As the Department for Education reviews consultation from the IT industry on its plans for the 2014 schools ICT curriculum, Computing has assembled a panel of thought leaders to discuss the ICT skills expectations within the industry in school leavers. For this panel, Computing Reporter Peter Gothard is joined by: Ian Livingstone - Government skills champion and co-author of the Next Gen report; Joanna Poplawska - Co-founder of the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission; Crispin Weston - Chairman of the BSI Education and Training Standards Committee; Phillip Bryant - Qualifications Group Manager for Computing, ICT and Design and Technology, OCR examination and awards body

In March 2013, the IT director group, The Corporate IT Forum, conducted a survey which showed IT workers are more confident with the public cloud. Some 43% of the organisations surveyed said they were using public cloud, representing an increase of 30% since 2010. However, private cloud use is expected to increase from 40% in 2010 to 64.1% in 2013, suggesting IT departments still prefer private to public clouds. But IT directors are becoming more open to the prospect of using public cloud.

By Ollie Ross, Forum Head of Research: The consumerisation of IT is happening despite policies, rules and regulations, and organisations are learning fast that their employees are rebelling against a "managed" IT landscape and are instead demanding a "market" one, with freedom of expression. The IT organisation is now charged with delivering this change – efficiently, effectively and as securely as possible. Mobile device management (MDM) is widely deployed on corporate-provided devices, but rarely on employee-owned consumer devices for reasons of cost. According to The Corporate IT Forum’s Enterprise Everywhere Conference and Consumerisation of IT Summit reports, there are some key tenets and best practices emerging: - Replicating traditional corporate IT levels of control in a consumerised world misses the point and is probably impractical. - The quid pro quo for consumers in a new world of freedom is their responsibility to look after the organisation’s data. - Privacy is a major factor in consumerisation – it means you have to effectively sandbox company data from private data. - Controls should be applied to the data rather than the device. - Provide guidance for app developers to control access to information on devices. - Set operational principles on the use of allowed cloud services. - Keep policies and processes up to date – revising the IS policy every two years is inappropriate. - Consider data sensitivity – look at apps, build a risk assessment and decide whether it sits within your risk or outside it. - Employee agreements that address wiping personal and corporate data must be active, not passive, with signatures and human resource records.

Amid lacklustre take-up of Windows 8 and a declining PC industry, Microsoft could be set to rethink its strategy for Windows 8. In an interview with the Financial Times, Tami Reller, head of marketing and finance suggested that Microsoft would change “key aspects” of how the software is used. Tami Reller admitted that the learning curve with the company’s new user interface was “definitely real,”which suggests Microsoft will reintroduce the much-loved Start button in Windows 8. Ollie Ross, head of research at IT manager's group, the Corporate IT Forum, said the touch user interface is more intuitive compared to a normal graphical user interface. "It is a particularly attractive quality for those looking to deploy business intelligence or where the user requires additional information in the field, such as in a shop floor-type scenario."

Promoting IT as a career path to primary and secondary school students would, industry experts claim, help close the IT skills gap. It is an initiative the Government has already thrown its weight behind by agreeing to shake-up the ICT GCSE curriculum, but stimulating an interest in IT from a young age is still proving a challenge. According to a report by the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission, just 35 per cent of ICT teachers are specialists in the field, opposed to more than 80 per cent for core subjects like maths and English.

Cloud computing is moving beyond small companies, startups and software development to the era of full-scale enterprise deployments. Mainstream software giant Microsoft is evidence of this. Curt Anderson, chief financial officer at Microsoft’s server and tools division, recently said the company’s Azure cloud service had made $1bn in the last 12 months. In March 2013 IT director group, The Corporate IT Forum, conducted a survey which showed that people in IT are more confident with the public cloud. When asked about public cloud usage, 43% of the organisations surveyed said they were using public cloud, representing an increase of 30% since 2010. However private cloud usage is expected to increase from 40% 2010 to 64.1% in 2013, which shows that IT departments still prefer private to public clouds. But IT directors are becoming more open to using the public cloud.

As the Department for Education reviews consultation from the IT industry on its plans for the 2014 schools ICT curriculum, Computing has assembled a panel of thought leaders to discuss the ICT skills expectations within the industry in school leavers. For this panel, Computing Reporter Peter Gothard is joined by: Ian Livingstone - Government skills champion and co-author of the Next Gen report. Joanna Poplawska - Co-founder of the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission Crispin Weston - Chairman of the BSI Education and Training Standards Committee Phillip Bryant - Qualifications Group Manager for Computing, ICT and Design and Technology, OCR examination and awards body

In a recent survey of IT professionals by the Corporate IT Forum, delivering innovation was revealed as the leading operational target – indeed, nearly a quarter of respondents said it was their top strategic goal. In tough economic times, organisations are looking to achieve a competitive advantage by finding new ways to simplify processes, increase productivity and cut costs. But while innovation is an important goal, delivering it is another matter – particularly when day-to-day tasks have to take priority. And it seems they do: the Corporate IT Forum found in its November 2012 Reality Checker survey, that while 50% of companies say they seek out innovation, 9 out of ten dedicate less than 5% of their working week to it.

According to the Corporate IT Forum, an IT user group for business, employment in the IT industry is expected to grow at nearly five times the UK average over the next decade. Large corporations continue to actively recruit IT professionals, but more than half of large IT-dependent organisations and most small non-technical, IT-dependent businesses across the UK, are stuck in a growth and profits limbo due to shortages of skilled IT staff. London's Tech City has more than 3,400 firms providing 48,000 digital economy jobs – more than double the number of 15 years ago at the height of the dot com boom. Yet its future progress is threatened by a severe IT skills shortage.

Joanna Poplawska, co-founder of the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission, added that “it’s important to remember that over 50 per cent of IT professionals are going to work for [large organisations such as McDonald’s] that are represented by the forum, as opposed to the vendor community.” Poplawska voiced concerns that, with 900,000 ICT jobs forecast to be available in Europe by 2015, the 2014 target for UK education reform seems a one-shot opportunity: the UK needs to shape up quickly. ”I don’t think we have a choice,” said Poplawska. “You can see it across Europe; there’s widespread agreement that ICT education is a massive driver behind the economy. At the same time, it’s agreed education is not doing enough. There are gaps there that need to be filled.”

Cloud applications are starting to gain critical mass in enterprise IT, according to cloud application providers. While this can be dismissed as the special pleading of the self-serving, senior executives at Informatica and Birst couch their arguments with caution in a brace of recent Computer Weekly interviews. And, on the user side of the house, the Corporate IT Forum is registering a shift in focus from “should IT move to the cloud?” to “how?” and “in what areas?” Head of research at the blue chip user organisation, Ollie Ross says: “The Corporate IT Forum's 2013 Cloud Computing Reality Checker has clearly shown that, for large enterprises, the challenge is now how to use cloud, not if they should use it.”

The ongoing shortage of skilled IT workers in the UK has prompted efforts to increase its attractiveness as a career choice through programmes targeting primary and secondary school students, as well as apprenticeship schemes and other government initiatives. Despite this, many IT graduates report difficulties in securing employment in the industry, but why is this and what can they do to overcome these issues and land a job? Speaking to IT Pro, Mark Lycett, a professor of information systems development at Brunel University and a member of The Corporate IT Forum Education & Skills Commission, said part of the problem is that few students leave university with the skills and experience employers are looking for. "If you talk to many of the organisations that say they have vacancies, the kind of [jobs they are offering] are for people that have 18-months to two year’s experience," he said. The reason for this, he offered, is because so many organisations rely on outsourcing and offshoring to fill their entry-level IT positions. "Having put a lot of those commodity-type jobs offshore, it has created a gap between what people would typically come out of university with, in terms of educational skills, and perhaps what organisations are looking for," he added.

The technology industry has slammed the government’s failure to identify IT as a key driver of economic growth, following chancellor George Osborne’s 2013 budget announcement. David Roberts, director of The Corporate IT Forum, said: “The Budget is good news for the aerospace technology industry and for SMEs involved in 'digital content production'. However, when you consider the vital role that information technology plays in the success of UK business, this is much too narrow a focus."

Walk down the hall. Look into the IT room. How old are the people in there? How are they getting on? Or are they just getting on? Would you trust them to keep the server lights on in a couple of years? Is there anybody actually in there at all? If there isn’t, your company may be part of the problem that’s keeping John Harris and his colleagues at the Corporate IT Forum awake at night: who’s going to take over from today's IT workers when the time comes for them to log out for good. Essentially, the UK is in danger of losing a generation of tech-sector professionals, and by extension the people who will be leading IT operations, even running companies, five, ten, 20 years from now. And while the forum points its finger at the usual suspects - school IT courses and computer-science degrees that have little to do with the real world, and a government that listens to US-based vendors more than it listens to UK Plc - British industry can take a large share of the blame itself. This is due to the industry’s woeful inability to convince young people that working with the insides of computers can be a satisfying, even well-paid, career. The sector's tendency to exacerbate this by sending the jobs overseas is also under fire. Not convinced? Well, that just proves the point.

Teachers and academics fear the new computer science curriculum is too broad in some of its requirements, causing concern for how some teachers may choose to interpret its content. During the Westminster Education Forum Keynote Seminar: Reviewing the new Computing Curriculum recently, teachers, academics and industry experts aired their views on the new syllabus, raising alarms that if the new curriculum is misinterpreted it could be as unsuccessful as the ICT programme it is replacing. John Harris, chairman of the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission and the vice-president for global enterprise architecture at AIMIA agreed with Livingstone and said he is excited about the idea of STEAM not STEM. He said from a non-technical industry perspective there is definitely a skills shortage. “Businesses are not just looking for programmers or service support. The Holy Grail is people that understand both the business world and the tech world. There are lots of technical people that do not work in IT – times are changing. We need to be more vocal as an industry,” said Harris.

The Corporate IT Forum's Education & Skills Commission has published the first of four reports on addressing the IT skills crisis facing the UK. The first report, 'The Early Years', focuses on the school years and finds and IT education and careers system seriously lacking. The report identifies causes for the skills shortage, from outsourcing policies, and ageing workforce through to insufficient understanding of IT and what it enables in both the boardroom and on the shop floor.

Education experts have warned the Department for Education that its recently proposed computing curriculum lacks creativity and is weighted too heavily in the discipline of computer science. The DfE launched its revised computing curriculum earlier this month for a three-month national consultation that will conclude on 16 April. The revised curriculum will eventually replace ICT study programmes currently being run by schools, with the new computing curriculum due to come into force in September 2014. Joanna Poplawska, performance director for the Corporate IT Forum, argued that the the proposed curriculum is a step in the right direction but requires further attention. "A problem is its open to different interpretation and more conservative teachers will stick to traditional means of teaching." Poplawska said the curriculum does not necessarily need to be more prescriptive, but the DfE needs to openly specify its expectations and tell teachers how to achieve creativity and inspiration within its proposed curriculum bullet points. Further concerns at the forum were raised about the government's decision not to specify use of computing in other school subjects, as part of its wider curriculum reform.

