to crack when it comes to this information flow? Is there something unique about healthcare that we don't necessarily find in other vertical industries?

Schmidt: What’s unique about healthcare right now is that in order to answer the question we have to go back to some of the challenges we’ve seen in healthcare.

We’ve progressed in healthcare from a healthcare delivery model that was more based on acute care -- that is, I get sick, I go to the doctor -- to more of a managed-care type capability with the healthcare delivery, where a doctor at times is watching and trying to coach you. Now, we’ve gotten to where the individual is in charge of their own healthcare.

A lot of fragmentation

With that, the ecosystem around healthcare has not had the opportunity to focus the overall interactions based on the individual. So we see an awful lot of fragmentation occurring. There are many great standards across the powers that exist within the ecosystem, but if you take the individual and place that individual in the center of this universe, the whole information model changes.

Then, of course, there are other things, such as technology advances, personal biometric devices, and things like that that come into play and allow us to be much more effective with information that can be captured for healthcare. As a result, it’s the change with the focus on the individual that is allowing us the opportunity to redefine how information should flow across the healthcare ecosystem.

Gardner: So I guess it’s interesting, Larry, that the individual is at the center or hub of this ongoing moving ecosystem with many spokes, if you will. Is that a characterization, or is there no hub and that’s perhaps one of the challenges for this?

Schmidt: What you said first is a good way to categorize it. The scenario of the individual being more in charge of their healthcare -- care of their health would be a better way to think of this -- is a way to see both improvements in the information flow  as well as making improvements in the overall cost of healthcare going forward.

Schmidt
As I offered earlier, because the ecosystem had pretty much been focused around the doctor's visit, or the doctor’s work with an individual, as opposed to the individual’s work with the doctor. We see tremendous opportunity in making advancements in the communications models that can occur across healthcare.

Gardner: Larry, is this specific to the United States or North America, is this global in nature, or is it very much a mixed bag, market to market as to how the challenges have mounted?

Schmidt: I think in any country, across the world, the individual being the focus of the ecosystem goes across the boundaries of countries. Of course, The Open Group is responsible and is a worldwide standards body. As a result of that, it's a great match for us to be able to focus the healthcare ecosystem to the individual and use the capabilities of The Open Group to be able to make advances in the communication models across all countries around healthcare.

Gardner: Eric, thinking about this from a technological point of view, as an enterprise architect, we’re now dealing with this hub and spoke with the patient at the middle. A lot of this does have to do with information, data, and workflow, but we’ve dealt with these things before in many instances in the enterprise and in IT.

Is there anything particular about the technology that is difficult for healthcare, or is this really more a function of the healthcare verticals and the technology is really ready to step up to the plate?

Information transparency

Stephens: Well, Dana, the technology is there and it is ready to step up to the plate. I’ll start with transparency of the information. Let’s pick a favorite poster child, Amazon. In terms of the detail that's available on my account. I can look at past orders. I can look up and see the cost of services, I can track activity that's taking place, both from a purchase and a return standpoint. That level of visibility that you’re alluding to exists. The technology is there, and it’s a matter of applying it.

Stephens
As to why it's not being applied in a rapid fashion in the healthcare industry, we could surmise a number of reasons. One of them is potentially around the cacophony of standards that exist and the lack of a “Rosetta Stone” that links those standards together to maximum interoperability.

The other challenge that exists is simply the focus in healthcare around the healthcare technology that’s being used, the surgical instruments, the diagnostic tools, and such. There is focus and great innovation there, but when it comes to the plumbing of IT, oftentimes that will suffer.

Gardner: So we have some hurdles on a number of fronts, but not necessarily the technology itself. This is a perfect case study for this concept of the boundaryless information flow, which is really the main theme of The Open Group Conference coming up on February 3. [Register for the event here.]

Back to you, Larry, on this boundaryless issue. There are standards in place in other industries that help foster a supply-chain ecosystem or a community of partners that work together.

Is that what The Open Group is seeking? Are they going to take what they’ve done in other industries for standardization and apply it to healthcare, or do you perhaps need to start from scratch? Is this such a unique challenge that you can't simply retrofit other standardization activities? How do you approach something like healthcare from a standards perspective?
I think it's a great term to reflect the vast number of stakeholders that would exist across the healthcare ecosystem.

