Xerox has announced the acquisition of UK-based print and digital marketing services provider Go Inspire as it looks to increase its global digital services presence.

The move is expected to improve the transformation of Xerox’s transactions and direct mail services into multi-channel communications, as well as accelerate the company’s growth across the EMEA region.

In an announcement, Xerox said it is focused on “widening the scope” of its Digital Services and Customer Engagement Services.

"Go Inspire's capabilities will support the transformation of our transactional and direct mail services into multi-channel communications, accelerate growth in EMEA and create new avenues for us to help current and new clients," said Darren Cassidy, UK & Ireland Managing Director and senior vice president of EMEA Global Document Services at Xerox.

Based in Leicester, Go Inspire is a service marketing agency that combines strategic marketing consultancy with data science and analytics, digital transformation, customer loyalty programme design, creative marketing services and print and mail services.

The firm services customers across the EMEA region, delivering loyalty schemes and marketing solutions to household names such as Sky, BT, Tesco, Waitrose, and Lakeland.

Go Inspire positions itself as “large enough to be secure and credible, but not too big to lose the ability to provide bespoke services for clients.”

Xerox said the takeover will help boost its aim of bringing innovative solutions to the workplace. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“We are thrilled to join the Xerox team and eager to contribute to the growth of Xerox Digital Services,” commented Patrick Headley, chief executive officer at Go Inspire.

“Together with Xerox, we will expand the portfolio of high value services for our expanding client base throughout the UK and beyond.”

Intuit has agreed to purchase global customer engagement and marketing platform Mailchimp for $12 billion as it sets to cement its market position among small businesses.

Intuit and Mailchimp will combine their respective technologies to build an end-to-end customer growth and engagement platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the company said.

Founded in 2001, Mailchimp began offering email marketing services and has now evolved into a major name in customer engagement and marketing automation with AI-driven tools and services. Intuit, meanwhile, is most well known for its QuickBooks small business accounting software.

A unified platform between these two entities would allow customers to get their business online, market their business, manage customer relationships, benefit from analytics, get paid, access finance, optimise cash flow and remain compliant. This is alongside access to expertise the firm will provide in the form of a services offering.

Through this joint platform, SMBs can also combine customer data from Mailchimp and purchase data from QuickBooks to gain insights that can be used to grow their businesses.

“We’re focused on powering prosperity around the world for consumers and small businesses. Together, Mailchimp and QuickBooks will help solve small and mid-market businesses’ biggest barriers to growth, getting and retaining customers,” said Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi.

“Expanding our platform to be at the centre of small and mid-market business growth helps them overcome their most important financial challenges. Adding Mailchimp furthers our vision to provide an end-to-end customer growth platform to help our customers grow and run their businesses, putting the power of data in their hands to thrive.”

The firm has committed to another large-scale acquisition only months after completing its $8.1 billion purchase of Credit Karma, a startup with 110 million members. This firm offers financial services, including credit and loan comparison, alongside free credit score tracking.

Intuit was mostly intrigued by the firm’s reach, according to Forbes, as it embarked on its vision to expand among smaller businesses.

The Mailchimp acquisition allows Intuit to build on these ambitions, given the company’s own global customer reach comprising 13 million users. Intuit will also benefit from taking over 2.2 million daily AI-driven predictions.

As part of its ambitions to target SMBs with a unified platform, the firm has embarked on an acquisition spree in recent years, also purchasing OneSaas in February and TradeGecko in August 2020.

Intuit expects the Mailchimp acquisition to close during the second quarter of the 2022 fiscal year, with the deal subject to standard regulatory hurdles.

The Conservative Party has been fined £10,000 for sending 51 marketing emails to people who did not want to receive them.

The fine comes after an Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) investigation relating to emails sent from the Conservative Party in the name of the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, launched in an eight-day period after he was appointed in July 2019.

The emails set out Conservative political priorities, with the last sentence including a link directing them to a website for joining the Conservative Party. The ICO found, however, that the party failed to retain clear records of the basis upon which people can consent to receive marketing emails, as required by law.

"The public have rights when it comes to how their personal data is used for marketing," said the ICO's director of investigations, Stephen Eckersley. "Getting messages to potential voters is important in a healthy democracy, but political parties must follow the law when doing so. The Conservative Party ought to have known this but failed to comply with the law.

"All organisations – be they political parties, businesses or others – should give people clear information and choices about what is being done with their personal data. Direct marketing laws are clear, and it is the responsibility of all organisations to ensure they comply."

In the eight-day period, the Conservative Party sent out 1,190,280 marketing emails but the regulator found that not all emails were in breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), as it's likely some of the emails will have been validly sent. Due to the lack of record-keeping, however, it wasn't possible to determine the proportion that wasn't validly sent.

Investigators concluded that the Tory Party didn't have valid consent for the 51 marketing emails received by the complainants. It also failed to ensure records of those who had unsubscribed from its marketing emails were properly transferred when it changed email provider.

During its investigations, it was determined the Conservative Party engaged in an industrial-scale marketing email exercise in the December 2019 General Election campaign, sending nearly 23 million emails. This generated a further 95 complaints, which are likely to have resulted from the party's failure to address the original compliance issues identified in July 2019.

GDPR defines personal data as an ‘asset’, yet despite this modern valuation, most of us have unwittingly – or unthinkingly – given it away in exchange for online services. As such, the average digital footprint is spread far and wide.

If you can remember all the companies that have bits of your digital info, you can begin approaching each one individually and demand they delete it – but you may be surprised at the quantity of organisations that really is. While the mind may immediately leap to Facebook, Google and the other tech giants, it’s also lots of obscure entities. That time you brought a hat at Disneyland, for example, the shop collected more than just a payment.

How do you start tracing companies you don’t remember engaging with? The answer is in your inbox and involves a little AI knowhow. This is the basic premise of Mine, an Israeli startup that uses machine learning to make the GDPR’s ‘right to be forgotten’ serviceable.

Gold Mine

Mine was founded by CEO Gal Ringel and CTO Gal Golan, who met in the cyber security unit of the Israeli army, and CPO Kobi Nissan, who previously worked for CandyCrush developer King. While many businesses saw GDPR as a hindrance when it came into force in 2018, for Mine it was an integral part of its inception.

“When we started to research the right to be forgotten, we quickly realised that we couldn’t find one tool that makes the GDPR accessible for the average person,” Ringel tells IT Pro. “Regulations are complex and difficult for the average user to understand. With that goal in mind, we quickly realised that we needed to come up with a really simple app that uncovers what companies have your personal data, to make your digital footprint tangible, for the first time, so you can almost touch it.”

Ringel estimates that around 350 companies are waiting to be found in the average person’s email. For work accounts, it’s almost half of that falling somewhere between 80 to 100. A staggering 90% of the companies that have your data can be found in your inbox, spam filter or even your trash folder. What’s more, the key to finding out who has your personal details isn’t in the email itself, but rather the subject line.