Have you watched your children play Minecraft? Teachers at a school in Sweden have and decided the block-building computer game was so intellectually engaging that it should be compulsory. Here in the UK we’re still stuck in an educational minefield where computing is concerned. I’ll declare my hand here as I’m involved in a project to make computing exciting. I’m really struggling to understand why we seem incapable of using the amazing online world we now live in to inspire young people in the classroom. On the same day that Michael Gove announced his U-turn on the scrapping GCSEs - meaning computing won’t now be elevated to a formal science option for English secondary school pupils - the Department for Education issued its latest report on the coalition's plans to improve the teaching of computing. Reading ‘The National Curriculum in England Framework’ is like reading a list of what we should absolutely not to do to make the subject exciting. The report talks of wanting children to "analyse problems in computational terms" and "evaluate and apply IT - including 'unfamiliar technologies' - to problem solving”. There’s the problem. By describing computing in such cold terms, albeit fundamentally correct, we are in danger of alienating a whole generation of potentially talented pupils from engaging with technology - pupils with the skills that UK plc will require over the coming decades. The Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission (CIFESC) recently stated that closing the IT skills gap requires input from all major employers, not just those classed as IT sector, and in a review of ICT skills by consultants SQW for Skills Development Scotland it was recognised that students and their advisors (including parents) often have an extremely poor understanding of IT-related careers, and young people commonly hold negative misperceptions as a result.

A report by analysts at Forrester paints a bleak picture of Oracle's applications business, suggesting CIOs should be wary of the supplier’s motives to avoid being locked into expensive contracts. Oracle is going through a major transition from enterprise software provider to a provider of hardware, software and cloud services. Historically, users have struggled to buy into Oracle's Fusion strategy, according to Ollie Ross, head of research at IT director group The Corporate IT Forum. "The lack of clarity early on around what Fusion actually was – its roadmap and licensing, and suspicion around its purpose as a vehicle for integrating Oracle products as much as an application strategy – held back early adoption," she said. "Only two years ago, Forum members embarking on Fusion claimed it was presenting them with 'some challenges, not least the availability of experienced resources'." Ross also pointed out that members of the Corporate IT Forum were unhappy with Oracle’s licensing policies. As Computer Weekly has previously reported, some IT departments find the text in Oracle’s licensing contract, called Software Investment Guide, “utterly incomprehensible”, especially as it relates to virtualisation. In the past, Oracle has made several major acquisitions, resulting in a multitude of price-list amendments, usage rights and licence metrics, licensing options and extended definitions. “Members continue to find Oracle's software licensing rules difficult to understand," said Ross. “Virtualisation and cloud computing have made Oracle licensing policies even more complex.” He said members of the Corporate IT Forum were unhappy that, unlike Microsoft, Oracle did not currently have a software subscription model. “Members commented that there appeared to be a push to use Oracle VM. However, some expressed the view that it is 'not well supported yet, not stable, nor as effective as VMware'," Ross added. The Forum’s criticism of Oracle licensing is reflected in the Forrester survey, with 43% of respondents citing high licensing costs as their biggest gripe about Oracle applications. High maintenance costs (38%) and difficult to upgrade (32%) also rated highly when the research participants were asked to rate what they disliked most about Oracle.

The government has overhauled the current ICT curriculum in schools, last week publishing a fully revised draft alternative for a three month national consultation. The draft proposes renaming the curriculum ‘computing' to include a broad focus on computer science skills. The current ICT curriculum for five to 16-year-olds was dis-applied in schools last September for being irrelevant and boring. The Department for Education (DfE) will launch the new curriculum in September 2014. V3 has spoken to key members of the education sector, as part of our Make IT Better campaign, to find out their initial thoughts on the draft computing curriculum. Joanna Poplawska, performance director for the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission: "Our initial reaction to the proposed curriculum is that it is not going to provide the skills that are needed for business. In our Early Years report published in January we recommended that IT should be taught to all children. However, it appears that digital literacy and programming have been given priority over IT, despite the subject being critical for British industries. The Commission would like to see a curriculum that gives young people the ability to work on technology solutions that can be applied to business rather than just technology products."

E-Skills UK is calling on tech firms of all sizes to join its latest IT skills and job creation crusade. The initiative is part of e-Skills bid to take part in the Government’s £340 million Employer Ownership of Skills Pilot, which encourages employers to create employment projects that could provide UK plc with an economic boost. In a statement to IT Pro, Joanna Poplawska, performance director of fellow IT skills body the Corporate IT Forum, said initiatives like this will play an important role in tackling EU-wide tech skill shortages in the future. For instance, she said there are fears that up to 700,000 IT-related vacancies could go unfilled in the EU by 2015. “It would be naïve to think that the IT departments of large UK-based organisations won’t be amongst the worst affected given how many major businesses and multinationals are based here,” she said. “Anything that gets employers involved in designing the solutions to their own problems has got to be a good thing,” she added.

HE UK Education Secretary announced today that Computer Science will be included in the English Baccalaureate, or EBacc, as the country looks to expand its IT skills. Education Secretary Michael Gove is backing the addition because of the importance of computer science. According to the Department of Education (DoE), increased IT skills are good for education and the economy. Last Summer the government announced that it was going to remove IT from the curriculum for two years. Then the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission lamented the news, but acknowledged that the existing IT curriculum was failing to meet the needs of employers.

The European Commission (EC) is calling on various private sector organisations and the CIO community to help bridge the gap between digital skills and available jobs in Europe by year 2020. ICT has become an instrumental part of the developing European economy. While the demand for ICT practitioners is growing by about three per cent a year, the number of graduates specialising in such areas is declining. This could result in an estimated 700,000 unfilled vacancies by 2015, according to the EC. IT skills body, the Corporate IT Forum, has also pledged its support. One of the forum's key focus areas moving forward will be to help implement some of the initiatives outlined by the Grand Coalition, according to executive director David Roberts. “We live and do business in an increasingly digital world and businesses will struggle to flourish and compete in a global market if the education system cannot produce people with business-ready ICT skills," Roberts said. "The root of the problem appears to lie in an ineffective education and careers system – and this will be a major focus for the Education & Skills Commission in 2013."

The term "data scientist" barely registered as a search term on Google in August 2010. It is now close to one million results. But a search on the UK website of Harvey Nash, a professional recruitment company, for data scientist jobs returned, today, zero results. What is this job role, of which so much is said, and of which there is so little trace in the real world? John Harris, chairman of the Corporate IT Forum, a membership organisation for business users of IT that includes HMRC, GlaxoSmithKline, and United Biscuits, among others, sees a data science skills gap as a thorny issue. If there is corporate gold to be dug up, where are the geologists to identify its location? CEOs and CIOs are struggling to find these people in the UK, he confirms. “Corporate organisations need to find data scientists with unique skills, mathematical, but with business knowledge and the imagination to ask the right questions. They won’t necessarily find them in IT at present." The Forum’s Education and Skills Commission, which Harris chairs, encourages, “vocational programmes, in Sixth Forms and in universities, that challenge students to apply statistical analysis to real life problems. "Data science skills are a great example of an emerging capability that our education system needs to be ready for," he says. "There is now a plethora of data publicly available that students could work with, but businesses should also do more to ‘crowd source’, openly sharing data problems and challenges with schools and universities."

The UK will be short of 33,300 IT workers in 2050 due to a lack of skills, an ageing workforce and a restrictive migration policy, according to recruitment company Ranstad Technologies. This problem is also leading to an increase in IT salaries as businesses compete for a limited pool of workers. By 2050, there will be a shortfall of 3.1 million workers – some 9% of the required workforce – across all sectors in the UK, with IT in the top five professions in terms of size of shortfall. Only teaching (128,000), construction (66,800), nursing 61,200 and engineering 36,800 will have bigger shortages. John Harris, chair of The Corporate IT Forum and chief architect and head of IT strategy at pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), told Computer weekly in a recent interview that years of outsourcing commodity IT skills has much to blame for the lack of grass-roots IT talent today. "It is important to feed the pipeline at the bottom end," he said. "While outsourcing did bring value, people moved jobs that should not have been moved. We outsourced our skills pipeline." This meant the IT prospects for young people were effectively hamstrung as they were not given a chance to enter the industry. "Yes, it may be more economical to outsource to India, but such a job may be the type of work that gives an apprentice a real grounding in IT," he said.

V3 launched its Make IT Better campaign in October 2012 to increase awareness around the government's reform of the ICT curriculum in schools. The campaign, launched in partnership with the Corporate IT Forum, is focussed on improving ICT education in schools in order to fix the growing skills crisis facing the IT industry. "The Corporate IT Forum Education & Skills Commission fully supports V3's 'Make IT Better' campaign. It is doing a great job of promoting excellence in IT education and keeping the important issue of ICT curriculum reforms at the forefront of V3 readers' minds," said Joanna Poplawska, performance director at The Corporate IT Forum. "We are all agreed that a range of people need to have input into the new curriculum, including IT-dependent employers, to ensure that the next-generation workforce is equipped with the right technology skills to boost British business."

The latest data from the market analyst Gartner paints a bleak picture of the PC industry. For CIOs, the era of desktop refresh cycles may well be over. According to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments totalled 90.3 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, a 4.9% decline from the fourth quarter of 2011. Ollie Ross, head of research at IT director group, the Corporate IT Forum, said: “Our research would indicate a very cautious ongoing approach to outlay on hardware amongst members, with purchase on an ‘as needed’ basis." She said members of the Corporate IT Forum were increasingly open to people using their own approved devices at work, when used alongside suitable mobile device management software and policies."This shows a very different approach to the near-automatic software update/hardware refresh cycles of relatively recent years.”

The first of four reports on the IT skills crisis facing the UK focuses on the school years and says that the IT education and careers system is in complete disarray. The report from the Corporate IT Forum Education & Skills Commission, entitled ‘The Early Years’, finds that many of the current duties for schools and related initiatives are not funded properly, fail to address business needs or are not being executed in a way likely to make a fast enough impact. It makes 20 recommendations on education, careers guidance and the development of the new IT curriculum. These include the need for input from a range of major employers who use IT to deliver products and services, rather than just those who are IT developers and vendors.

With data increasingly on the agenda, the question of whether its ingestion and analysis are worth the cost is moot. Ever since McKinsey, the consultancy, anointed the term in its May 2011 report Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity, business leaders have been seeking to understand the issues at stake. John Harris, chairman of the Corporate IT Forum, an organisation of large corporate information technology users including John Lewis, HM Revenue & Customs and BAE Systems, says a skills and personnel gap is the main stumbling block to realising the business value of data. “There is frustration among CEOs,” he says. “They know there is gold in the hills and do not see why IT is not digging it out. Give me my gold, is the attitude. But IT people are not geologists who know where to dig.” Harris draws a comparison with the British code breakers at Bletchley Park who helped decipher secret Nazi communications during the second world war: “They were mathematicians and linguists who could [also] think creatively.” Organisations, according to Harris, need to look for “data scientists” who know mathematics but who also have “business knowledge and the imagination to ask the right questions. They won’t necessarily find them in IT.” The data-led transformation of business is, he adds, “still in its infancy – more than the IT industry realises. The opportunities are genuine, but it will take a lot of effort.”

CIOs from some of Britain's biggest enterprises are demanding a complete overhaul of the way the nation's young people are introduced to technology at school. Their intervention highlights national concerns about both long-term industrial decline and the perceived need to instill real coding skills in schoolchildren as early as possible. While British kids are taught ICT (Information and Communications Technology) as a core part of the mandated syllabus (National Curriculum), they don't get much more practical exposure to the digital world beyond learning MS Office programs. Increasingly, it's become clear that Brits don't engage with enough of what makes tech work -- therefore becoming passive consumers of computers rather than creators.