Schmidt: The first thing we have to do is gain an appreciation for the stakeholders that interact. We’re using the term “ecosystem” here. I think it's a great term to reflect the vast number of stakeholders that would exist across the healthcare ecosystem. Anywhere from the patient, to the doctor, to payment organization for paying claims, the life sciences organizations, for pharmaceuticals, and things like that, there are so many places that stakeholders can interact seamlessly.

So it’s being able to use The Open Group’s assets to first understand what the ecosystem can be, and then secondly, use The Open Group’s capabilities around things like security, TOGAF from an architecture methodology, enablement and so on. Those assets are things that we can leverage to allow us to be able to use the tools of The Open Group to make advances within the healthcare industry.

It’s an amazing challenge, but you have to take it one step at a time, and the first step is going to be that definition of the ecosystem.

Gardner: I suppose there’s no better place to go for teasing out what the issues are and what the right prioritization should be than to go to the actual participants. The Open Group did just that last summer in Philadelphia at their earlier North American conference. They had some 60 individuals representing primary stakeholders in healthcare in the same room and they conducted some surveys.

Larry, maybe you can provide us an overview of what they found and how that’s been a guide to how to proceed?

Participant survey

Schmidt: What we wanted to do was present the concept of boundaryless information flow across the healthcare ecosystem. So we surveyed the participants that were part of the conference itself. One of the questions we asked was about the healthcare quality of data, as well as the efficiency and the effectiveness of data. Specifically, the polling questions, were designed to gauge the state of healthcare data quality and effective information flow.

We understood that 86 percent of those participants felt very uncomfortable with the quality of healthcare information flows, and 91 percent of the participants felt very uncomfortable with the efficiency of healthcare information flows.

In the discussion in Philadelphia, we talked about why information isn’t flowing much more easily and freely within this ecosystem. We discovered that a lot of the standards that currently exist within the ecosystem are very much tower-oriented. That is, they only handle a portion of the ecosystem, and the interoperability across those standards is an area that needs to be focused on.

But we do think that, because the individual should be placed into the center of the ecosystem, there's new ground that will come into play. Our Philadelphia participants actually confirmed that, as we were working through our workshop. That was one of the big, big findings that we had in the Philadelphia conference.
We understood that 86 percent of those participants felt very uncomfortable with the quality of healthcare information flows.

Gardner: Just so our audience understands, the resulting work that’s been going on for months now will culminate with the Healthcare Industry Forum being officially announced and open for business,, beginning with the San Francisco Conference. [Register for the event here.]

Tell us a little about how the mission statement for the Healthcare Industry Forum was influenced by your survey. Is there other information, perhaps a white paper or other collateral out there, that people can look to, to either learn more about this or maybe even take part in it?

Schmidt: We presented first a vision statement around boundaryless information flow. I’ll go ahead and just offer that to the team here. Boundaryless information flow of healthcare data is enabled throughout a complete healthcare ecosystem to standardization of both vocabulary and messaging that is understood by all participants within the system. This results in higher quality outcomes, streamlined business processes, reduction of fraud, and innovation enablement.

When we presented that in the conference, there was big consensus among the participants around that statement and buy in to the idea that we want that as our vision for a Healthcare Forum to actually occur.

Since then, of course, we’ve published this white paper that is the findings of the Philadelphia Conference. We’re working towards the production of a treatise, which is really the study of the problem domain that we believe we can be successful in. We also can make a major impact around this individual communication flow, enabling individuals to be in charge of more of their healthcare.

Our mission will be to provide the means to enable boundaryless information flow across the ecosystem. What we’re trying to do is make sure that we work in concert with other standards bodies to recognize the great work that’s happening around this tower concept that we believe is a boundary within the ecosystem.

Additional standards

Hopefully, we’ll get to a point where we’re able to collaborate, both with those standards bodies, as well as work within our own means to come up with additional standards that allows us to make this communication flow seamless or boundaryless.