With Google Cloud’s AI platform, Mine has built machine learning models divided into two datasets. The first is trained on emails that have been tagged as different types of interactions – specifically learning about subject lines. This process has been repeated in 12 different languages so that the service works for users in other parts of the world, not just Israel, and can also spot traces of companies from Germany, France, Italy, Israel, Spain and many more.

“We search for these traces and then reflect it back to you,” Ringel explains. “So basically the AI understands what the interaction you had with a company was just based on the email’s subject. So for example, ‘Welcome to Airbnb’, that interaction is a sign up, and ‘Your purchase from Amazon’, means you’ve bought something.

“We worked really hard for almost a year to develop machine learning that is non-intrusive, but basically scans your inbox by only looking at the email subject. So it never actually reads the context of the email, because we don’t want to see the process of how they collect the personal data and we also don’t want to be collecting any email data.”

How Mine understands what data you’ve given to that company is down to the second dataset, which has been trained on thousands of privacy policies. Under the rules of the GDPR, companies have to be transparent with the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of data collection. So for example, Airbnb collects your data for two reasons: Signing up to its service and then for payments. So it will have your name, address, email, mobile phone number, a copy of your passport, plus payment details if you’ve ever used its service.

Sign up

Naturally, to find all this out, you need to sign up to one more service: Mine’s. It requires your email address to perform its basic function and your first and last name so that it can contact each company on your behalf. Upon registering your email, the company says, the machine learning models get to work and within 30 seconds you’ll be presented with 40 or so companies that have your data – this expands to hundreds after roughly 48 hours and repeatedly notifies you as and when you sign up to more.

All the usual suspects will be there – Netflix, LinkedIn, Amazon – along with an assortment of unknown and forgettable one time services. Underneath each will be the data you signed up and a button to take action. Click on this and Mine sends a request on your behalf. Some companies, however, will be listed as “action unavailable”.

“The reason you see action unavailable can be for two reasons,” Ringel explains. “First, these are companies that we still haven’t got round to analysing their privacy policies and learned their data structure. And the second could be that we didn’t find any contact information within their privacy policy. So we don’t know who to approach. When you want to reclaim from a company, we automatically shoot an email to its data protection officer or its privacy officer.”

As a company turning the GDPR into a service, Mine will come under more scrutiny than most when it comes to compliance. The company’s own privacy policy has no margin for error.

“The only data we do store is your email address, which you signed up with, and a list of the companies’ names we identified in your footprint,” Ringel confirms. “You can easily request a copy of the data we hold about you to see exactly what we keep. We are fully transparent on everything we are doing and, of course, in line with GDPR regulations.

Modern customers crave memorable personalised experiences. That’s why 83% of the marketers we asked in our recent survey – carried out in association with the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) – have increased their personalisation budget in 2019, with 32% pointing to a “significant budget increase.”

Money helps – but it can’t slingshot you all the way to personalisation perfection. In the same survey, we also discovered a number of barriers to personalisation – many of which can only be resolved by adapting the culture of the organisation you work for step-by-step, day-by-day.

This whitepaper sets out the 5 main barriers modern marketers are facing, exploring the origin of each problem and how they can be overcome.

Here we are on the cusp of 2020 – a date that still sounds ridiculously futuristic to me – and yet we’re still clinging to a mode of communication that was invented when the Pharaohs were knocking around Egypt.

Email should have killed off the postal service years ago. It’s certainly given it a good kicking, to be fair, but I’m still dealing with businesses that insist on communicating via ‘snail mail’ for no good reason whatsoever.

I’ve spent the past week getting quotes for a new boiler. The first company was referred to me by the very forward-thinking energy supplier Octopus, which literally changes my energy prices every half an hour in line with demand, takes all my readings via smart meters and hasn’t sent me a single piece of paper in the year I’ve been with them. The company it recommended wants to install a “smart boiler” and took a survey of my house using a Skype-like app, where the surveyor was on the other end of a video link. Yet, when it came to delivering the quotes for the job, the company said it would send them in the post – quotes, I’m still waiting for almost a week later.

The same was true of the second, more local firm, which came to price up the job. This chap spent 10 minutes talking to me about the benefits of installing a Hive smart meter, relayed stories of how one customer kept turning the heating down at home while he was sitting on a beach in Barbados, fearful that his stay-at-home kids would be running up his bill while left unsupervised, and yet he too insisted on sending the quotes in the post “because I’m a bit old-school”.

I love my accountants. Avuncular old Pete and his efficient assistant Rachel are brilliant at patiently dealing with my lifelong aversion to making money (I do words, not numbers, as I told them at our first meeting).

They finally convinced me to stop running my business on patchy Excel spreadsheets and move to the online accounting system Xero instead, which has cut the amount of time I spend on tedious admin such as invoicing and filling in VAT returns enormously. Rachel can log into Xero and correct my inevitable errors (“no, Barry, you can’t claim a six-pack of Wagon Wheels as a business expense”) and everything is submitted electronically.

And yet, every time they write to me or send me an invoice, it comes through my letterbox on bits of paper that the dog will inevitably chew, or that I won’t see under the mountains of pizza menus and appeals to save donkeys in Derbyshire.

Why is this? How can these businesses – which are selling and working with cutting-edge technologies – rely on a postal system that is woefully inefficient, more costly and less convenient for the person on the receiving end? What has trackable, searchable, instantaneous email ever done to them?

So, here’s my early resolution for the new year (which I’m still convinced is only 2006, by the way): any company that insists on using the aptly named snail mail won’t be getting my business. I’ll write to them to let them know, obviously.

Although GDPR’s second birthday is rapidly approaching, the dust is yet to firmly settle around its implementation. Many questions and concerns remain unanswered, destabilising a data landscape that modern industries must navigate with caution.

This rings true with few professions greater than email marketers, with the email marketing campaigns they conduct experiencing the largest cause of complaints to data protection authorities across Europe since GDPR’s introduction in May 2018, alongside telemarketing and the use of video surveillance.

That’s because GDPR alters how organisations are able to use data, particularly the third-party data email marketers use to target existing and potential customers. For whichever reason – be it misunderstanding the legislation, or being unable to deliver personalised experiences whilst complying – over 100 GDPR-related fines have been distributed, stemming from around 60,000 complaints received by the European Commission. And perhaps nothing highlights how large a hurdle GDPR can be than the ICO’s decision to relax GDPR enforcement during the coronavirus economic downturn.

To avoid debilitating fines, it’s vital for businesses to follow established best-practices principles concerning the use of marketing and data. However, that's easier said than done.