Careers support and education in IT is in "disarray", according to a report from the Corporate IT Forum. The Forum's Education & Skills Commission has published the first of four reports on addressing the IT skills crisis facing the UK. Research among Forum members has identified a number of causes for skills shortages that are affecting more than half of large organisations. These range from outsourcing policies and an ageing workforce through to insufficient understanding of IT and what it enables in both the boardroom and on the shop floor. The first report, "The Early Years", focuses on the school years and finds an IT education and careers system in "complete disarray". The report makes 20 recommendations on education, careers guidance and the development of the new IT curriculum.

Outsourcing of entry-level IT jobs has left UK businesses struggling to find staff with sufficient experience to fill senior roles, according to IT professionals at some of the UK’s largest firms. The domestic talent pool has been drained by the practice of offshoring entry-level and junior IT roles to lower cost regions over the past decade, said John Harris, chairman of The Corporate IT Forum, which represents some of the largest business users of IT in the UK. “We’ve damaged our own pipeline. If you’re a school leaver and you’re looking at IT jobs and what you see is all the jobs dribbling away offshore you’re not going to be inspired,” said Harris, who is also VP for global enterprise architecture at loyalty management specialist AIMIA. “As a collective industry, we let it go too far. We put some things out there that we shouldn’t have put out there and in some instances have done so in a very crude way. I’ve seen lots of examples where we’ve just picked up jobs and a process, which wasn’t necessarily optimal or working well, and shifted it out and said ‘Keep doing that the same way we always did and do it cheaper’. “We all look dreadfully surprised when five years later we need to find an [enterprise] architect. Where do we grow architects from? We grow them from our analysts. Then we realise ‘Ah, we don’t have many of those any more because we shifted them out’.”

The Corporate IT Forum (CIF) has called on the government to provide every UK school with enough funding to run a computing or science club. V3 has recently partnered up with CIF on Make IT Better, a campaign to improve IT education in schools and encourage the government to be transparent in its IT curriculum reforms. Now, in a report on the IT skills crisis facing the UK, CIF has argued that IT education is in a state of "complete disarray", and this needs to be fixed in order to attract young people into IT careers. The report further suggests that the IT industry as a whole needs to have more input in IT education, as well as in the design of the new IT curriculum.

This year has seen some major announcements that have shaken, and occasionally angered, academics and the education community. Education secretary Michael Gove announced in January that GCSE ICT was to be scrapped. His plans have been widely criticised for leaving the education sector without a clear direction for IT as a subject. One body to air their concerns was the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission, which condemned the move. The organisation said it was disappointed that the government had not listened to its concerns about withdrawing the ICT curriculum from schools before the new programme is introduced.

An alliance of CIOs at some of the biggest companies and organisations operating in Britain has issued a call to action, saying that it's time the government stops listening to technology firms on IT issues and starts paying attention to the people that actually use the technology. A new report from the Education and Skills commission of The Corporate IT Forum comes out today, and in it the commissioners (think IT chiefs at outfits like McDonalds, the Land Registry, Channel 4, Tesco's etc) have harsh words for the usual suspects - the state of ICT teaching in schools and universities, for instance.

A recent survey by CA has reported that 40% of IT decision makers expect to be audited by their software provider up to twice a year. Along with economic pressure, the survey of 92 senior decision makers reported that technological changes such as virtualisation have also driven the increase in audits. Ollie Ross, head of research at IT director group, The Corporate IT Forum said: “Software licensing has always been complicated, but in recent years, recent developments have had an enormous impact on the complexity of software licensing.” She warned that software auditing was seen as an overhead: “Senior management do not appreciate that business strategy such as bring your own device (BYOD) or virtualisation can affect licensing.” Ross warned IT departments that software auditing is very expensive. “Having a robust SAM process is a necessity and can save you money,” she added.

Careers support and education in IT is in disarray, suggests new research. Various reports call for more investment and support to address the IT skills crisis. UK small businesses are stuck in a growth and profits limbo due to a shortfall in IT skills. Both the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission and insurance provider Simply Business have recently published reports on addressing the IT skills crisis facing the UK. The Commission’s findings identified a number of causes for skill shortages that are affecting more than half of large IT-dependent organisations. These range from outsourcing policies and an aging workforce, through to insufficient understanding of IT and what it enables in both the boardroom and the shop floor. “Employment in the IT industry is expected to grow at nearly five times the UK average over the next decade. Yet, careers support and education for young people interested in pursuing a career in IT is in disarray.

Closing the IT skills gap requires input from all major employers, not just those operating in the IT sector, according to a report by The Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission (CIFESC). In the first of four reports published by the IT skills body, looking at how improving early years education can reduce the IT skills shortage, the group said more needs to be done to make young children aware of IT career opportunities before they enter higher education.

The IT education and careers system is in complete disarray, according to a report by the Corporate IT Forum (CIF) Education and Skills Commission. The Early Years report, the first of four from the commission, highlights the IT skills crisis currently facing the UK. The research identifies a number of causes of skills shortages, which, according to the figures, are affecting more than half of large IT-dependent businesses. They include new outsourcing policies, an ageing workforce, and an insufficient understanding of IT and the benefits it can bring. In light of these findings, the Education and Skills Commission has included 20 recommendations in the report, suggesting improvements on education, careers guidance and the development of the new IT curriculum.

Business intelligence (BI) and enterprise search have been converging slowly in corporate IT organisations. But this convergence has been frustrated by organisational politics and competing technology legacies, according to experts canvassed in recent months. Ollie Ross, head of research at the Corporate IT Forum, notes a convergence of business intelligence and enterprise search interests among members of the blue chip user group, at least to the extent of the holding of a member-driven ‘Enterprise Search as a Business Intelligence Tool’ workshop in December 2011. Ollie Ross said that when enterprise search was first broached inside the forum, some two years ago, it was intensive from some, but not general. “It was an activity on the back of freedom of information requests and other legal discovery," said Ollie Ross.

Cybercrime is nothing new and for many years the IT security industry has been fighting a losing battle to protect consumers and businesses alike from the growing threat. The recent news that the UK government has set up centres at British universities to tackle the problem really doesn’t focus on UK businesses, although they have said that they will work closer with corporations to address the problem. Whilst this is changing somewhat now, it does seem to be too little, too late and as David Roberts, head of the Corporate IT Forum, said: "IT chiefs in UK PLCs don't think the government appreciates the scale of the cybercrime (sic) threat, the seriousness of the threat or how much it's costing."

V3 has become increasingly concerned that current measures being taken to overhaul the IT curriculum and GCSE syllabus will not lead to young people being taught the technology skills needed by the IT industry. The V3 Make IT Better campaign, launched in partnership with the Corporate IT Forum, calls on the Department for Education (DfE) to give the ICT curriculum reform process transparency and to include the views of more teachers, education advisers and IT professionals from the start.

V3 has today launched a campaign designed to achieve excellence in IT education across the UK, and equip the next-generation workforce with the right technology skills to boost British business. Joanna Poplawska, performance director for campaign partner The Corporate IT Forum, said: "We need to ensure all those interested are given the chance to inform the draft ICT curriculum immediately. "This is critical if we are going to achieve a curriculum that prepares students for both the IT industry and careers within any ICT dependent industries. "We are talking about a very broad church but it is the only way we will get students with the right skills the UK needs to have both a flourishing IT industry and a workforce suitable for world class businesses."

Speakers at Channel Conference 2012 saw the channel as a key route to business success as technologies fast-forward into the future. The panel debate included Joanna Poplawska, performance director at the Corporate IT Forum, analysed solutions to the IT skills shortage, where many find a barrier to growth at a time when there are already obstructions aplenty. Poplawska pointed out that education programmes should avoid producing large numbers of people with siloed skills who might find it difficult to develop their capability in response to economic and industry change.

A charge often levelled at Jersey and Guernsey when it comes to developing strong digital industries is that there’s a distinct lack of skilled workers in the islands. What is perhaps more worrying is that the right people don’t seem to be coming through the ranks. The failure of the British National Curriculum to effectively teach computer science and – perhaps more importantly – a passion for all things digital has resulted in a dearth of skilled employees for the IT industry across the board. When looking at the National Curriculum in detail, while there are opportunities for students to look in greater depth at the structure of database building and other technical areas, there is very little aimed at teaching students how computers work. The focus instead is on computing as a medium for presenting information, and this is a problem for businesses, says Joanna Paplowska, Performance Director at the UK’s Corporate IT Forum. “From a business perspective, our members strongly feel that, at the moment, teaching focuses on ICT literacy skills but it fails to teach an understanding of how ICT helps us to do business,” she explains. In highlighting the lack of context in which IT is being taught, Paplowska touches on one of many concerns employers have with the current state of IT education.

Teachers, education advisors and members of the IT industry have told V3 they are concerned their views will not be heard during the reform process of the new draft ICT curriculum. The new curriculum is set to be launched in schools next September and the consultation period on the document closed on Monday, having been open for just one week. Joanna Poplawska, performance director for the Corporate IT Forum, said she was anxious the first draft of the PoS was being put together without a proper consultation. "The Corporate IT Forum have 45,000 members who may have not been consulted," said Poplawska. "We are very concerned."

Big businesses feel that Google is not a suitable choice for enterprise contracts, according to a survey. The Corporate IT Forum, which represents IT directors and CIOs, surveyed 100 heads of IT at some of the UK’s largest organisations. Just 5% currently regarded Google as a credible supplier to the enterprise market. Businesses that are using Google tend to be "lite" users, which do not require full functionality of the services, the Forum noted. “If Google is to make serious headway in the corporate market, it will need to change its approach," said David Roberts, executive director of The Corporate IT Forum.

Heads of IT still believe that Google is "still not a corporate contender" with its apps and services, according to the UK user body The Corporate IT Forum. Research from the Forum, which surveyed heads of IT at some of the UK’s largest organisations, concludes that the internet giant has "a lot of ground to cover to become a serious player in the enterprise arena". The Forum's Google Reality Checker involves practitioners from over 320 organisations, and the report was based on the responses from 100 senior IT people from 57 organisations.

UK CIOs don't consider Google a valuable enterprise supplier, according to a new survey. Of the heads of IT of large British firms surveyed by bean counters at the Corporate IT Forum, more than half saw the Chocolate Factory as a company suitable for ordinary punters. Just five per cent think that it's a credible supplier to businesses. "There is huge potential for Google to do great things in the corporate market," Forum exec David Roberts said in a canned statement. "However, there are several issues - or perceived issues - holding back corporate users, mainly Google’s ‘missing features’ when compared with mainstream offerings such as Microsoft."