Gardner: Eric Stephens, back to you with the enterprise architect questions. Of course, it’s important to solve the Tower of Babel issues around taxonomy, definitions, and vocabulary, but I suppose there is also a methodology issue.

Frameworks have worked quite well in enterprise architecture and in other verticals and in the IT organizations and enterprises. Is there something from your vantage point as an enterprise architect that needs to be included in this vision, perhaps looking to the next steps after you’ve gotten some of the taxonomy and definitions worked out?

Stephens: Dana, in terms of working through the taxonomies and such, as an enterprise architect, I view it as part of a larger activity around going through a process, like the TOGAF methodology, it’s architecture development methodology.
In the healthcare landscape, and in other industries, there are a lot of players coming to the table and need to interact.

By doing so, using a tailored version of that, we’ll get to that taxonomy definition and the alignment of standards and such. But there's also the addressing alignment and business processes and other application components that comes into play. That’s going to drive us towards improving the viscosity of the information, that's moving both within an enterprise and outside of the enterprise.

In the healthcare landscape, and in other industries, there are a lot of players coming to the table and need to interact, especially if you are talking about a complex episode of care. You may have two, three, or four different organizations in play. You have labs, the doctors, specialized centers, and such, and all that requires information flow.

Coming back to the methodology, I think it’s bringing to bear an architecture methodology like provided in TOGAF. It’s going to aid individuals in getting a broad picture, and also a detailed picture, of what needs to be done in order to achieve this goal of boundaryless information flow.

Gardner: I suppose, gentlemen, that we should also recognize that we are going about this in the larger context of change in the IT and business landscapes. We’re seeing many more mobile devices. We’re probably going to see patients accessing more information that we have been discussing through some sort of a mobile device, which is good news, because more and more patients and their providers can access information regardless of where they are. So mobility, I think, is a fairly important accelerant to some of this.

And, of course, there’s big data, the ability to take reams and reams of information, deal with it rapidly, analyze it in near real-time and then scale accordingly for cost issues. It’s also another big thing.

Larger context

So let’s just quickly step aside from the forum activities and look at how the larger context of change is perhaps fortuitously timed for what we we’d like to do in terms of transformation around healthcare. Let me first direct that to you, Larry. How important are things like mobile and big data in making significant progress in the issues facing healthcare?

Schmidt: Well, that’s interesting, because when we first stared with mobility devices, I actually built and think that the mobile devices become, what I will call a personal integration server. It will help the individual who wants to take charge of their healthcare or care of their health. It will give them the opportunity to capture information using other devices, such as biometric devices, blood pressure monitors, and things like that, and have that captured on a mobile device and placed in a repository someplace to allow either a physician or others, or even that individual, to look at trending over time.

To me, the mobile device, from a standpoint of being able to gather data, is a great technology enabler that has come of age. It allows us the opportunity to streamline that information gathering that is necessary to provide the right diagnoses of working with your health coach or your provider.

Of course, that has the possibility, at the individual level, of producing a lot of data, and it could be massive amount of data, depending on how the data is actually gathered. So big data and analytics, even at the individual level, being able to decipher or to understand trending and things that are happening to the individual over time outside of the doctor’s office, is something I think will really enable improvements in healthcare.
One of the key success factors that is going to have to be addressed is interoperability.

All that, of course, is fueled by the “Internet of things” and technology advances such as IPv6 to allow us to use devices like this across a network and actually keep them identified. Those two technologies that we see in IT trends, will be a great help in advancing healthcare and of course the possibility of it enabling boundaryless information flow.

Gardner: Eric Stephens, do you want to weigh in as well on where these new advances in IT can play a huge role if those standards and the framework approach methodologies are in play?

Stephens: Larry really hit the points well. I was thinking about the new terminology, the Internet of things or machine to machine, where mobile devices could end up being the size of a fingernail at some point.

Do we get to the point where there is real-time monitoring of critical patients, going back through other mobile devices and into a doctor’s office or something, will we have the ability to do a virtual office visit, and how much equipment will you need in a home, for example, to go through and do routine checkups on children and such?

One of the key success factors that is going to have to be addressed is interoperability. Back when we were all starting to cut our teeth on the Internet, one of the things that was fascinating to me is that, you have a handful of standards and all these vendors are conforming to them, such that you don’t have to think about plugging in a laptop to a network or accessing website. All that’s driven by standardization.