The main point of concern is customer consent. GDPR holds organisations accountable for the data they hold and use, requiring them to have a strong reason for touching data, referred to as ‘legitimate interest’ – such as fraud prevention or the fulfillment of a legal contract. Such data processing has to be necessary to the act of achieving this purpose, provided that the rights of the individual whose data is being processed aren't infringed upon.

There are a number of ways to meet the legitimate interest clause, though its often the case that marketers rely on an individual giving their explicit and informed consent. Previously, many companies relied on tiny and obscure check-boxes that are ticked by default in order to obtain 'consent' from customers but, under GDPR, companies must explain in clear, concise wording exactly why customers' data is being gathered and how it will be used.

Many marketing departments are concerned that, if customers are given the choice about whether or not they want to be sent newsletters and other forms of marketing materials, they will refuse it. However, Skip Fidura, Chair of the Responsible Marketing Committee at the Digital Marketing Association, believes that GDPR actually offers an opportunity for marketers to use GDPR to their advantage.

We spoke to him to find out some of his top tips for email marketers who want to survive GDPR.

1) Don't panic!

The biggest thing that digital marketers need to remember, Fidura says, is that GDPR is not the apocalyptic cataclysm that many are making it out to be. If marketers have been doing their jobs properly, he argues, the laws should have a minimal impact on how marketers do business.

"There's really nothing in the GDPR that email marketers haven't been talking about and doing as best practice for years. Being open, honest and transparent when it comes to getting consent - you can use the GDPR language, but it all boils down to being open, honest and transparent," Fidura explains.

2) Don't re-permission your lists, refine them

A common response to GDPR from many marketing departments has been to try and re-obtain consent from their entire marketing list for life-long messaging, but according to Fidura, this is an unnecessary effort. "The myth when GDPR first came out," he notes, "was that consent is the only way we can market and therefore, because I don't have GDPR-level consent, I have to go get GDPR-level consent."

In reality, he continues, what brands have done is to take a step back and examine their data, working out how much of their lists they can continue to market to under GDPR's 'legitimate interests' provisos, which customers they need to approach to ask for new permissions, and which customers should be culled from their lists entirely.

3) Follow best practice

This dovetails neatly with another of Fidura's top tips, which is to make a point of following best practice - i.e. reducing email lists when some recipients haven't engaged for a defined period of time - no matter how unpalatable it may seem.

"[Marketers] know they should be culling people off lists, but when you go to the finance people and say 'I've just cut 25% off our email list', the finance people go 'what are you, crazy?'," he says. "So actually, I think in some cases, marketers have been able to use GDPR to do what they know they should have been doing all along."

4) Audit your data regularly

Of course, you can't cut dead weight from your email lists if you don't know that it's there. Fidura advises that companies conduct regular audits of their data stores to ensure that they know exactly what state their lists are in.

"The problem with data is data has a shelf-life, and just like a piece of fish that's gone off, if you let it sit too long, it's gonna stink," he states. Companies need to be aware of how long data is going to be relevant for when they collect it, and should regularly audit it based on the inflow of data and how many people are accessing and modifying it.

5) Don't forget about ongoing compliance

Many organisations went into a mad scramble to get ready for GDPR last year, but that doesn't mean that the work to get compliant is done. As Fidura points out, GDPR is far from a one-time deal. While initially complying with the regulations is important, ensuring that you continue to uphold those standards is actually more critical in the long run. The further we get from May 2018, the more relaxed companies are going to get, and it won't be long before "they're going to buy some new system and forget that they've got to now plug that into their GDPR compliance".

"What they need to think about going forwards is, they need to remember the steps they went through to get to their GDPR compliance; the data audit that they did," Fidura says. "Every time they bring a new channel, tool or system online, they need to think about what the potential impact of that is to the consumer. If necessary, they need to do a privacy impact assessment and they need to document all that stuff, because [GDPR implementation] is not the end; it's the end of beginning. GDPR doesn't go away."

6) Build customer trust

GDPR might be scary for marketers, but in reality, it offers companies an opportunity to build a deeper, more trusting relationship with their customers. According to research by the Digital Marketing Association, 62% of consumers are more willing to share their data if they have GDPR explained to them, and more than 85% want greater control and transparency regarding how their data is used and collected.

"We know that consumers get to be more comfortable about giving up data when they know how the data's going to be used; that's just human nature," Fidura says. "I think the opportunity for all marketers is to start talking about GDPR, start telling people about what's in the GDPR, what their rights are, how the business is implementing that, so that they start to rebuild trust. And then, of course, they have to live up to that."

7) Be honest about what data you need

It's not just customers that marketers need to be honest with around GDPR; according to Fidura, they also have to be honest with themselves. As part of the data audits mentioned above, marketing professionals need to take a step back and examine what data they absolutely need to have, and what data they're gathering for the sake of it.

"The example I always use is this: we have DotMailer-branded socks. In theory, to know how many socks to buy, we should ask people their shoe size. As an email marketing company, do we really have a need for their shoe size?", Fidura notes. "No - because we're probably going to buy a bunch of large, a bunch of mediums and a bunch of smalls anyway."

8) Be accountable

One of the fundamental tenets of GDPR is making companies accountable to the people whose data they hold, but Fidura says that this is a standard which companies should be holding themselves to regardless, in the service of rebuilding customer trust.

"Whatever you do, if something goes wrong and you violate that trust, be accountable for it. Hold up your hand and say 'you know what, we screwed up'," he says. "Too often, corporations don't want to say anything until they know all the facts, but by then, they've lost the story."

9) Don't let lawyers write your privacy policies

For marketers, GDPR isn't simply about getting customers to check a box indicating that they're happy to receive your emails; one of the stipulations is that you must give them a specific set of details about how you're using that information. Similar to the oft-ignored terms and conditions agreements for software, this is often represented by a wall of dense legal text, but it doesn't have to be.

"Don't let your lawyer or compliance team write your privacy policy," advises DMA managing director Rachel Aldighieri. "Work with them and the creative teams and your communications teams to write that." She says that privacy policies can be engaging and attractive when done well, citing examples from EasyJet, the BBC and more.

This article was originally published in May 2018, and has since been updated to include additional figures.

Being the largest social network in the world means Facebook has a deluge of data at its corporate fingertips. That means the social network has vast amounts of scope to sell on services and software products, which tap into that wealth of data, to third-party businesses.

However, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has tightened up the access it allows third-party developers to have to its data treasure trove.

But it still allows some access to features that are based on the potential to plug into Facebook user data, albeit in a more secure and locked down fashion.

Facebook Open Graph is one such tool. It essentially provides the means by which third-party developers can integrate Facebook features, such as the 'Like' and 'Share' functions into their web and mobile apps and services.

And thanks to its design and refinement over the years, Facebook Open Graph is relatively easy to integrate into web pages and apps.

