Hasso Plattner admits SAP needs to build customer trust
February 8, 2010

Chairman Hasso Plattner was keen to stress the positives of Leo Apotheker's stint at SAP during a corporate webcast today and to quell some of the rumours circulating about the CEO's abrupt departure.

Plattner denied claims that the troubled Business ByDesign roadmap was somehow Apotheker's fault. "This is just plain wrong," emphasised Plattner, and so too was the rumour that he and Apotheker were not singing from the same hymn sheet. "There was no difference in opinion between Leo and myself on strategy. This is just wrong information," he noted.

But Plattner did give a strong indication where things had gone awry at SAP, admitting that the company needed to build up trust again with customers, partners, employees, and all stakeholders.

"We have lost trust here and I'm totally committed with the team that we change this and quickly," he said.

James Governor, principal analyst with Redmonk, suspected the main reason behind this lack of trust lay with the maintenance fiasco last year, when SAP sought to hike maintenance fees by 5%.

"At recent SAP events Leo has not been there. To some extent he was a lightning rod for the maintenance problems. I think he was a little bit too macho for the SAP installed base," said Governor.

So when the initial maintenance rumpus blew up, Apotheker's decision to tough it out rather than be more conciliatory to customers upfront, ruffled too many feathers. While SAP has backed down over the maintenance fees, Apotheker was the figurehead in customers' eyes for the whole sorry affair.

"He was handed a bad hand and he didn't play it well," said Governor.

In his address, Plattner was keen to look forward, anticipating a good year for Business ByDesign and emphasising that the roadmap for the company called for a clear focus on growth, margins and innovation, tackled simultaneously. "We have to work to turn this strategy into reality," he said.

Changes include a flattening of management hierarchy and changes to the way they develop new products, embracing fast radical change alongside the traditional SAP way of incremental improvement.

The key question is why was chairman Plattner taking centre stage in the webcast while the two new CEOs stayed quiet. It certainly seems to point to the fact that Plattner is very much back in the driving seat.

Posted by Janine Milne at 3:34 PM | Comments (0)

SAP chief quits suddenly

Leo Apotheker's surprise departure from SAP less than a year after taking over the CEO top job hints that all is not well at the software vendor.

His resignation - by "mutual agreement" - came Sunday night after the company's supervisory board decided not to renew his contract.

Apotheker's short tenure as CEO saw him preside over a dismal financial performance in 2009 with revenue falling 8% and software licence revenue tumbling 28% after years of growth.

It also witnessed the company cave into customer demand and curb plans to hike support costs. Customer outrage meant SAP back-tracked on plans to upgrade all customers to "enterprise" support, instead giving them the choice of sticking with the cheaper basic software backup if they preferred. With upgrades, support and maintenance major cash cows for the company, this was clearly a blow to the company's fortunes.

Further rumblings of discontent over the clarity of its long-term strategy from customers seemed to seal his fate.

The company statement emphasised that co-founder Hasso Plattner would "continue to play a strong role in advising the new leaders on technology and product development."  Plattner's decision to step forward into a more active role recently could be an indication that perhaps he had not always seen eye-to-eye on product direction with Apotheker.

Posted by Janine Milne at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

Twitter faces "Big Brother" test
February 5, 2010

There was an interesting item on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning about social media. Five journalists from French speaking radio stations are currently locked away in a secluded farmhouse in France with no access to news apart from Twitter and Facebook.

 

The aim behind the five-day experiment is to see just how good social media can be as a news source and to test how accurate a picture of the world's events can be gained this way.

 

So many teenagers eschew normal news sources such as television, radio and newspapers, but are constantly plugged into happenings on Twitter and other social media. Is this the way they should be receiving news of main events?

 

We'll have to wait until the hacks emerge from their five-day ordeal (though the idea of a French farmhouse for five days with no news or Internet access sounds rather delightful to me) to get the full run-down.

 

The Canadian journalist interviewed on the Today programme declared himself a news junkie, so perhaps an interesting side-experiment would be to study how the news black-out affected the stress levels of the journalists involved.

 

Posted by Janine Milne at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

Pressure builds on IT public-sector jobs
February 4, 2010

We may officially be out of recession - though a growth rate of 0.1% hardly seems much to crow about - but there's little to cheer about in government IT recruitment.

Local authority spending on IT staff will plummet by 10% this year as budgets have the life squeezed out of them, according to the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitim). And that's regardless of which party wins the next election.

This contrasts with the findings of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG which found that permanent placements overall grew last month. December's figures had proved to be even more buoyant.

KPMG's Bernard Brown commented that while this showed confidence had returned to the private sector, the "starting gun" had only just been fired for the public sector and that the impact of the recession would be felt there for the next 12 to 18 months.