Outsourcing is becoming an increasingly complex task for CIOs – especially if you want it to be successful. Originally, the idea of handing all or parts of your IT infrastructure to a third party was to exploit economies of scale and access to scarce skills to deliver services for lower cost. We’ve been through the phase of “transformational outsourcing” too, where customers looked to their suppliers to manage major IT change projects – not always with great 
success. And lately, outsourcers 
are increasingly being expected to innovate for their clients, while 
also cutting costs – never an easy combination to achieve. Ollie Ross, head of research at The Corporate IT Forum, says CIOs should also look at how well their business fits with the supplier. “Look at the relative size of your company compared to the SI,” she says. Cultural fit is equally important. “You have to up your game if you want to work with a big SI. There is no point getting them to do things your way. You’ll have to work their way,” says Ross. “You need to be clear about 
what type of organisation you are. If you don’t have the structure and culture for innovation and innovative processes, you won’t accept supplier innovation.” She says innovation may not necessarily take the form of a major change: “Value may be derived from lots of small steps such as continuous service improvement.” Getting suppliers to innovate is not easy, particularly if the contract with the SI was put in place for different reasons. A prescriptive contract equals no innovation. The Corporate IT Forum recommends running innovations workshops with key suppliers. The experts Computer Weekly spoke to agree that contracts should also be considered fair on both sides, and allow the SI to reap benefits from innovations.

Technology is racing ahead faster than ever before, making it difficult for professional expertise to keep up, it has been claimed. In a recent interview with Computer Weekly, John Harris, chair of The Corporate IT Forum, claimed that years of IT outsourcing have taken their toll on skill levels within the sector. "While outsourcing did bring value, people moved jobs that should not have been moved. We outsourced our skills pipeline," he claimed. "It is important to feed the pipeline at the bottom end."

There is a debate in the IT industry about why UK corporates feel the need to outsource and offshore. Most say it's because of a skills shortage. There is no shortage of IT graduates but there is a shortage of those with the right skills," they say. John Harris, chair of The Corporate IT Forum and chief architect and head of IT strategy at pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for example told Computer weekly in a recent interview that years of outsourcing commodity IT skills has much to blame for the lack of grass-roots IT talent today. "It is important to feed the pipeline at the bottom end," he says. "While outsourcing did bring value, people moved jobs that should not have been moved. We outsourced our skills pipeline." This has meant the IT prospects for young people were effectively hamstrung. He says young people were not being given a chance to come into the industry. "Yes, it may be more economical to outsource to India, but such a job may be the type of work that gives an apprentice a real grounding [in IT]," he says. By developing skills in-house young IT apprentices who progress into future IT architecture experts will have a thorough grasp of the businesses. It may be regarded as a long game, but Harris believes clear career planning and progression can ultimately deliver high value to a business.

The buzz around cloud computing has reached a fever pitch – and not just across IT departments. Boardrooms across the globe increasingly recognise that cloud could radically change the way they manage their technology assets and computing needs. But amid all the hype, how do business executives know if any opposition they encounter from their IT department is based on technology limitations rather than cultural resistance? Given the continued growth of electronic data, the corporate world recognises that it doesn’t necessarily make sense – from either an economic and environmental perspective – to build more expensive, energy-intensive data centres to handle their computing requirements of today and beyond. At the same time, cloud’s ability to drive innovation and productivity is making it an increasingly attractive option for businesses that want to remain competitive and agile. “You can have a server in a couple of minutes, plug and play functionality and no huge barriers to entry or hassle of installation. It’s also a much fairer way of paying for IT – but you have to be eyes wide open with it,” warns John Harris, chief architect & VP global IT strategy at GlaxoSmithKline and chairman of the Corporate IT Forum.

Warwick Ashford examines the issues CIOs must consider in balancing security needs and budgetry constraints Outsourcing IT support, desktop support and infrastructure is relatively common and an increasing number of organisations are investing in outsourcing e-commerce systems, datacentre hosting and software and application development, but security outsourcing remains a challenge for many. According to a recent survey by The Corporate IT Forum, only 5% of respondents had outsourced security and 48% said they would not outsource their IT security teams. However, in reality, businesses do not have to adopt an all-or-nothing approach to security outsourcing. Instead, they can outsource only IT security activities of their business that are best suited to the model. The Corporate IT Forum survey showed that, of those respondents who had outsourced security, 29% had taken a mixed approach, using third-party contracts for commoditised areas in IT security. But how can businesses identify what is best to outsource?

The Government has announced that it is to go ahead with plans to scrap the ICT curriculum in schools in England from September. The programmes of study and attainment targets for the subject will be removed, granting schools the autonomy to set their own curriculum until a revised computer science programme is introduced in 2014. It is a bad decision and one that could condemn many young people to receiving little teaching in the subject at all for the next two years. Although the ICT curriculum has failed to meet the needs of employers, withdrawing it before a new programme of study is introduced will simply widen the gap between the best and worst teaching in schools to an unacceptable level.

Specialist charities such as housing associations and social enterprises face paying nearly four times as much for Microsoft software due to licensing changes to be introduced by the software giant in September. The changes will see housing associations and other organisations lose their designation of voluntary status and with it access to software prices that are similar to academic bodies. “One can't help but be in awe of the approach taken by certain suppliers of licensed software over their determination to increase revenue at any cost and by whatever means,” said David Roberts, executive director at user group The Corporate IT Forum.

A patchy and wary movement towards cloud computing in UK corporate IT is proving contested territory between IT and the business. Data integration is a hot zone in the general business-IT contest and, within that, cloud platforms for integration are sensitive spots. Ollie Ross, head of research at blue chip member organization The Corporate IT Forum said that with "any new development, cloud is the first option to be considered.” "What the cloud does offer organisations is a risk-free way of trying something out in terms of innovation or collaboration," Ross said. As an example of that she cited a 2011 implementation of Sabisu's cloud-based integration platform by Sabic, a chemical manufacturer. This allowed the sharing of data across organizational boundaries, and was a runner-up at the forum's "Real IT" awards in March 2012. A project outcome, according to the awards documentation, was that real- time data is presented, at Sabic, through a single TV screen. "This replaces dozens of ERP screens reviewed hourly, and has significantly improved the management of the plant."

Last week while at the grandly titled Cloud Computing World Forum, Jon Reed and I took the opportunity to sit down with John Harris, GlaxoSmithKline. We were talking to him in his capacity as part of the Corporate IT Forum leadership rather than his role with GSK. Since the news of Larry Ellison’s antics at Oracle’s cloud launch was fresh in our minds we asked whether the public pronouncements made by vendor CEO’s really matter to buyers. The answer was a surprising ‘yes.’ It turns out that while peer networking and experience exchange is top of the ‘influence’ list, technology CXOs do take notice and do make judgments based upon what they hear.

Microsoft’s decision to increase the costs of volume licensing agreements demonstrates the power software suppliers wield over their customers. In May Microsoft announced that volume licensing will see between 7.5% and 33.5% price hikes from July to bring UK prices in line with the Euro region. David Roberts, executive director at the Corporate IT forum, has 100 members representing businesses that employ over 6 million people in the UK. He called the changes “expensive, heavy and an intensely irritating waste of valuable corporate energy.” “One can't help but be in awe of the approach taken by certain suppliers of licensed software over their determination to increase revenue at any cost and by whatever means,” said Roberts. He said members are already suffering stress as a result of Oracle increasing prices for slight variations in already licensed usage. “Now it seems that Microsoft is up to its old tricks again of creating new reasons to extort money from loyal customers,” said Roberts. He said he is aware of the problems faced by 10 member organisations as a result a private meeting among member organisations and senior licensing and legal experts.

The Department for Education (DfE) has announced that it is to go ahead with plans to "disapply" the National Curriculum for ICT, removing the compulsory education framework for computer skills in schools, as well as assessment criteria. Joanna Poplawska of The Corporate IT Forum's Education and Skills Commission told Computing that, due to these measures, school students would "be left without any requirement for any framework or any structure, which means there will be some children who will not be taught ICT at all." Today's decision comes after Education Secretary Michael Gove signalled the policy change in January and the government began a public consultation process with schools, local authorities and other interested parties. The decision does not appear to have been clear-cut, however. According to the government, 58% of 328 respondents felt that the statutory Programmes of Study for ICT should be disapplied in maintained schools in England, while just 50% of 319 respondents said attaintment targets should be axed. The DfE released a statement saying: "Having carefully considered the responses to the recent public consultation, the government has decided to proceed with the proposal that schools should not be required to follow the existing Programmes of Study for Information and Communication Technology education, or the associated Attainment Targets and statutory assessment arrangements, from September 2012." The announcement, which will affect ICT in schools until the government's proposed ICT curriculum reforms in 2014, struck some as unnecessarily sudden, including Poplawska. "I think the plan was to announce this at the beginning of July, so it came much quicker than expected," Poplawska told Computing. "The Commission's worry is that schools will be now allowed to either drop ICT, or weaker schools – which struggle with the teaching of ICT, because they often don't have specialised teachers – will take this opportunity to reduce the provision of ICT teaching." "It will really be watering down what's needed in terms of an approach to ICT in schools," Poplawska added. Poplawska believes that, at the very least, a curriculum structure should remain in place, with even the existing one being "better than nothing". "It should then be reviewed regularly, due to the ever-changing nature of ICT. It's more difficult to do that than with more traditional subjects, such as English and maths, and so that would require more support and attention," she said. The Corporate IT Forum is also concerned that the government will not be able to restructure the IT curriculum in time for its 2014 target. "Coming up with a new curriculum is clearly not an easy thing to do," said Poplawska. "It would require very complex work, the involvement of teachers, government, ICT users, and so on. I don't think anyone will actually be able to say that this is going to be ready in two years' time." Commission Chairman John Harris added in a statement: "It is now absolutely critical that the government works with universities and employers to ensure that the new computer science curriculum in schools will be sufficiently innovative and exciting, both to attract more young people into IT careers and to create business leaders who understand the possibilities that technology provides."

The Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission has condemned the UK Government’s decision to scrap the ICT curriculum in schools from this September. Members of the commission, who include large corporations, educators and UK trade bodies, are urging the government to keep the current programme in place until a new computer science-based curriculum is introduced in September 2014. John Harris, chair of the Corporate IT Forum and chief architect and head of IT strategy at global pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, said the commission was disappointed government had not listened to its concerns about withdrawing the ICT curriculum from schools before the new programme is introduced. “While we agree that the current ICT curriculum is failing to meet the needs of employers and should be improved as a matter of urgency, we are extremely concerned that the absence of a programme of study or attainment targets for any period of time will widen the gap between the best and worst ICT teaching in schools to an unacceptable level, effectively condemning large numbers of children to receiving little or no ICT teaching at all,” said Harris.

The government has confirmed its intention to remove ICT teaching from the GCSE education curriculum for two years much to the dismay of IT education specialists. The plans to postpone the teaching of IT were first unveiled in January as the government works towards the creation of a new syllabus more suited to the modern era of technology, which will be introduced in 2014. The decision has caused much consternation among IT chiefs, with members of The Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission criticising the decision as "effectively condemning large numbers of children to receiving little or no ICT teaching at all". Commission chairman John Harris, who is also head of IT strategy at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, said the lack of any official programme of teaching made a bad situation even worse. "We agree that the current ICT curriculum is failing to meet the needs of employers and should be improved as a matter of urgency," he said. "We are extremely concerned that the absence of a programme of study or attainment targets for any period of time will widen the gap between the best and worst ICT teaching in schools to an unacceptable level."

The Department for Education (DfE) has announced that the current programme of ICT teaching in English schools is set to be removed as part of a wider review into the national curriculum. Schools will continue to teach ICT, but they will not be told what pupils should study until a new ICT curriculum is implemented in 2014. The decision has been met with a mixed reaction from business leaders, who are concerned about a possible IT skills shortage. The Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission criticised the decision to disapply the curriculum a full two years before a new programme of study was in place, arguing it would exacerbate the IT skills shortage.