As the need to have a social media presence and ways for a brand to actively engage in the world of social networking is increasingly important for businesses of all sizes, having access to Facebook Open Graph becomes ever more pertinent. A lack of integration between an app and key social media sites, for example, might stymie that app's reach and engagement with its users.

Facebook's Open Graph API has been in existence for almost a decade and it's made a marked difference on engagement levels for those that implement it on their website, the social network claims. One of the most popular uses of Open Graph is as a signup tool, meaning Facebook users can sign into third-party services (such as a commenting platform, retailer or forum) using their Facebook credentials rather than having to sign up to a separate account and remember yet another username and password.

For developers, this means they don't have to spend time developing a sign-up process or a database where all the information is stored Facebook does that for them.

Yet, Open Graph is not just about providing data for login fields it also provides a means for users to 'like', 'share' or 'comment' on content from within a website, instead of them having to search for the Facebook post. This also means Facebook's comment system can be embedded into the site, providing an easy way for visitors to engage with content using their own profile, in a way that's familiar to them.

In terms of engagement, using Open Graph provides tools for immediate customer interaction while avoiding the need to create custom buttons and features to carry out the same functions.

Another powerful social feature that the latest version of Open Graph enables is the ability for web pages that have been 'liked' by a person to send content to that person's Facebook news feed, which they can then interact with and share.

Unlike merely copying and pasting a link, using Open Graph to help spread and share a website or a service's content is more prominent given the way the content is surfaced and displayed amid the social noise on Facebook.

Essentially, Open Graph helps companies and brands exploit the age-old yet sought after 'word-of-mouth' promotion, only in a digital format.

However, some people may not expect this and could see it as an infringement on privacy. So companies making liberal use of Open Graph need to proceed with some caution.

Users of Open Graph are provided with data on how their content is performing on Facebook, such as assessing how many 'likes' a new product may have received or helping analyse what their fans or customers find interesting by judging what on their website is being shared on Facebook.

For marketers interested in propelling their company's brand on Facebook, Open Graph is arguably a must-have tool. But it requires a degree of finesse to ensure customers, visitors and users are kept engaged yet don't feel the brand is pushing itself on them too strongly. Used well, however, Open Graph could be the difference in a company becoming a roaring success or fading into obscurity.

Latest News

Facebook has made its Open Graph platform available to all businesses who want their apps to gain traction in user Timelines.

The social network also announced 60 fresh apps based on the Open Graph framework were uploaded, including ones from Autotrader and Soundcloud.

Timeline apps are for the activities users want to share with friends. The Autotrader app, for example, will show when users click a 'Want' button next to the make/model homepages of cars.

"The social web has made the traditional peer opinion' that influences peoples' buying behaviour more important than ever," said Ian MacDonald, head of consumer marketing at Autotrader.

"We will have a real-time indication of how in-demand a particular car is via the volume of people indicating that they want' that car."

Businesses interested in developing apps for Timeline integration with Open Graph can point their tech teams towards the tutorial here.

Mike Keating, enterprise solutions director at social media experts Techlightenment, said the impact for marketers lives would be significant.

"Facebook is the biggest thing to happen to marketing for many years - never before have users given so much indication of the brands and the products with which they are engaged. Facebook has changed this forever, allowing marketers to construct content that is truly personalised to an individual," Keating said.

"Implementing this correctly means customers are more likely to interact and engage with the brand and their friends' activity, and consequently amplify the reach of this content by sharing it with their friends."

New data protection rules will frustrate consumers who demand personalised experiences but are wary of handing over their data, but organisations who prove trustworthy stand to benefit, according to experts.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force on 25 May and gives people more control over what personal data organisations can collect, allowing them to move it to other companies or demand organisations delete it altogether.

It also requires companies to be more transparent about how they use people's personal information and gets rid of passive opt-outs some organisations relied on to obtain customer consent: now people must actively agree to their data being collected and processed.

As a result of that, and with GDPR making people more aware of the value of their data, marketers' jobs are about to get harder, according to The Content Advisory's privacy lead, Tim Walters, speaking at Aprimo's recent Sync Europe conference.

"I am convinced that GDPR will rather significantly reduce the amount of first party and third-party data that marketing teams have access to," he said.

Walters said the data was the fuel for marketing efforts and pointed to a recent report by Accenture that identified a more systemic or structural problem that is choking off the supply of fuel for customer management.

But he pointed to a "vicious circle" being created by GDPR, where customers want "hyper-relevant" experiences when shopping online, but are very reluctant to hand over their personal data that would inform those relevant experiences.

"Consumers will punish brands that do not provide ... relevant experiences by abandoning them for other providers," he said. "Not because they necessarily know that another provider can provide that experience, but because [they] hope that they can."

However, on the other hand, GDPR and the high profile Cambridge Analytica scandal, where millions of Facebook users' profile data was harvested to allegedly influence US voters in the 2016 presidential election, has increased public awareness about the risks around sharing their data.

"The fact that they don't know what's going on with the data that they surrender ... means that they are reluctant to provide that personal data. which is precisely necessary to create the kinds of experiences that they demand," said Walters, adding: "That's the vicious circle."

But GDPR provides an opportunity for companies that recognise people are in control of their personal data - creating that trust breaks the vicious cycle.

"Every company in the world, whether they are subject to GDPR or not, should be looking for some kind of framework or template or guidebook to show them how to go about putting consumers in control of their data," Walters concluded.

"That is the only way to make progress. That guidebook or template is exactly what the GDPR is."

Edmund Breault, head of marketing at Aprimo, told IT Pro that GDPR is absolutely going to help marketing organisations by putting customers at the heart of their efforts.

"While the efforts in the short term on marketing organisations to become GDPR-compliant have added burden, GDPR fundamentally makes customer-centricity a "legal" requirement," he said.

"We are now in a trust economy and marketers need to provide capabilities to allow consumers to stay in control of their data."

GDPR fines shouldn't be the biggest concern for marketers, according to marketing tech company Dotmailer - instead, they should be worried about the reputational damage that arises from not acting in customers' best interests.

GDPR comes into force in just over a month, and one of the biggest concerns for companies is the hefty potential fines for breaching the new regulation, with a maximum penalty of 20 million or 4% of the company's global annual turnover - whichever is higher.

However, while these figures are particularly alarming for many marketing departments (which by definition deal with vast amounts of personal data), Dotmailer's client service director and Digital Marketing Association non-executive director, Skip Fidura, said that the more pressing danger is not the response from regulatory bodies but from customers.

"Forget about the fines! That's the headline; that's what they want you to hear," he told attendees at Dotmailer's annual customer summit in London. "Think about the cost to your business if you lose your reputation by betraying that trust."