Drive standardization

One of the things that we can do in the Forum is start to drive some of that standardization, so that we have these devices working together easily, and it provides the necessary medical professionals the information they need, so they can make more timely decisions. It’s giving the right information, to the right decision maker, at the right time. That, in turn, drives better health outcomes, and it's going to, we hope, drive down the overall cost profile of healthcare, specifically here in the United States.

Gardner: I should think makes for a high incentive to work on these issues of standardization, taxonomy, definitions, and methodologies so that you can take advantage of these great technologies and the scale and efficiency they afford.

Getting back to the conference, I understand that the Healthcare Industry Forum is going to be announced. There is going to be a charter, a steering committee program, definitions, and treatise in the works. So there will be quite a bit kicking off. I would like to hear from you two, Larry and Eric, what you will specifically be presenting at the conference in San Francisco in just a matter of a week or two. Larry, what’s on the agenda for your presentations at the conference? [Register for the event here.]

Schmidt: Actually, Eric and I are doing a joint presentation and we’re going to talk about some of the challenges that we think we can see is ahead of us as a result of trying to enable our vision around boundaryless information flow, specifically around healthcare.
As an enterprise architect, I look at things in terms of the business, the application, information, technology, and architecture.

The culture of being able to produce standards in an industry like this is going to be a major challenge to us. There is a lot of individualization that occurs across this industry. So having people come together and recognize that there are going to be different views, different points of views, and coming into more of a consensus on how information should flow, specifically in healthcare. Although I think any of the forums go through this cultural change.

We’re going to talk about that at the beginning in the conference as a part of how we’re planning to address those challenges as part of the Industry Forum itself.  Then, other meetings will allow us to continue with some of the work that we have been doing around a treatise and other actions that will help us get started down the path of understating the ecosystem and so on.

Those are the things that we’ll be addressing at this specific conference.

Gardner: Eric, anything to add to that, I didn't realize you are both doing this as a joint presentation?

Stephens: Yes, and thanks to Larry for allowing me to participate in it. One of the areas I will be focusing on, and you alluded to this earlier, Dana, is around the information architecture.

As an enterprise architect, I look at things in terms of the business, the application, information, technology, and architecture. When we talk about boundaryless information flow, my remarks and contributions are focused around the information architecture and specifically around an ecosystem of an information architecture at a generic level, but also the need and importance of integration. I will perhaps touch a little bit on the standards to integrate that with Larry’s thoughts.

Soliciting opinions

Schmidt: Dana, I just wanted to add the other work that we’ll be doing there at the conference. We’ve invited some of the healthcare organizations in that area of the country, San Francisco and so on, to come in on Tuesday. We plan to present the findings of the paper and the work that we did in the Philadelphia Conference, and get opinions in refining both the observations, as well as some of the direction that we plan to take with the Healthcare Forum.

Obviously we’ve shared here some of the thoughts of where we believe we’re moving with the Healthcare Forum, but as the Forum continues to form, some of the direction of it will morph based on the participants, and based on some of the things that we see happening with the industry.

So, it’s a really exciting time and I’m actually very much looking forward to presenting the findings of the Philadelphia Conference, getting, as I said, the next set of feedback, and starting the discussion as to how we can make change going toward that vision of boundaryless information flow.
We’re actually able to see a better profile of what the individual is doing throughout their life and throughout their days.

Gardner: I should also point out that it’s not too late for our listeners and readers to participate themselves in this conference. If you’re in the San Francisco area, you’re able to get there and partake, but there are also going to be online activities. There will be some of the presentations delivered online and there will be Twitter feeds.

So if you can't make it to San Francisco on February 3, be aware that The Open Group Conference will be available in several different ways online. Then, there will be materials available after the fact to access on-demand. Of course, if you’re interested in taking more activity under your wing with the Forum itself, there will be information on The Open Group website as to how to get involved.