 

 

Posted by Janine Milne at 4:37 PM | Comments (0)

Quality Assurance: too little, too late

From the times of the earliest craftsmen through to ISO 9000, quality assurance has been key to any product development. So why is it still not getting the attention it deserves in the IT industry?

A white paper today issued by IDC shows that only 24% of the companies it interviewed were fully satisfied they'd sufficiently nailed quality issues.

Even though the vast majority (80%) of the 60 public and private sector firms in the survey recognised that delays to project delivery could undermine their commercial success, quality issues were discovered late on in the process. As a result, the companies were forced to reduce the scope of the project, throw more bodies at the problem or squeeze more precious budget over it. Probably all three.

Sean Rowlands, director of managed services for Capita Assurance and Testing which sponsored the survey, commented that using such as immature quality assurance regime was "like driving a car only using the rear view mirrors".

Posted by Janine Milne at 3:19 PM | Comments (1)

Cyber-criminals choose easy route to your data - through employees
February 3, 2010

Enterprising cyber-criminals have worked out that the biggest weakness in any security set-up is your staff.

 

Alongside the expected areas of social networks, Web 2.0 and rogue security software, the latest CA security report pinpointed employees or former employees as security threats. Moles working inside an organisation can both pinpoint weaknesses within the business and perhaps be willing to leak data for profit.

 

Blaming the poor economic conditions, CA says that security problems have moved on from employees simply misusing data or making mistakes (although these are clearly still big problems). Now their motives are likely to be more intentional.

 

So this means that it's even more important for companies to fine-tune the balancing act between seeking out new ways of locking down their data and leaving enough flexibility for employees to do their jobs properly.

Posted by Janine Milne at 11:19 AM | Comments (1)

Social networking and HMRC security scams claim victims

Social networking has opened up new ways of collaborating and communicating, but it's also opened up a mighty can of highly wriggly worms when comes to security.

 

A report by data protection firm Sophos earlier this week found a 70% rise in attacks on users on social networking sites. A similar number of businesses were worried that the way their staff behaved on sites such as Facebook could put their businesses at risk.

 

While most of the problems were found to be increase in spam - more annoyance than a threat -there had also been a marked increase in malware sent through social networking sites. Sophos pointed out a grim irony that threats from malware and identity thefts are increasing, just as many companies begin to soften their stance on social networking and allow staff to use the sites.

 

But then, you have to admire the ingenuity of scamsters, who are constantly finding new ways to torment Internet uses. This was ably highlighted in reports of a phishing scam involving the HMRC. The carrot tempting Internet users to lower their normal 'Scam Alert' guard was the promise of a refund back from the Tax Man.

 

When they clicked on a link on from the HMRC landing page, visitors were immediately asked to enter bank and other details, so that the rebate could be squirted straight into their bank account. As if. Apparently, browser and fraud prevention specialists Trusteer, found that the HMRC attacks were twice as successful as normal banking phishes.

 

I'm not surprised by this. As one of the many millions who've just filed their tax return online - which involved many painful hours combing the website looking for information and calling up the helpline - I can well imagine how normal rational thought could go out the window at the prospect of getting some money back from the Tax Man.

Posted by Janine Milne at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

Twitter phishing attack highlights flaws of passwords

Twitter has apparently fallen foul of a phishing attack, alerting some users to reset their passwords and urging them to choose hard to guess passwords using a mix of words, numbers and symbols.

 

Passwords are an obvious security weakness in any system. They are so hard to remember, that of course people will use obvious words or numbers and re-use them across many sites. Or just as bad, write them down on a Post-it and stick it on their desk or laptop.

 

Stephen Hower, CEO of GrIDsure, points out that this method of security is flawed: "The owners of these sites have chosen this method of authentication in the misguided view that it is cheap and offers a good level of security.  In reality, it is neither.  As we've seen, passwords can be compromised through various forms of attack, including shoulder-surfing, key-logging and screen-scraping." 

 

As a purveyor of alternatives to PINS and passwords, Hower clearly has a vested interest in highlighting the flaws of the user name/passwords combo, but he has a point. Why does the user name/password combo remain so prevalent, when this method of authentication is insecure?  

 

 

Posted by Janine Milne at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

Microsoft admits IE flaw caused Google hack
January 18, 2010

Microsoft has admitted that a flaw in its Internet Explorer web browser enabled hackers to gain access to Google's system, an event that resulted in Google threatening to pull its operations in China.

In a post on its Microsoft Security Response Center, director Mike Reavey said that a bug within Internet Explorer could allow hackers to remotely run programs on infected machines.

"Based upon our investigations, we have determined that Internet Explorer was one of the vectors used in targeted and sophisticated attacks against Google and possibly other corporate networks," Reavey wrote.

Posted by admin at 9:54 AM | Comments (0)