As GDPR has not yet come into effect, there are currently no examples of this effect, but to illustrate his point, Fidura cited the case of TalkTalk, which suffered a catastrophic data breach back in 2015. The company received a fine from the Information Commissioner's Office of 400,000 for its poor handling of the incident, but even though the corresponding penalty it could have incurred under GDPR would have totalled almost 60 million, Fidura argued that this still didn't compare to the company's loss of reputation.

"TalkTalk was fined 80% of the maximum possible fine at the time: 400,000. Peanuts for TalkTalk," he said. "But they lost 1 billion off their market capitalisation. Way more than any percentage of the maximum fine under GDPR they would have faced. The fine is just the headline - it's the loss of reputation that you've got to worry about."

However, he stressed that GDPR "does not fundamentally change what [marketers] are trying to accomplish, and that's to get the right message to the right person at the right time".

John Mitchison, director of compliance at the Digital Marketing Association, called the legislation an evolution of the UK's current law, the Data Protection Act 1998. "Many of the problems that people come to me with as director of compliance at the DMA... they explain the problem that they've got, and I realise that it's not a problem with GDPR, it's a problem with the [Data Protection Act]."

"They've been doing things wrong, or in contravention of the DPA, for many years, and only now starting to worry about rules. The stretch between the current Data Protection Act and GDPR is not a huge distance. If you're doing things under the current regulations compliantly, then coming up to the standard of GDPR shouldn't be that big a stretch."

As part of the summit, Dotmailer also announced a series of product updates to its email and marketing automation platform, including new data protection features to help companies work towards GDPR compliance. This includes a new tool called Consent Insight, designed to give marketing departments more information about their customers' consent in order to prove compliance to regulators, including the text of the consent agreement they signed as well as their location, IP address, browser and more.

A new tool has also been launched to allow quick and easy exporting of this data in order to comply with Subject Access Requests - another GDPR component that allows consumers to request a copy of any data held on them by a company. This is also combined with a new functionality for deleting all of a customer's data from Dotmailer's platform if required, which includes a recycle bin to protect against accidental deletion.

All of the new features will be available for free to all Dotmailer customers.

Google has continued to realign its services, cutting away unwanted fat to ensure it isn't wasting time and money on unneeded products.

The email disaster recovery product Google Message Continuity (GMC), launched in December 2010, has been closed.

The internet giant said it wanted to focus on Google Apps, which includes an email disaster recovery capability.

All GMC customers can continue to use the service until their contract runs out.

We've been sticking to some old resolutionsthe need to focus on building amazing products.

The Needlebase data management platform, acquired from ITA Software, is also set for the scrapheap on 1 June 2012 and is being considered for integration into other Google services.

"As we head into 2012, we've been sticking to some old resolutionsthe need to focus on building amazing products that millions of people love to use every day," said Dave Girouard, vice president of product management at Google, in a blog post.

"That means taking a hard look at products that replicate other features, haven't achieved the promise we had hoped for or can't be properly integrated into the overall Google experience."

Picnik, the online photo editor acquired in 2010, has been ditched and will be put to rest on 19 April. The Picnik team will continue to work at Google, however, contributing to other photo software.

Google has made the premium version of Picnik free to everyone until it is killed off. Those who have already paid for a premium suscription are to be given a full refund in the coming weeks.

The Social Graph API, which made data about public connections between users available to developers, will be retired on 20 April. It was not getting the adoption Google wanted.

Google is still placing a heavy emphasis on a more social experience for its users, recently updating search to reflect this.

However, the changes came under fire from Twitter, which claimed Google was warping results so users would not be presented with the most valuable results.

Google has continued to profit from illegal adverts, including ones purporting to sell 2012 Olympics tickets, according to a report.

The internet giant admitted to the BBC it keeps any money made from companies advertising illegal services before they are taken down.

Illegal ads spotted by the BBC included those claiming to sell Olympics tickets, as well as cannabis and fake IDs. It is illegal to sell Olympic tickets on the open market without permission from the correct authorities.

Google subsequently took down the ads after it became aware of them.

One company benefiting from ads on Google's AdWords service was LiveOlympicTickets, which is not an officially recognised ticket reseller.

When we are informed of ads which break our policies, we investigate and remove them if appropriate.

It managed to become Google's top sponsored link for tickets,

Even the Metropolitan Police said it was aware of LiveOlympicTickets and that the company was breaking the law.

However, the company is not based in the UK, meaning it could be difficult to prosecute.

"We have a set of policies covering which ads can and cannot show on Google. These policies and guidelines are enforced by both automated systems and human beings," Google said.

"When we are informed of ads which break our policies, we investigate and remove them if appropriate... Our aim is to create a simple and efficient way for legitimate businesses to promote and sell their goods and services whilst protecting them and consumers from illicit activity."

Google hasn't had an easy ride with AdWords, even though advertising provides the company with most of its revenue.

In August, it agreed to give up $500 million (324 million) in revenue for publishing ads from Canadian pharmacies selling illegal drugs to US consumers.

Social network Google+ has also provided cyber criminals with another avenue to try out their nefarious tactics. In July, a host of fake Google+ invitations were sent out, pointing recipients to the Canadian Family Pharmacy.

Google has created an updated version of Gmail, now available to every user.

The internet giant said the latest version of its email client will be rolling out to everyone in the next few days, but it is available to preview now.

The new Gmail features brighter colors, larger tabs for conversations, amongst many other features.

A dropdown menu on the search bar allows for advanced searching, making it faster to find what users are looking for within their mail. Users can also create filters for any search with this new panel.

Conversation has been redesigned, allowing reading through email threads to look simpler. Profile pictures will pop-up next to users contacts, adding a social element as well as making it easier to see who said what.

"We also stripped out as much as possible so you can focus on communicating with your friends and colleagues," said Google user experience designer Jason Cornwell, in a blog post.

Since users may access their account from a variety of screen sizes and devices, the elements on the screen will now automatically adjust based on the form factor being used.

Google has also added a drop down menu to change the type of display density, including "comfortable, cozy, and compact" settings based on users' preference.

The navigation panel on the left keeps labels and chat contacts in view at all times, but users will be able to resize the labels and chat areas on their own. The arrow keys also help users navigate around the page.

With the help of iStockPhoto, HD themes have been rebuilt to enable high-resolution screens. Users who have a particular theme enabled will see an automatic update of it when Gmail is officially carried over to its new look.

Below is a video outlining the changes:

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has bared its teeth this week, charging the Salamander Organisation for using unlicensed software.

The York-based company has agreed to pay 29,000 to cover a settlement of licence fees to date, as well as ensuring it had paid for the software going forward. The type of software used has not been disclosed.

Salamander was caught out after an anonymous tip off to the BSA, followed by a software audit on the firm.

The BSA is currently shining a spotlight on Yorkshire to seek out those avoiding paying licences, claiming it does "substantial" damage to the UK economy.