The UK Government has announced plans to remove ICT from the GCSE curriculum for two years, a move that faces criticism from the IT industry. The government revealed plans to cut ICT studies from the curriculum back in January, along with the announcement that it will launch a revamped ICT syllabus in 2014 more suited to modern technology than learning how to make a Powerpoint presentation. The Department of Education (DoE) today confirmed that it will cut ICT from the GCSE curriculum as planned, with schools given the power to decide whether they will teach the subject or not. "In this interim period, schools will still be required to teach ICT to pupils at all key stages but teachers will have the flexibility to decide what is best for their pupils without central government prescription," the DoE said. Following the announcement, members of the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission were quick to criticise the DoE's decision, calling for the new IT syllabus to be launched sooner. It said, "We are very disappointed that the Government has not listened to our concerns about withdrawing the ICT curriculum from schools before the new computer science programme is introduced in 2014. "While we agree that the current ICT curriculum is failing to meet the needs of employers and should be improved as a matter of urgency, we are extremely concerned that the absence of a programme of study or attainment targets for any period of time will widen the gap between the best and worst ICT teaching in schools to an 'unacceptable level', effectively condemning large numbers of children to receiving little or no ICT teaching at all. "The UK is already facing a major IT skills crisis. Disapplying the current ICT curriculum in September a full two years before it is replaced by a new computer science teaching programme, which will inevitably take time to become embedded within schools, will lead to even greater problems by 2020." The government is also looking into revamping ICT at an A-Level standard, a move that will no doubt face just as much criticism.

The Department for Education (DfE) has decided to disapply ICT from the curriculum from September, following a public consultation. The Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission shares concerns of the possible knock-on effects on the UK’s IT skills gap, and condemned the government’s decision. John Harris, chair of the Corporate IT Forum and chief architect and head of IT strategy at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said: “We are very disappointed that the government has not listened to our concerns about withdrawing the ICT curriculum from schools before the new computer science programme is introduced in 2014. “While we agree that the current ICT curriculum is failing to meet the needs of employers and should be improved as a matter of urgency, we are extremely concerned that the absence of a programme of study or attainment targets for any period of time will widen the gap between the best and worst ICT teaching in schools to an ‘unacceptable level’, effectively condemning large numbers of children to receiving little or no ICT teaching at all. He added: “The UK is already facing a major IT skills crisis. Disapplying the current ICT curriculum a full two years before it is replaced by a new computer science teaching programme, which will inevitably take time to become embedded within schools, will lead to even greater problems by 2020.”

Up to 15 new University Technical Colleges (UTCs) have been approved for opening in 2013 and 2014 by the Department for Education. Meanwhile, plans by the government to overhaul ICT training for young people as part of the National Curriculum have come under fire from the Corporate IT Forum's Education and Skills Commission. It argued that many thousands of young adults could be left lacking the key IT skills which employers look for when entering the jobs market if the way the subject is taught is completely altered.

Graduates of IT can sometimes be blinkered, thinking the only sensible career paths are with the big-name technology companies such as Google or Microsoft, according to Joanna Poplawska, performance director of The Corporate IT Forum. She says: "Less than half of IT graduates go into IT, with many working in the non-IT areas, helping businesses use technology to grow. They just have to realise there are plenty of exciting opportunities out there. It's realising that buying a carton of orange juice involves a lot of information technology skills, starting from the plantations to the packaging to the recording of the transaction when you pay for it."

category of Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility. The Real IT Awards celebrates the achievements of corporate IT in stimulating organisational success and is judged independently by senior IT professionals in leading global, European and UK organisations. The Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility category evaluates how a business takes account of its economic, social and environmental impact in the way it operates its IT strategy. The Balfour project was selected for its print strategy which minimises impact on the environment through its use of M2’s managed print services. The partnership has led to a more aligned printing strategy, combined with significant cost savings.

The Education and Skills Commission, a group established by the Corporate IT Forum, is concerned by the Department of Education’s proposals to disapply the current ICT curriculum. The removals of current compulsory study activities, fear the members of the Education and Skills Commission, could result in some schools being able to choose to provide little or no ICT education at all for the next two school years. The Commission, however, in its submission to the consultation, point out that ICT skills education is already in crisis, and that the proposal to disapply the current curriculum could widen the gap between the best and the worst ICT teaching in schools, leading to great problems by the end of this decade

IT leaders from some of Britain’s largest companies have joined forces with educational experts to warn against Government proposals to remove the current ICT curriculum in schools in September. Members of the Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission are urging the Government to keep the current programme of teaching in place until a new, more challenging computer science based curriculum is implemented in September 2014. Whilst agreeing that the current ICT curriculum fails to meet the needs of industry and is in need of urgent improvement, they fear the removal of the existing mandatory activities will result in some schools providing virtually no ICT education at all for two school years. This could result in the gap between the best and worst ICT teaching in schools opening to an ‘unacceptable level’.

The government has been criticised for its plans to remove ICT education from the national curriculum for secondary schools by the Corporate IT Forum's Education and Skills Commission. According to the organisation - which represents the interests of the largest corporate ICT users in the UK - any plans to scrap compulsory ICT education could have a lasting effect on the future job prospects of young people.

The Corporate IT Forum's Education and Skills Commission is warning against the government's plans to withdraw the ICT curriculum from schools. The public consultation on the proposal closed yesterday. The Corporate IT Forum, the body that represents the largest corporate users of ICT in the UK, fears the removal of the curriculum - in response to critcism that it does not meet future employers' needs - will result in some schools providing virtually no ICT education at all for two school years.

With the deadline looming for responses to the government’s proposal to axe ICT from the school curriculum one of the industry skills groups has called for a rethink. The public consultation over the changes to the way computer skills are taught in schools ends today and among those chipping in with its views is the Corporate IT Forum’s Education and Skills Commission, which argues that the strategy should be an overhaul not the chop for the current lessons.

The Corporate IT Forum's Education and Skills Commission is warning against the government's plans to withdraw the ICT curriculum from schools. The public consultation on the proposal closed yesterday. The Corporate IT Forum, the body that represents the largest corporate users of ICT in the UK, fears the removal of the curriculum - in response to critcism that it does not meet future employers' needs - will result in some schools providing virtually no ICT education at all for two school years.

An industry group has voiced concern over the government's plan to scrap ICT lessons in English schools. The Corporate IT Forum's Education and Skills Commission warned that withdrawing the present curriculum before a new programme of computer courses has been properly developed could leave many pupils disadvantaged.

The Corporate IT Forum's Education and Skills Commission is warning against the government's plans to withdraw the ICT curriculum from schools. The public consultation on the proposal closed yesterday. The Corporate IT Forum, the body that represents the largest corporate users of ICT in the UK, fears the removal of the curriculum - in response to critcism that it does not meet future employers' needs - will result in some schools providing virtually no ICT education at all for two school years.

A new organisation made up of UK IT leaders and educational experts has warned against education secretary Michael Gove's proposals to reform ICT education in schools from September.

The current ICT curriculum, which teaches how to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, is to be scrapped and replaced with one focused on computer science and programming. Announcing a consultation on the reform in January, Gove said there is a significant and growing base of evidence, not least from Ofsted inspections, demonstrating there persistent problems with the quality and effectiveness of ICT education in schools.

However, IT leaders from some of Britain's largest companies have joined forces with educational experts to warn against the timetable of reform, saying students will be left in a vacuum. Under Gove's proposal ICT would remain a compulsory subject within the National Curriculum, subject to the outcomes of the National Curriculum review. However, schools would be freed of the requirement to adhere to the existing curriculum.

Members of the Education and Skills Commission, a group established by the Corporate IT Forum, fear the removal of existing mandatory activities will result in some schools providing virtually no ICT education at all for two school years.

Employers have criticised the government’s computer science GCSE work for having a vendor agenda which means that it may fail to deliver business-ready IT graduates. The Corporate IT Forum has told The Reg it feels IT suppliers have a "very significant" degree of influence on the Department for Education's work on the new GCSE. The group represents 320 organisations – altogether employing 145,000 professional IT staff – ranging from McDonalds and Balfour Beatty to GCHQ and HMRC. The group said it thinks the proposed GCSE runs the risk of turning out students qualified to support Microsoft or Cisco products rather than for serving businesses outside of tech. The corporate IT group told us it wants more input from its members about the new qualification.

The gap between the best and worst ICT teaching in England's schools will open to an "unacceptable level" if plans to ditch the subject from the national curriculum go ahead, experts have warned the government. Information technology leaders from some of the UK's largest companies have joined forces to urge the government to keep Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in schools. Current government proposals will see existing ICT lessons replaced by computer science, which the Department for Education (DfE) claims is a more "rigorous" programme of study than its predecessor. The move, which comes into play in September, will grant schools the autonomy to set their own curriculum. But the Education and Skills Commission, the group established by The Corporate IT Forum, which includes corporate giants such as McDonalds, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Balfour Beatty, are objecting to the plans.

The government has been warned not to withdraw the current IT curriculum in schools this September if it does not have an interim replacement programme, even though the curriculum has been deemed inadequate in preparing students for careers in the industry. Members of the Corporate IT Forum, a body that represents some of the biggest UK businesses in the IT industry and over 10,000 IT professionals, said removing the IT programme with nothing to replace it is likely to cause more harm than good.

An influential group of UK IT directors is calling on the government to replace ICT education with "IT in business" lessons. The Corporate IT Forum's Education and Skills Commission said it would be potentially harmful to the UK if the now defunct ICT curriculum is not replaced. Joanna Poplawska, spokesperson for the commission, said it is worried that the UK government lacks a grasp of business computing, and is more interested in creating the next Facebook or Google, leaving a huge gap in IT skills that can be applied in business.

A commission comprising UK IT leaders and educational experts has warned the government against proposals to remove the current ICT curriculum in schools from September. The existing ICT curriculum, which teaches students to use computing applications such as spreadsheets, is to be scrapped from September and replaced with one focused on computer science and programming in September 2014. At the time it was proposed, the move was lauded by the IT industry, but members of the Education and Skills Commission now fear that the removal of existing mandatory activities will result in some schools not providing ICT education at all for two years. The commission was established by The Corporate IT Forum, a body that represents corporate users of ICT in the UK. It has 25 members from a range of private and public sector organisations and is aimed at tackling what it sees as a growing IT skills crisis.

With the deadline looming for responses to the government's proposal to axe ICT from the school cirriculum one of the industry skills groups has called for a rethink. The public consultation over the changes to the way computer skills are taught in schools ends today and among those chipping in with its views is the Corporate IT Forum's Education and Skills Commission, which argues that the strategy should be an overhaul not the chop for the current lessons. "The Corporate IT Forum Education and Skills Commission agrees that the current ICT curriculum is failing to meet the needs of employers and should be improved as a matter of urgency. We are very concerned that the absence of a programme of study or attainment targets for any period of time will severely disadvantage large groups of children," said Commission Chairman John Harris, Chair of The Corporate IT Forum.

Mobile business intelligence efforts are on the rise in corporate organisations, according to a Corporate IT Forum survey conducted in February and March 2012. Dani Briscoe, research services manager at the Forum, said that while the organisation’s 2011 BI survey disclosed a focus on cloud, 2012 is seeing a “move towards development for mobile.” Cloud computing enjoys a more general popularity among the blue-chip organisation’s members, 36 of whom responded to the BI survey. There were 56 individual responses.