Before we sign off, I want to get a sense of what the stakes are here. It seems to me that if you do this well and if you do this correctly, you get alignment across these different participants -- the patient being at the hub of the wheel of the ecosystem. There’s a tremendous opportunity here for improvement, not only in patient care and outcomes, but costs, efficiency, and process innovation.

So first to you Larry. If we do this right, what can we expect?

Schmidt: There are several things to expect. Number one, I believe that the overall health of the population will improve, because individuals are more knowledgeable about their individualized healthcare and doctors have the necessary information, based on observations in place, as opposed to observations or, again, through discussion and/or interview of the patient.

We’re actually able to see a better profile of what the individual is doing throughout their life and throughout their days. That can provide doctors the opportunity to make better diagnosis. Better diagnosis, with better information, as Eric said earlier, the right information, at the right time, to the right person, gives the whole ecosystem the opportunity to respond more efficiently and effectively, both at the individual level and in the population. That plays well with any healthcare system around the world. So it’s very exciting times here.

Metrics of success

Gardner: Eric, what’s your perspective on some of the paybacks or metrics of success, when some of the fruits of the standardization begin to impact the overall healthcare system?

Stephens: At the risk of oversimplifying and repeating some of things that Larry said, it comes down to cost and outcomes as the two main things. That’s what’s in my mind right now. I look at these very scary graphs about the cost of healthcare in the United States, and it's hovering in the 17-18 percent of GDP. If I recall correctly, that’s at least five full percentage points larger than other economically developed countries in the world.

The trend on individual premiums and such continues to tick upward. Anything we can do to drive that cost down is going to be very beneficial, and this goes right back to patient-centricity. It goes right back to their pocketbook.

And the outcomes are important as well. There are a myriad of diseases and such that we’re dealing with in this country. More information and more education is going to help drive a healthier population, which in turn drives down the cost. The expenditures that are being spent are around the innovation. You leave room for innovation and you leave room for new advances in medical technology and such to treat diseases going. So again, it’s back to cost and outcomes.
Anything we can do to drive that cost down is going to be very beneficial, and this goes right back to patient centricity.

Gardner: Very good. I’m afraid we will have to leave it there. We’ve been talking with a panel of experts on how the healthcare industry can benefit from improved and methodological information flow. And we have seen how the healthcare industry itself is seeking large-scale transformation and how improved cross-organizational interactions and collaborations seem to be intrinsic to be able to move forward and capitalize and make that transformation possible.

And lastly, we have learned that The Open Group’s new Healthcare Industry Forum is doing a lot now and is getting into its full speed to improve the situation.

This special BriefingsDirect discussion comes to you in conjunction with The Open Group Conference on February 3 in San Francisco. It’s not too late to register at The Open Group website and you can also follow the proceedings during and after the conference online and via Twitter.

So a big thank you to our panel, Larry Schmidt, the Chief Technologist at HP for the America’s Health and Life Sciences Industries, as well as the Chairman of The new Open Group Healthcare Industry Forum. Thanks so much, Larry.

Schmidt: You bet. Glad to be here.

Gardner: And thank you, too, to Eric Stephens, an Oracle Enterprise Architect. We appreciate your time Eric.

Stephens: Thanks for having me, Dana.

Gardner: This is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this look at the healthcare ecosystem process. Thanks for listening, and come back next time for more BriefingsDirect podcast discussions.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: The Open Group.
Register for the event here.

Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how The Open Group is addressing the information needs and challenges in the healthcare ecosystem. Copyright The Open Group and Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2014. All rights reserved.

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Thursday, January 23, 2014

Siemens Brazil Leverages HP Anywhere to Deliver Applications Better to More Mobile Devices

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast on how a major energy engineering company is delivering mobile capability to its managers in Brazil.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the HP Discover Podcast Series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing sponsored discussion on IT innovation and how it’s making an impact on people’s lives.

Gardner
Once again, we’re focusing on how companies are adapting to the new style of IT to improve IT performance and deliver better user experiences and business results. This time, we’re coming to you directly from the recent HP Discover 2013 Conference in Barcelona.

Our task: To learn directly from IT and business leaders alike how big data, mobile, and cloud -- powered by converged infrastructure -- are all supporting their business goals in new and interesting ways.