Michala Wardell, chair of the BSA UK Committee, claimed the cost to businesses using unlicensed software was in excess of 2 million in fees and legal settlements last year double the amount from 2009.

"Businesses must be aware that enforcement action will be taken against any company found using unlicensed software," she said. "The abuse of intellectual property rights is a serious offence, and will not be accepted."

"Settlements such as this can seriously damage a company's reputation if they are caught out and can be costly."

A recent study by the Alliance claimed reducing the current piracy rate of 27 per cent down by 10 per cent over four years could create 5.4 billion in "new economic activity" and 1.5 billion in new taxes.

"Unlicensed software often occurs when a company's management regards software licensing as an IT problem, rather than treating their software as a business asset," said Julian Swan, director of compliance marketing in EMEA for BSA.

"It is crucial for companies to implement software asset management best practices and take advantage of the tools available from software vendors to ensure that their software licensing is in order."

Nearly half of IT professionals planning Windows 7 rollouts for their organisations are concerned about migrations issues, specifically those of user profile migration.

This was the main finding of a survey from RES Software which polled over 1,500 IT professionals worldwide from a range of industries. It found 57 per cent were planning the move to Windows 7 this year, mostly down to Microsoft's scheduled closure of Windows XP support in 2014.

However, 45 per cent were concerned with the migration of user profiles from Windows XP to Windows 7. Of those surveyed, 43 per cent said not only was it an issue establishing what permissions and applications required migration but they had "serious concerns" they were not properly equipped with tools and software to cope with the move

RES Software claimed many companies were "still struggling" with profile management in operating system migration and cited data from Gartner suggesting an estimated 250 million computers in mid-to-large sized businesses could migrate between the two operating systems by Microsoft's 2014 cut-off.

Bill Corrigan, chief marketing officer of RES Software, said: "This study reaffirms the fears we are hearing from customers. The move to Windows 7 is inevitable, but how successful these migrations will be remains the key variable for many organisations."

Marks & Spencer has warned customers their email addresses have been leaked, thanks to a huge breach at US marketing firm Epsilon.

The retail giant emailed customers saying they could expect more spam messages, after addresses were leaked after the hack on Epsilon on 30 March.

Customer email lists from a wide range of major corporations were taken, including hotel chains Marriot and Hilton. It was thought most affected businesses were US based.

M&S confirmed no other personal information, outside names and email addresses, were stolen.

"We have been informed by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails to our customers, that some M&S customer email addresses have been accessed without authorisation," the firm said in its email.

Although spam could be an issue for customers hit by the breach, targeted malware attacks are another worry.

"Today, data theft accounts for 33 per cent of all attacks and although an increase in spam is an obvious outcome, not so obvious is the increased risk of targeted malware attacks seeking to infiltrate company systems," said Paul Davis, director of European operations at FireEye.

"The loss of personal data is the initial step in a series of potential exploits from mass spam through to advanced targeted malware, which seeks to establish a beachhead within corporate systems for subsequent exploit and data exfiltration."

Frank Coggrave, Guidance Software's general manager for EMEA, said the Epsilon hack highlighted a wider trend in the industry.

"The significant knock-on effect to big name Epsilon customers, including Marks & Spencer and hotel chains Mariott and Hilton, highlights that no one is safe from these increasingly sophisticated and targeted attacks," Coggrave said.

"Since attacks consistently break through even the toughest of security systems, organisations need to focus on deploying incident response plans to mitigate the effects."

A number of high profile attacks have hit major corporations over the past month, including an Advanced Persistent Threat strike on security firm RSA.

Consumers' growing use of social media is changing the way businesses carry out their marketing, customer service, and even innovation, according to new research.

Almost two-thirds of companies are reconsidering how they define customer value, just over half believe that customer service is now a company-wide issue, and as many as 71 per cent say that customers are now a "critical" source of new ideas.

The study, carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by SAS, the software vendor, suggests that social media is making the relationship between companies and their customers much more transparent. In particular, customers are more likely to try to deal with C-level executives through social media than through other channels.

Businesses should respond, the report suggests, by integrating the "multichannel" feedback from blogs, community sites and social networks with their conventional marketing and market research data. This might mean providing additional training for staff tasked with interpreting the data.

The research also found that, although companies believe that information from social media sources is changing their understanding of customers' value to the business, few have gone as far as creating a new definition of customer value.

There is, the EUI suggests, a gap between the increasing volume of information provided to marketing teams through sales and marketing, and companies' abilities to turn that information into actions. Only 52 per cent of organisations were confident that they are using technology well enough to take advantage of the new information available to them even though, the EIU suggests, "extracting a competitive edge from these new channels will require careful analysis of customer behaviour".

Last year, Gartner, the industry analysts, published research suggesting that

Integrated service management and delivery will be key as the IT industry braces itself for a fundamental shift in activity and thinking.

Strategy and focused execution will also play important supporting roles that help businesses analyse the information that will aid future decisions and fuel innovation and competitive advantage.

Some 7,000 delegates were assembled at the opening keynote session of IBM's Pulse 2011 event in Las Vegas, all keen to hear how they can use service management to their advantage.

The number of delegates at this year's event is up by 30 per cent and some 41 per cent more business partners are in attendance in 2011 than in 2010, according to IBM.

"This tells me we're going through the biggest tech-fuelled transformation in our industry for years. This also tell me that there is a huge demand for the skills and expertise that you bring to the table," said IBM's general manager of Tivoli software at IBM, Danny Sabbah.

Citing an IBM study, Sabbah said that more than three-quarters of chief executives are readying their organisations for turbulent change that will put more pressure on the business and, in turn, IT functions, than ever before.

"We need stellar execution," he said. "We need maniacal focus on reducing risk and cost. That is what the business and government are demanding. I see it every day and I know you do too."

Sabbah said that organisations have a greater dependence on business leaders and that there's a big gap between what they're expected to deliver and what they're actually able to deliver on.

"Businesses around the globe are busy strategising on how to lead if not just to keep up," added Scott Hebner, vice president of global marketing for Tivoli software.

"It's obvious our entire community needs to embrace a new era of smarter computing. Because it's not just about technology anymore, it's about the economic impact of technology."

As a nod to what delegates can expect in terms of announcements the rest of the week, Hebner added: "Today the focus is on strategy, tomorrow it's execution. A strategy without execution is hallucination."

Using automation, organisations can analyse what's happening in real-time and make the right decisions using the right information, according to IBM.

"None of us have infinite time and resources. And not all metrics are created equal. However if we take this approach based on visibility, control and automation, we can effectively and positively get better business results," said Sabbah.

"This is a journey. One we must definitely make and given the turbulence and competition we have no choice. We must start now."

The cloudy side of Amazon has announced it will offer Oracle Database 11g Release 2 over its sky-high relational database.