Business may feel three or four years is plenty of time to get ready for the new data protection framework in Europe, but the clock is ticking and it is later than they think. The Corporate IT Forum recommends that organisations should ensure they have clear policies signed (and re-signed) by individuals, and supported by appropriate technology to aid maintenance of policy awareness. "Use policies and user input to help define the rules for tools, and use tools to segregate personal and corporate data on mobile devices," says Ollie Ross, head of research at The Corporate IT Forum. "Although the usability of digital rights management (DRM) is not straightforward, it’s easy to apply simple controls such as preventing data copying and document printing."

The government has opened a consultation on its plans to change R&D tax credits in a move to encourage more technology companies to invest in innovation. David Roberts, director at The Corporate IT Forum, said the ATL R&D proposal was a welcome move. “We are not going to grow the economy or return to being a world force without innovation and without unique products that are protected from copy-cats who have not paid the price of the supporting R&D,” said Roberts.

Diseases of the Developing World: Winner in the Partnership group, overall runner up. Employees in the Research and Development aligned innovation group (R&D IT Lite) identified the opportunity to securely connect GSK scientists with external scientists anywhere in the world who are researching the same topics. It required a solution that allowed access to users outside of the GSK internal network regardless of location and device, but without exposing GSK proprietary data.

High street restaurant chain, Zizzi, has won an award for its work with electronic donation charity Pennies. In the 8th annual, Real IT Awards, the restaurant brand came out on top in the Corporate, Social and Environmental Responsibility category. Speaking about the initiative, which gives diners the opportunity to donate small change via Chip 'N' PIN, the judges said: "The Gondola initiative blew us away. What a cool thing to do!"

Zizzi’s introduction of micro-donation scheme Pennies, the electronic charity box, beat high profile IT solutions to be crowned project of the year at the 8th Real IT Awards. The awards, judged by senior IT players in Global, European and UK organisations, highlight achievements of Corporate IT in stimulating business success. ‘Pennies with Zizzi’ was the category winner of Corporate, Social and Environmental Responsibility as well as overall winner.

We’ve had the perfect start to spring here at Pennies with the exciting news today that our partnership with Zizzi’s has won an award. ‘Pennies with Zizzi’ has been crowned project of the year at the 8th Real IT Awards as well as picking up the category prize for Corporate, Social and Environmental Responsibility.

Restaurant chain Zizzi has been awarded the project of the year award for a charity donation project led by its internal IT team. The Corporate IT Forum rewarded Zizzi for its 'Pennies with Zizzi' project, which involved working with The Pennies Foundation charity to create an electronic charity box that allows customers paying by card at the restaurant to donate spare change to charity.

Restaurant chain Zizzi has been awarded the project of the year award for a charity donation project led by its internal IT team. The Corporate IT Forum rewarded Zizzi for its 'Pennies with Zizzi' project, which involved working with The Pennies Foundation charity to create an electronic charity box that allows customers paying by card at the restaurant to donate spare change to charity. "Zizzi showed its determination to create a way of supporting casual donations in the new age of electronic payment. They paid close attention to communications to make sure all stakeholders - particularly customers - would embrace it.

Zizzi’s introduction of micro-donation scheme Pennies, the electronic charity box, beat high profile IT solutions to be crowned project of the year at the 8th Real IT Awards. The awards, judged by senior IT players in Global, European and UK organisations, highlight achievements of Corporate IT in stimulating business success. ‘Pennies with Zizzi’ was the category winner of Corporate, Social and Environmental Responsibility as well as overall winner.

Zizzi Restaurant picked up the IT project of the year accolade in The Corporate IT Forum’s 8th Real IT Awards held last night. Zizzi’s ‘Pennies with Zizzi’ project involved working with The Pennies Foundation to create an electronic charity box that allows customers paying by card to donate spare change to charity. The corporate, social and environmental responsbility project is already on track to deliver £100,000 of micro donations to The Prince’s Trust.

The Corporate IT Forum, an independent body that brings together IT practitioners from over 320 of the UK’s leading organisations, last night announced the winners of the 8th Real IT Awards. This year’s winners represent a broad spectrum of corporate IT users, and include leading public and private sector organisations such as HM Revenue and Customs, Balfour Beatty, The Environment Agency and British Sugar, as well as high street retailers New Look and Pizza Express. The winning entries from across the 13 categories are equally diverse and range from the world’s first ever iPhone app for payment by smartphone, to a targeted flood warning service for emergency flood responders and a rapid deployment of IT project in the new Tripoli.

Restaurant sequence Zizzi has been awarded a plan of a year endowment for a gift concession plan led by a inner IT team. The Corporate IT Forum rewarded Zizzi for a ‘Pennies with Zizzi’ project, that concerned operative with The Pennies Foundation gift to emanate an electronic gift box that allows business profitable by label during a grill to benefaction gangling change to charity.

Restaurant chain Zizzi has been awarded the project of the year award for a charity donation project led by its internal IT team. The Corporate IT Forum rewarded Zizzi for its 'Pennies with Zizzi' project, which involved working with The Pennies Foundation charity to create an electronic charity box that allows customers paying by card at the restaurant to donate spare change to charity. "Zizzi showed its determination to create a way of supporting casual donations in the new age of electronic payment. They paid close attention to communications to make sure all stakeholders - particularly customers - would embrace it. "We were very impressed by the way this was driven by the IT department," said the Real IT Awards judges, which included representatives from DHL, Laing O'Rourke and South West Water.

The term big data is on fire. And while it is still early days, with much confusion in the market, corporate organisations are broaching big data projects, confirm analysts, suppliers and users. UK blue-chip user group The Corporate IT Forum is one group that has expressed interest in big data. “While our members have not really done much in this area, they are interested in how you manage data to stop sprawl and in the issues of managing and analysing unstructured data,” a representative said. Big data encompasses unstructured and semi-structured data types and is a term of convenience for petabytes and exabytes of data volume.

The Corporate IT Forum’s annual survey on corporate IT strategies flagged more positive developments for the BI market over the ensuing 12 months. The study, compiled via responses garnered from almost 700 IT professionals between October and November 2011, revealed a 10.7 percent rise in the number or survey participants planning to implement a BI strategy in the coming year. In addition, 45.8 percent of respondents indicated that they already have a BI strategy in place.

The IT skills gap is a hot topic at the moment. Much of the discussion focuses on skills in education, but there is a crucial piece missing in our attempt to plug the gap: what about the people who have been through the system and are already working in IT? In my view, learning is critical to the success of a business and mentoring has a very important part to play in developing new skills. Schemes are already in place in many companies, but a lot of them are failing to provide the breadth of skills and knowledge needed to create a talented and innovative industry and ensure a successful future for UK IT.

The latest Reality Checker report from The Corporate IT Forum reveals that BlackBerry still leads the corporate smartphone market but with growth in the use of consumer products, Apple is nipping ever closer at its heels, writes Linda Endersby. The survey of IT heads at some of the UK's largest organisations showed BlackBerry is still the corporate device of choice, in use at over a third of organisations, but only 12% of staff used it as their personal device.

A colleague interviewed John Harris, chairman of IT user group The Corporate IT Forum and chief architect and vice president of global IT strategy at GlaxoSmithKline, recently and got his views of the UK skills shortage. He, like many others, is of the opinion that years of outsourcing commodity IT skills is contributing to a lack of grass-roots IT talent today, because the talent pipeline is not being fed at the bottom end.

While the government has set out plans it hopes will help employers take on apprentices and ensure the UK workforce has the skills that businesses need, there is a reality gap and this gap appears impassable in the IT sector, where technical skills are in high demand, but young people are not being hired or trained effectively. John Harris is chairman of IT user group The Corporate IT Forum and chief architect and vice president of global IT strategy at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. He is working with members of the Forum to make skills development a major focus for the IT director's group. He says, “We are trying to make apprenticeship a hot topic. Unanimously everyone sees this as important.”

According to a new report from the Corporate IT Forum, a growing number of UK businesses are opting to adopt virtual desktop and server technologies in order to cut down on costs. Some 60 per cent of firms that have virtual servers have opted for them in order to increase their efficiency. They are also helping to ease people into the idea of cloud computing by making the distinction between virtualisation and private cloud computing less obvious.

The tablet and the smartphone have now become a common sight in UK corporate businesses and the latest Reality Checker from the Corporate IT Forum, which surveyed heads of IT at some of the UK’s largest organisations, has found that BlackBerry is still the corporate device of choice, but Apple is hot on its heels and the favourite on a personal basis.

“2012 will be a year of change and smarter working, with IT departments focused on improving processes and finding ‘new ways of doing things’, a survey of 170 UK businesses reveals. While cost cutting was the key goal across all business sectors in 2011, ‘doing more with less’ through optimisation and innovation is the mantra for this year, according to the latest annual Strategy Survey from The Corporate IT Forum, set up to share best practice. The survey shows that budgets across all sectors will be concentrated on key business applications, alignment of IT and the business, and risk management. There is also substantial planned focus on infrastructure investment and ‘working smarter’.”

Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lead the way when it comes to adopting the benefits on offer from cloud computing. According to Business Computing World 60 per cent of medium sized firms are using cloud solutions in one form or another. ... The figures are broadly in line with those found in a recent study conducted by the Corporate IT Forum. Of 170 organisations questioned, 60 per cent said that they were currently using the cloud in their day to day operations

A new Association for CIOs across Europe, called the European CIO Association, (AISBL) will be launched formally on February 7th 2012 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union. Headquartered in Brussels to increase its access to European institutions, the not-for-profit Association will be operational across seven countries and is designed to support the work of Chief Information Officers in larger international businesses through information exchange, meetings and senior level professional development services. The European CIO Association will also represent the collective views and suggestions of CIOs and large corporate users of IT services to governments and the supply-side vendor communities at EU level.

2012 will be a year of change and smarter working, with IT departments focused on improving processes and finding ‘new ways of doing things’, according to the latest annual Strategy Survey from The Corporate IT Forum.

A new, Brussels-based association for CIOs has launched today. Called the European CIO Association, the not-for-profit organisation will operate across seven countries and is aimed at CIOs in larger, international companies. The association's board includes chairman Michael Gorritz, who is group CIO of Daimler, David Roberts, executive director of The Corporate IT Forum in the UK, Thomas Endres, group CIO of Deutsche Lufthansa, Maarten Buikhuisen, director of global process management at Heineken International, Joss Delissen, CIO of PostNord, Gianluigi Castelli, executive VP of ICT at energy company ENI and Sylvain Jouanny, director at Finaki.

2012 will be a year of change and smarter working, with IT departments focused on improving processes and finding "new ways of doing things", a survey of 170 UK businesses reveals. 2012 will be a year of change and smarter working, with IT departments focused on improving processes and finding "new ways of doing things", a survey of 170 UK businesses reveals. While cost cutting was the key goal across all business sectors in 2011, "doing more with less" through optimisation and innovation is the mantra for this year, according to the latest annual Strategy Survey from The Corporate IT Forum, set up to share best practice.

A new, Brussels-based association for CIOs has launched today. Called the European CIO Association, the not-for-profit organisation will operate across seven countries and is aimed at CIOs in larger, international companies. The association's board includes chairman Michael Gorritz, who is group CIO of Daimler, David Roberts, executive director of The Corporate IT Forum in the UK, Thomas Endres, group CIO of Deutsche Lufthansa, Maarten Buikhuisen, director of global process management at Heineken International, Joss Delissen, CIO of PostNord, and Gianluigi Castelli, executive VP of ICT at energy company ENI.