Our next innovation case study interview highlights how Siemens Brazil is using HP Anywhere to improve how they deliver applications to users with mobile devices. Here to tell us how they’re making progress is Alexandre Padeti, IT Consultant and Applications Integration Technician with Siemens Brazil in São Paulo. Welcome.

Alexandre Padeti: Hi, Dana.

Gardner: Tell us a little bit about what Siemens Brazil. Then let's learn about your transition to mobile applications.

Padeti: Siemens Brazil is an engineering company in Brazil, mainly responsible for 50 percent of the energy transmission in Brazil. With the mobility scenario within Siemens Brazil, we’re just starting right now to implement HP Anywhere in our field applications.

Padeti
Gardner: Why didn’t you just make these applications, customize them, host them, and deliver them? What was missing from your being able to do this yourselves?

Padeti: In the beginning, we were looking for a tool that gave us the freedom to develop for any device. That's the main reason that we chose HP Anywhere. We have the freedom now to choose -- or give the freedom to the users to choose -- the device.

Gardner: What types of applications have you targeted first for moving out to the mobile tier?

Padeti: The main applications that we are working with at the moment is Workflow Approval, which integrates with our back-end SAP ERP system. With HP Anywhere, we’re trying to give the managers mobility, the option to make their approval on daily basis in a different way.

Real-time basis

Gardner: So it's more important to have workflow approved and managed on a real-time basis, wherever these individuals are and whatever device they happen to be using?

Padeti: Yes. These are the main points of the solution. We’re trying to give this especially to our managers, who are used to being in meetings or moving from one place to another. They gain the ability to make this kind of approval on the go.

https://hpln.hp.com/group/hp-anywhereGardner: Tell us a little bit about the process of adoption. You've had a proof of concept (POC) phase?

Padeti: Initially we had a POC with HP Anywhere together with HP Brazil and a local partner. From the beginning, it was well-suited. So we decided to go with HP Anywhere in production, and now we’re running a project that will cover nearly 200 users by the end of January.

Gardner: Do you think this will lead to more applications and more mobile users? Does this seem to be a larger undertaking with movement toward even more mobility?
We’re quite sure that 90 percent of the devices will be running on Android and a small percentage on iOS.

Padeti: Yes, that's for sure. This will become bigger in Siemens Brazil, because it's a change of the mindset of the users. They will begin to change the way they’re thinking about requesting solutions from the IT department. In the future, I believe that we’ll have a lot of requirements to develop more such mobile applications.

Gardner: Alexandre, do you have a sense yet what will be the majority of these mobile devices? Which are most popular among these 200 initial users there?

Padeti: The standard for Siemens Brazil is based on Android. So we’re quite sure that 90 percent of the devices will be running on Android and a small percentage on iOS.

Gardner: As you've gone through this process, are there any lessons learned that you could share for other organizations? What lessons have you learned, or what advice could you offer them?

Small processes

Padeti: The first one would be to think first about smaller processes. At Siemens Brazil, we’re starting with a not-so-big process. We’re using a not-so-complex one to start. This is a good thing to engage the users and allow them to be comfortable, and furnish proof of use on the solution.

The next one would be to talk a lot with the users, because in our case we have requirements that the user could not think of before. We're learning constantly about what is possible with mobility.
When you give to them the freedom with the mobility, new ideas will come up.

I really advise you to talk with the users and know what they want, because most of the times they don’t come up with an idea until they use mobile, because they’re only thinking initially of desktop or notebook PCs. So when you give to them freedom with mobility, new ideas come up.

Gardner: Well, very good. I’m afraid we will have to leave it there. We've been talking about how Siemens Brazil has been moving to more mobile applications delivery for its workers, in this case workflow applications to managers. Our guest has been Alexandre Padeti, IT Consultant and Applications Integration Technician at Siemens Brazil in São Paulo. Thank you so much.

Padeti: Thank you, Dana.

Gardner: And I like to thank our audience as well for joining us for the special new style of IT discussion coming to you from the recent HP Discover 2013 Conference in Barcelona. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of HP-sponsored discussions.  Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast on how a major energy engineering company is delivering mobile capability to its managers in Brazil. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2014. All rights reserved.

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