From the second quarter of 2011, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) users will be able to enjoy the Oracle database, alongside various versions of MySQL.

The addition will form part of the overall Amazon Web Services (AWS) offering.

When it becomes available, the RDS tab of the AWS Management Console, the AWS command-line tools and the RDS APIs will all support the use of the Oracle database as the "database engine," Amazon said.

"As with today's MySQL offering, Amazon RDS running Oracle Database will reduce administrative overhead and expense by maintaining database software, taking continuous backups for point-in-time recovering, and exposing key operational metrics via Amazon CloudWatch," the company explained in a blog post.

"It will also allow scaling of compute and storage capacity to be done with a few clicks of the AWS Management Console."

Anyone who wants to can run various databases, including Salesforce.com's Database.com as well as the Oracle database and MySQL, over Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

RDS is designed to make sitting databases on top of EC2 that much simpler, however.

As for payment, those with Oracle database licenses will be able to bring them across to the cloud to use them "pursuant to Oracle licensing policies." There will be no need to shell out for extra software licences or support fees.

Those without licences will be able to pay for Oracle Database 11g on an hourly basis, using the classic cloud on-demand model.

The rate will depend on what edition of the Oracle database is being used and how much server power is required.

"I think that this new offering and the flexible pricing models will be of interest to enterprises of all shapes and sizes," said Jeff Barr, senior manager of cloud computing solutions at AWS.

Earlier this month, AWS launched a new bulk and transactional email service aimed at businesses and developers.

Eric Stahl, senior director for product marketing at Salesfore.com, said the addition of Oracle would not cut out any complexity.

"Oracle on Amazon is just changing the post code of the complexity," Stahl told IT PRO.

"The users still needs to license, install, configure, tune, back up and upgrade the database. With Database.com you just build your app."

A new competition to help transform scientific ideas into product realties has been launched in the North-East of England.

Newcastle Science City has launched the contest with a 20,000 prize to help encourage innovation and give support to either a company or individual with the drive to put plans into business action.

The key areas the organisation is looking for innovations in are ageing and health, sustainability or regenerative medicine.

Simon Green, project manager at Newcastle Science City, said: "The competition presents a phenomenal opportunity to businesses and individuals to develop their ideas and realise their potential especially in the current economic climate when investment can be difficult to secure."

"At Newcastle Science City we have the right expertise and the connections to create innovate, high-growth businesses and this competition will help accelerate that."

Once the applications have been made, six contenders will be short-listed and be in the running to win the support from the organisation, which could include market research, marketing, software development and intellectual property protection.

It is then hoped the product could come to market in as little as 12 months.

Newcastle Science City is a joint venture between Newcastle University, Newcastle City Council and One North East in an attempt to encourage the science industry in the area.

Candidates have to want to be based in the North-East and applications must be submitted Friday 11 February at 5pm.

Click here to make an application.

Dennis Publishing has moved the date of its London Information Technology Show (LITS) to later next year in response to the recent Royal wedding announcement.

The LITS will now take place between 21 and 23 October 2011 and the ExCEL centre in London and still promises to be a must-attend even for consumers and business users alike.

With all of Dennis' key tech brands represented, experts from titles such as IT PRO, PC Pro and Channel Pro among others will be there to help you learn more about technology and help you benefit from exclusive show offers.

Event Director, Jay Tyson, said: "As soon as the date of the Royal Wedding was made public, the phones started ringing with exhibitors asking what the new show dates were. After weighing up the facts, a nationwide holiday, the nightmare of getting a hotel room and potential public transport issues, it took us less than 30 minutes to make the call. And because of the other events, both in the UK and internationally, the obvious timeslot to move to was October."

He added: "The enforced move actually benefits the show. About a third of the stands sold so far are over 100sqm and interest is far greater than we anticipated, suggesting our original expectations of what the market wanted were conservative. To be honest, the extra six months gives us time to re-scale the show and deliver an even better event."

EVENT DETAILS

Date: 21st 23rd October 2011

Venue: ExCEL London

What: PC, Macs, computing, mobile, 3D, hardware, software, tablets, components, gaming photography and much, much more

With: trade stands, seminars, demonstrations, entertainment, product launches and exclusive show offers

Who: 20,000-plus consumers with a genuine interest in technology

FURTHER CONTACTS

Event Director

Email Jay Tyson or call 020 7907 6802

LITS Sales Director

Email John Pudney or call 020 7907 6661

Marketing Manager

Emil Tom Townsend-Smith or call 020 7907 6112

Salesforce.com's head honcho, Marc Benioff, has bashed Microsoft for its aggressive sales tactics.

Benioff said he planned to fight Microsoft with some upcoming launches, after the Redmond giant launched an aggressive sales campaign designed to steal Salesforce.com customers.

Benioff also pointed to the fact Microsoft had launched a patent lawsuit against the strictly cloud firm, which was settled earlier this year.

"They [Microsoft] are trying everything they can to stop the cloud because they want to hold on to their monopoly," Benioff said during a Q&A session at the company's Dreamforce conference, attended by IT PRO.

"They're monopolists... they don't want their cash cows exploded."

The day salesforce.com's Dreamforce event kicked off, Microsoft launched a Cloud CRM for Less' offer in an attempt to lure customers away from Benioff's firm and his old company Oracle.

In an open letter, Michael Park, corporate vice president for sales, marketing and operations at Microsoft Business Solutions, pledged to rebate companies up to $200 for each user who makes the switch over to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online from Salesforce.com between now and 30 June 2011.

Park even addressed customers attending Dreamforce, advising they asked themselves some questions about their use of Salesforce.com software.

One recommended query read: "Microsoft provides a financially backed 99.9 per cent uptime commitment for every Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customer; why does Salesforce.com only provide me with "commercially reasonable efforts" to keep my business running?"

Another said: "Microsoft works great with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office; why does Salesforce.com want me to start from scratch when it comes to productivity tools for my people?"

Around the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where IT PRO has been reporting on the Dreamforce conference, Microsoft employees were seen on Segways spreading the aggressive marketing message.

Oracle was busy advertising its CRM credits at the conference as well, with one banner claiming Larry Ellison's firm was number one for CRM. Cars were also seen daubed in Oracle marketing messages.

Despite this, Benioff said he was still very fond of his old employer and his relationship with Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison was amicable.

"We have a great relationship with them and I don't see us as a competitor with them. Some people do but I just don't see it," he claimed.

Many have claimed Salesforce.com has moved further into Oracle territory with the launch of Database.com.

"I don't see Oracle as an enemy. I love Oracle," Benioff added.

Benioff has not been averse to talking down competitors in the past. At the same event last year, he criticised SAP for its efforts in cloud computing.