IT departments will be focusing on ushering a new era of change and looking to come up with smarter ways of working, according to a new survey. The latest Corporate IT Forum Strategy Survey 2012 found that chief information officers (CIO) were planning on casting a sharp eye over budgets across all departments and focusing on what is and isn't working.

Like server room monitoring, server virtualisation can help businesses reduce energy consumption in the data centre. The use of virtual servers is another option for businesses seeking to minimise power consumption and keep their bills down. When businesses virtualise their servers, they are able to run many units from a single box, and ensure a greater proportion of the total capacity on each server is utilised. And a recent study conducted by the Corporate IT Forum found that 60 per cent of companies are now using virtual servers to reduce IT costs.

A new, Brussels-based association for CIOs has launched today. Called the European CIO Association, the not-for-profit organisation will operate across seven countries and is aimed at CIOs in larger, international companies. The association's board includes chairman Michael Gorritz, who is group CIO of Daimler, David Roberts, executive director of The Corporate IT Forum in the UK, Thomas Endres, group CIO of Deutsche Lufthansa, Maarten Buikhuisen, director of global process management at Heineken International, Joss Delissen, CIO of PostNord, and Gianluigi Castelli, executive VP of ICT at energy company ENI.

UK businesses are investing in virtual servers to reduce information technology costs, it has been reported. A survey conducted by the Corporate IT Forum found that 60 per cent of companies are using virtual servers to increase operational efficiencies.

It’s taken a while but companies are now really starting to get their collective heads around the benefits of cloud computing. A recent survey of 170 UK businesses conducted by the Corporate IT Forum found that more than 60 per cent now feel the need to use the technology as a way of improving their services while at the same time reducing costs.

Mobile security remains a challenging area that many organisations are finding difficult, said Dani Briscoe, research services manager at The Corporate IT Forum. The forum’s End User Device Reality Checker study highlighted the number of personal devices allowed on the corporate network, as well as the numerous corporate devices provided to staff.

2012 will be a year of change and smarter working, with IT departments focused on improving processes and finding ‘new ways of doing things’, according to the latest annual Strategy Survey from The Corporate IT Forum. Whilst cost cutting was the key goal across all business sectors in 2011, ‘doing more with less’ through optimisation and innovation is the mantra for 2012 and a significant percentage (42.5%) of CIOs are expecting IT expenditure to increase this year. For respondents from businesses the CIO focus is primarily on supporting organisational strategies for organic growth through new markets and products and the retail sector intends to lead the way in innovation with projects focused on consumerisation. Budgets across all sectors as a whole will be concentrated on key business applications, alignment of IT and the business and Risk Management. There is also substantial planned focus on infrastructure investment with the added twist of ‘working smarter’.

Customers are going to continue to want to do more with less through the course of this year even though a significant number of those controlling the IT budget purse strings expect their funds to increase. Things have moved on from the pressure to use IT as a cost cutting tool last year but the environment remains challenging and where budget will be allocated is around supporting growth and innovation. The Corporate IT Forum, a body promoting best practices in IT, found that there will be some efforts to deal with consumerisation as well as using technology to support moves into emerging markets.

Server virtualisation is becoming increasingly commonplace, according to a new survey carried out by the Corporate IT Forum. The research found that the technology was being deployed by 60 per cent of the forum’s members, largely in order to cut costs and consolidate the space needed for the servers in data centres. Dani Briscoe, the Corporate IT Forum’s research services manager, said, “Virtualisation is established. It is a known thing. People are happy with it. The distinction between private cloud and virtualisation is becoming blurred.”

The Corporate IT Forum’s annual survey on corporate IT strategies flagged more positive developments for the BI market over the ensuing 12 months. The study, compiled via responses garnered from almost 700 IT professionals between October and November 2011, revealed a 10.7 percent rise in the number or survey participants planning to implement a BI strategy for 2012. In addition, 45.8 percent of respondents indicated that they already have a BI strategy

With so much lip service being paid to virtualisation, it comes as no surprise that it has already become a mainstream facility. A survey from the Corporate IT Forum revealed that 60 per cent of its members are using virtualisation in order to consolidate their servers and cut costs in a difficult climate. The retail sector is the number one industry for embracing virtualisation, with 65 per cent of IT departments using it, although the manufacturing sector has the lowest proportion at 48 per cent.

Server virtualisation is proving a popular option among companies that are trying to cut costs, an expert has stated. According to Dani Briscoe, the Corporate IT Forum's research services manager, businesses are not increasing or cutting their investment in IT at the moment. This, she said, is partly because many firms are turning towards virtualisation, since they believe it can help them cut their hardware support expenditure. "Virtualisation is established – it is a known thing [and] people are happy with it," Ms Briscoe commented.

More than 60 per cent of companies are experiencing the benefits of running virtualisation as a way of reducing their IT costs. This is according to the Corporate IT Forum, whose recent survey of 170 organisations found that the technology was growing rapidly in all sectors but some are still more keen on it than others

A survey from the Corporate IT Forum has found that more than 60% of its members are running virtualisation for server consolidation and to reduce IT costs. “Virtualisation is established. It is a known thing. People are happy with it. The distinction between private cloud and virtualisation is becoming blurred,” said Dani Briscoe, research services manager at the Corporate IT Forum.

A growing number of data management professionals are looking at innovative ways to use data to enhance corporate performance, according to three surveys about IT strategic priorities in 2012. The Corporate IT Forum’s annual survey of IT strategies for 2012, conducted in October and early November 2011 among 692 IT professionals, found a 10.7% rise in the number of respondents putting a business intelligence or management information strategy in place for 2012, over the 45.8% who already have a strategy in place.

The decorations have come down and the lights have been out away for another year but as we look back over 2011 there are still plenty of things worth talking about. Ollie Ross, Head of Research at The Corporate IT Forum, said that perhaps unsurprisingly, corporate IT budgets have remained tight in line with the unstable global economy. However, this has inspired the IT function to focus on delivering 'more for less'. "A firm hand on expenditure has been matched with a determination to use both mainstream and emerging technologies and services innovatively," he says this has been seen particularly in terms of the attitude towards the cloud. "Realising the benefits of virtualisation has been a core focus for many corporate IT users this year. 2011 has seen the corporate IT function take a serious approach to the opportunities offered by the different aspects of cloud computing. Overall, initiatives involving a 'private cloud' have been more favourable with corporate IT users than public or 'mixed' cloud offering," he says. Ross also talks of the buzz word of last year 'consumerisation' and reveals it is spreading far and wide across the customer base.

IT industry figures have hit out against plans to scrap compulsory work experience for GCSE students. The comments follow government proposals to remove the statutory duty for schools to provide every young person at Key Stage 4 (14-16 year olds) with work-related learning. David Roberts, executive director of industry body The Corporate IT Forum, said the impact of removing work experience for students at GCSE level would be minimal. “Work experience is important, but it is debatable whether experience as shallow as that delivered by the current mandatory system is the best way of approaching it. We’d much rather see the current system replaced by a good mentoring scheme and better career advice,” he said.

Ken Bunce of Friends Life and the Corporate IT Forum's Information Security Service Leadership Board features in The Times about IT security outsourcing.

In this UKtech50 video, judge John Harris gives his views on the state of UK IT and the role of IT leaders in the UK economy.

The Corporate IT Forum, the leading representative of large corporate IT users, is calling for entries to its 8th annual Real IT Awards. Designed and judged by large, enterprise-level IT leaders, the awards aim to recognise those IT projects that have contributed to real business success. Past winners include Marks and Spencer, Volkswagen, City of Westminster and Pizza Express, which scooped last year’s IT Project of the Year. Over the next month organisations are encouraged to submit details of IT projects that have delivered tangible business benefits in 13 categories, six of which are brand new for this year and have been introduced to reflect the latest industry developments and changing priorities of corporate IT users.

Measuring security in supply chains is inherently difficult due to their "third party" nature. Various contracts will be governing the relationship and it is a careful balancing act to negotiate around what is formalised within the contract and what makes for a pragmatic safeguard, writes Dani Briscoe, research services manager at The Corporate IT Forum. For the full article, click on Read More.

David Roberts, executive director at the Corporate IT Forum (TIF), says the organisation has received complaints that virtualisation makes licencing significantly more complicated, with others experiencing increased licencing costs. Recent user comments from TIF's Virtual Licence Management Workshop included: "We are living in a virtualised world where keeping on top of the necessary licencing is creating confusion as vendors try to get their licencing rules to keep pace with the technology." "There is no homogeneous approach to licencing around the world," said one user. Another said: "Sometimes it seems as if the market likes the complexity so it can baffle organisations."

... Harris says that the traditional career path in which people would start as a junior analyst, become a programmer then senior analyst and then architect has now largely gone. He says: “That raises the issue: how do we develop talent?” The question has led to Harris introducing a groundbreaking mentorship scheme among the Forum’s members. Whereas most mentorship schemes pair junior and senior employees from the same company, Harris’s looks to connect people from different companies or industries, or even from direct competitors. But doesn’t this employee and information sharing between companies raise thorny questions about the need to be competitive, or worse, result in breaches of intellectual property rules? Harris says that the information shared, even via mentorship, can be valuable without giving away trade secrets. “We tend to work under Chatham House rules, so you know what’s being said is as private as you want it to be. But it’s about what you share. An efficient email service is unlikely to help us develop products quicker than competitors, or commercialise or market them better. But it’s a problem we all share.”

... Consumerisation of technology provides the IT department with a golden opportunity to win friends and influence people by allowing them to use their own devices at work and unblocking access to social media sites, where appropriate. "IT can seem to drag behind a little, but we have evidence of IT and marketing now working together," Ollie Ross says.

A survey conducted by the Corporate IT Forum reports IT directors are increasingly deploying tablet devices. In the Consumerisation Reality Checker survey of 58 IT directors, 34 said they are already providing tablets to staff in various roles across the business

David Roberts, executive director at the Corporate IT Forum, said Oracle is losing touch with customer realities. "There is now a gap between customer expectations and the ability to deliver what the customer wants," David Roberts said. "Organisations are becoming nervous at the lack of roadmap delivery and are concerned at the potential complexity and capability of the 'one size fits all' middleware platform vision. And if it costs them money, they'll also be cross," Roberts said.

The lively CIO panel debate from Computing's recent IT Leaders' Forum event on Infrastructure and Platform as a Service. The panel is chaired by John Harris, chairman of the Corporate IT Forum, and chief architect, GlaxoSmithKline.

"Corporates certainly aren't sitting Canut-like against this endless tide of computing devices and cost-saving opportunities. However, maturity in large-scale IT management and application means the Chromebook will be evaluated critically and thoroughly - and in good time, despite promises of faster, easier and much cheaper," said Ollie Ross, research manager at The Corporate IT Forum.

...Members [of the Corporate IT Forum] are currently involved in determining and implementing KPIs that show value and progress. Just over 60% [of members surveyed] do have some measure in place and this varies from showing alignment to legislation and regulations to meeting and achieving SLAs agreed with the business. Value is demonstrated through the reduction in security issues or failed changes; alignment to external compliance and audit. One head of IT from the food distribution sector commented "We measure success in terms of compliance to the external audit and PCIDSS requirements. We will also demonstrate through the reduction in security issues and failed changes, etc."

As a member of the Corporate IT Forum, where enterprises come together to share experiences and learning, Fabes is keen on the mentorship scheme the body operates. Whereas many organisations offer internal schemes, this one organises mentorships from different organisations, sometimes even direct competitors. "...I think it’s great for my guys to get an external perspective on developments in IT – within both our sector and other industries – then bring that knowledge back.” Fabes encourages his team to attend [Forum] seminars and workshops where possible. “It’s useful to know how others approach the challenges we all have in IT.”

McDonald's has recently introduced contactless payment technology into all of its UK restaurants. UK IT director Mark Fabes talks about the programme.

John Harris, the chairman of the corporate IT forum discusses the benefits of external mentorship schemes. Can competitors share people and knowledge?

The wider IT change programme was acclaimed at this year’s Real IT Awards, from The Corporate IT Forum, in the partnership category. Gaines said that particular value the award recognised was that “for the first time many people in our business were able to see all of it. It was a massive educational activity that generated a greater sense of team and togetherness. Most had learned the job on the job. That was a huge unintended benefit. It put a smile on the face of our board directors!”

Simmonds explained how at a recent meeting of the IT directors' group Corporate IT Forum with, almost everyone who said they used intrusion detection systems admitted they had deployed the IDS on the external side of the firewall, which gave great statistics, which presumably justified the cost. He said, "This is actually a very unprofessional way to run security."

The IT skills shortage has long been an issue but it's been made worse by the outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, and a growing reluctance of young people to work in the industry. The result is insufficient home-grown IT talent entering businesses. The Corporate IT Forum (CITF) is one of the organisations trying to address IT skills development by tapping into the expertise of its 320 member organisations and 10,000 individual members. Much of the organisation's work is about helping businesses make savings and create value through the use of IT. Members share knowledge through case studies and innovation sessions and collaborate with other members embarking on similar projects. A focus for the CITF is developing skills and chairman John Harris is looking at several ways the organisation can help boost IT skills in the longer term.

Pizza Express and Costa Coffee walked off with plaudits ringing in their ears at this year’s Real IT Awards for data-focused customer insight projects. The Awards, held in London on 9th March, and organised by The Corporate IT Forum, seek to recognise real business IT projects.

Around one third of CIOs expect to invest more in 2011 compared with last year, according to the latest Strategy Survey from The Corporate IT Forum. Overall results from the survey reflect a positive outlook for the year ahead from the UK IT industry, with 61 percent of CIOs planning to maintain or increase their investment levels and 29 percent focusing on organic growth. Is investment going to increase in 2011? We would like to hear what you think.

The Corporate IT Forum declares the winners of the 7th Real IT Awards Winning projects showcase the innovation, clever thinking and visionary approach being applied in corporate IT today The Corporate IT Forum, the leading representative of large corporate IT users, last night (9th March) announced the winners of the 7th Real IT Awards at the Park Plaza Riverside Hotel, on London’s South Bank. The Real IT Awards represent the pinnacle of achievement in corporate IT and recognise outstanding IT projects that have delivered tangible benefits to their businesses. This year’s winners include Pizza Express, Whitbread, Volkswagen Group, Marks and Spencer, Severn Trent Water, Nursing Midwifery Council and Westminster City Council.

... But despite all the obvious benefits, the looming specter of data protection and security is never far from risk officers' minds. There are any number of security and privacy concerns that go with cloud computing, according to John Harris, chairman of the Corporate IT Forum. "How do you authenticate in the cloud? Who is responsible for data? Where are services being hosted? Where and how are they being backed up?," he says. "How can you be sure that the provider can be trusted to handle your data securely, effectively, and will adhere to your policies and regulatory requirements? It's a question of balancing the competitive cost of not using the cloud, against the risks of actually using it."

I facilitated an event in London last weeek dealing with the integration of iPads (and other post-PC devices) into the corporate environment. The organisation had to move the event into a bigger, more central venue: there were at least three times as many takers as for most normal events. The event itself was under Chatham House rules, so this is not a report. Anything in this posting comes from my pre-event research. But simply: the size of the response to this event shows what a topical topic this is (if I may put it that way). And yes, the stimulus from the “Christmas present factor” (or other ways that top executives acquire iPads and then demand to be able to use them) is real; but so too is the portfolio of business uses and softer, but no less real, benefits that are emerging.

A third of CIOs will be investing more in 2011 compared to last year, according to a recent survey. This latest Strategy Survey is from The Corporate IT Forum. Overall results from the survey reflect a positive outlook for the year ahead from the UK IT industry, with 61% of CIOs planning to maintain or increase their investment levels and 29% focusing on organic growth.

John Harris, who took over as chairman of the Corporate IT Forum in July 2010, believes technology will make running IT easier. Speaking to ComputerWeekly.com last year he said, "As the basic technology gets easier, some of the fire-fighting can go. It will be more about understanding and managing services well. It will be just IT, and businesses make use of it in certain ways to grow."

This could be an important year for data management, and business intelligence in particular in the UK, according to a recent survey. CIOs and retail in particular are optimistic about their IT projects.

Most IT leaders wouldn't countenance the idea of replacing their PC estate with Apple's Mac alternatives, but there is a growing acceptance that employees may be more comfortable with using their home system at work, said David Roberts, executive director of the blue chip IT users group, the Corporate IT Forum. "So it may well be the case that there will be more Mac systems in the enterprise in future," he added. But can Apple really be treated as enterprise ready? Its approach to security may give some IT leaders pause for thought. Read more: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/1899050/security-derail-apple-s-attempt-woo-corporates#ixzz1IGujV6Oh Computing - Insight for IT leaders Claim your free subscription today.

... The result will mean dramatic changes to the way people manage their home and work life, with dramatic consequences for the IT department, John Harris, IT vice-president at GlaxoSmithKline and chairman of The Corporate IT Forum told the group. ... The take-up of the cloud will accelerate as businesses seek to get to grip with their costs. Pressure will come from the chief financial officer and other parts of the business, Harris predicted. "We have all heard the stories about client-servers and all the wonderful licensing deals you can get. We have 10,000 people and we have negotiated the cost down to £1 per licence. But then you work out that only 12 people are using the software, so then it does not look quite so good. "The beauty of cloud is pay as you go. You pay for what you use when you use it. There is no longer a huge amount of negotiation to be done. We will want to work that way because financially it makes sense," he said. "More and more cloud services will happen." But to take advantage of these new technologies, businesses will need to trust their employees to use them properly. "We have to assume people know how to behave with a PC. It's not like it was 20 years ago. If you work in finance and you know the company results, we don't follow you to the pub to make sure you don't talk to the bar maid. There are certain things people should know.

When polled, the majority of Corporate IT Forum members replying to a recent member Q&A about the impact of Stuxnet agreed that its complexity had deservedly heightened security concerns. However, most felt that the issues raised were, by and large, those that IT security professionals already face day to day. Employee awareness of the risks associated with malware goes a long way to protecting corporate systems. The response to Stuxnet has been to raise malware awareness among support staff and control engineers, and reiterate that Scada security can be as important as network or information systems security. In reality, many sectors' Scada security should be considered just as important as data security. Basic mitigation is a fairly simple process, if sometimes harder to put into practice. Defined system ownership and management carries responsibilities for implementation of patching and anti-virus against a strict policy (of course ensuring patches are verified). Removable media cannot be used without express permission of the system manager and all must be checked for viruses, for example via an offline PC. Many anti-virus systems can also monitor and alert upon the use of any portable media or network device being used on the system. To quote one member: "It's a relatively old lesson: training, training, and training. Teach people not to accept updates blindly. Put a process in place that allows them to check that updates are genuine and uncorrupted quickly and easily. And check the process is being followed." As an IT professional, your challenge is to keep the message fresh and in the minds of all employees, irrespective of their role.

"For IT leaders, there is a tightrope to be walked between the necessary short term measures to meet savings targets and the need to retain and grow the ongoing capability for success in the future," said Harris. "It is not just the current economic climate that is driving the changes. The industry is already striving to figure out the impact of new service models such as cloud technology, respond to the demands for consumerisation and maintain the right balance around in house and offshore sourcing models," he added. "It may be tough, we do need to ensure that we continue to find opportunities for people at the start of their careers, whether it is apprenticeships, industrial placements or graduate training programs, these are the routes through which different thinking - the Generation Y - enters the organisation." The DWP apprentices have become victims of their own success, said David Roberts, executive director at blue-chip user group The Corporate IT Forum

Sales and marketing executives are getting excited about social media, and savvy IT professionals are backing them up. There has been a sea change in the last three months, as Twitter, in particular, takes the corporate world by storm. Forum members are left wondering whether social networking is leading the way, or in the way.

John Harris, Chairman of The Corporate IT Forum and VP Applications at GSK, talks to Denise Plumpton at 360IT about the Forum, the global challenges that face IT today and who's harnessing and driving value to change the service IT can offer.

The rise of social media in the corporate world is leading to many organisations simply shutting down access as a form of control rather than leveraging the potential benefits. The Forum has seen a noticeable increase in use amongst the membership...
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Security delivered via the cloud does offer value-added potential for corporates - but will depend entirely on the nature of the business, the structure of the organisation, the IT strategy and architecture, and ultimately the appetite for risk.
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David Roberts, chief executive of the Corporate IT Forum (Tif), said: "£7m over three years seems a very small sum for a very large problem. We doubt whether it will be enough to tackle an issue that the Home Office itself calls a global menace."
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The Corporate IT Forum: Users are human and part of the risk matrix
Dani Briscoe, services manager, The Corporate IT Forum (Tif), points out that secure user authentication is a difficult balancing-act for IT security professionals.
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Private sector IT can give cost-cutting lessons: an open letter to Francis Maude
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has appealed for help from anyone who can help the government cut costs.
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New chairman sees special role for Corporate IT Forum
Business IT user group the Corporate IT Forum will aim to better prepare IT professionals for the changes in the industry, says new chairman John Harris.
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Apply commercial nous to government IT, say IT leaders
Government policy from the new coalition is now taking shape. Both parties adhere to a state model that is smaller and more efficient. With respect to government IT, the new administration would do well to learn from corporate norms in optimising efficiency and benchmarking continuous performance improvement, writes David Roberts, executive director at The Corporate IT Forum.
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Tif. Sets out IT wish list for new government
Synergy is a much abused term in business, but there is an opportunity for more of it, and better when it comes to central government and the large IT organisations of the UK, writes David Roberts, executive director at the Corporate IT Forum.
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Kevin Birch, IT service cost manager at Severn Trent Water Ltd., a UK-based H2O utility, usesthe cost administration review apparatus from Service-Now.com. “You wish to obtain divided from the rational that IT is free,” Birch said. “We wish to make executivesaware of the cost of infrastructure services, similar to service desk, the information center, the Unixenterprise platform, the desktops.” Birch provides the expenses related with around 100 applications to the business managers. Inturn, the execs can then import the cost to give the service against the business benefit. If Birch’s group wants to replace, ascent or decommission an application, then thesecosts will be used to help with the financial review and cost gain of the business case. Servern Trent uses a a third-party provider to benchmark IT expenses against comparable companiescalled The Corporate IT Forum , and it allows Birch to see wherehis group spends more on IT services than it should.