Nimbula is a two-year old start-up company from the US. It was founded by the two men who built Amazon's Elastic Cloud (EC2) but, despite its success, they wanted to find a way to bring the same benefits of the public cloud infrastructure behind the firewall for enterprise customers.

With a public cloud history and a private cloud future, Nimbula knows its cloud computing.

The company's vice president of marketing, Reza Malekzadeh, is best known for being the first non-engineer employee at VMware, and played a major role in the company's launch.

Just before his new venture launches its product in Europe, IT PRO got some time time with the executive at VMWorld 2010 - a show he used to organise - to talk all things cloud.

How have cloud computing adoption levels changed over the past year?

It depends on what you call cloud computing but what we have seen fairly dramatically is the [increaded] use of public cloud infrastructure. We have seen that it allows people to do things they couldn't do before and [enables] innovations [not possible] before.

With web companies, such as DropBox, which are entirely built on [public cloud] infrastructure... it has shown that you can very easily build up and use a service, scale it up as you have demand and really focus on the innovation you want to bring to the market rather than actual machines.

That, I think, has been proving some of the benefits that the infrastructure as a service public cloud brings.

People are interested in that but, to a large extent, enterprise customers still have a lot of concerns about putting their data out [there], whether it is because they already have investments in hardware or they have issues around security and compliance or legal reasons.

There are a variety of reason why private infrastructure still has its place. I think that it is still the very early days of enterprise customers adopting the cloud.

It is for a lot of people. There are [rules] of compliance. You have European rules that make sure your data is held in European boundaries and the US puts a lot of liability on anyone who holds health care data. These compliance issues make it very difficult for people just to throw their data out [in the public cloud]... because you are not quite sure where the data is going to end up.

People [also] have concerns about who can actually access that data. A lot of public cloud infrastructure providers... don't have real SLAs (service level agreements) so you are not quite sure what is going to happen.

Security is a big concern. I think some people might be over thinking it, but for a lot of people it is a true concern out there.

Is there anything that isn't suited to being in the cloud?

At this point, yes. There are a lot of things that, again for security and compliance reasons, [aren't].

You also have some applications with requirements, in terms of data, that if your computer and data are too far away, it introduces latency that wouldn't really work. I

If you want to have a certain level of customisation or control over the cloud, it also won't work. For example, you never know when [a provider] is going to do maintenance, you are never guaranteed that your machines are going to run here or there, or on this type of hardware or that type of hardware. If you have specific hardware requirements, it is going to be more difficult to find a suitable public cloud infrastructure for you.

Is the cloud better suited to the small and medium business (SMB) market or to large enterprises?

I think it works for both. I think SMBs are going to look for more packaged public cloud [offerings] because they dont' necessarily have the IT, whereas a larger company can actually say for some sort of applications or lines of business 'I am going to use this kind of computing because its cheaper.'

A good example is Intuit. It is a large provider of personal finance software in the US and provides a product called TurboTax, to [do] your taxes.

Here is a company that has huge data liability issues because you are putting your tax details on its network. But, at the same time, they need to do load testing. Once a year it fires up a lot of Amazon instances to simulate 18 million people hitting its network. It then shuts its network and carries on with its own service which is hosted on its own systems.

To do that load testing, it doesn't really make sense to go and buy equipment just to do one load test.

This is a model where large enterprise customers will use a public cloud for a very specific thing at a very specific time. We do the same, we do a lot of our regression testing on the public cloud.

I think it is not going to be black and white.

I have a hard time imagining three big providers that are all completely secluded from each other because I don't think customers want to go that way. I think, at the same time, customers have seen true value coming out of shared infrastructure.

I have the feeling that it is going to be a mix where you can have a lot of commodity applications that you can run on [the public cloud], which doesn't provide you with SLAs and makes it easy to fire off things. But, maybe there will be a number of smaller niche players that will address, say, the legal market because lawyers for example have a specific type of data privacy issue and those guys will build a slightly different service for that particular market.

I can see a nice mix but I definitely think that the idea of using your own and someone else's equipment is something that will prevail in the long term because it just makes economic sense.

Users are finding Salesforce.com's Chatter service is helping to show who the real company movers and shakers are. The message was made clear at a meeting of users at the Cloudforce conference in London.

"We now have a clearer view of how our support groups really work and who people turn to for advice," said Kimberly Jansen, director of global CRM at Misys. "It gives a valuable insight into how people want to work and has increased the efficiency of our focus groups."

Chatter users have been online for just over two months, but already the feedback appears positive. The general opinion is social networking in a business context breaks down virtual barriers between departments.

"Feedback shows that it also allows a CEO to see what is really happening inside the company and frees them from the CEO bubble," claimed Robin Daniels, director of product marketing at Salesforce.

Jansen added her company had branches all over the world. "The global spread stretches to areas like India and Manilla. Before we relied on email but now our communications have been [sped] up and the service allows people to add a more personal flavour to their interactions," she said.

CloudApps develops software to monitor their customers' carbon footprints. Simon Wheeldon, the company's CEO, claimed: "The application has improved the way we work. It makes it much easier to gather information about carbon reduction regulations because everyone is working in the same space. We can execute surveys that reach into the supply chain and our use of email has reduced.

"When a company grows beyond five or six people it is easy for the CEO to start to lose touch with what is happening. Chatter not only allows us to get information in real time but we can also track back through the chain of messages - that's not easily done with email."

Although the message was positive, as might be expected with Salesforce selecting the speakers, there is a downside for staff. It becomes apparent who is a conscientious, knowledgeable worker but it also highlights those who appear to be less forthcoming with input.

There is also the possibility people may sometimes post inappropriate comments. This may be a criticism of fellow workers or customers. Salesforce has put together a document of Chatter Etiquette to guide users in avoiding the pitfalls.

The US software industry has come through the recession with operating income averaging eight per cent in 2009.

Companies are anticipating filing stronger revenues for this year, according to a report from the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA).

The US trade association released its findings in its 2010 Software Benchmarking Industry Report. The 2009 figures were low, but showed massive improvement when compared to 25 per cent operating losses the previous year.

The report was compiled by OPEXEngine, an aggregator of financial and operating benchmarks. The researchers looked at businesses with up to $300 million (195 million).

"Since the recession, small and mid-sized software firms have focused on extensive expense and cash management, and now that revenue is improving, those decisions are really paying off," said Lauren Kelley, chief executive (CEO) of OPEXEngine.

However, things were not so good for start-ups, the report observed. High growth, early stage companies' profits tending to be funnelled into sales and marketing efforts. Overall though, even in this sector, the signs were positive with revenues growing by 15 per cent over the year.

Software as a Service (SaaS) firms with revenues up to $25 million (16 million) were coming out strong. Their figures grew by 21 per cent, confirming growing interest in SaaS provision within the SME community.

SIIA said 75 per cent of the companies surveyed claimed 2010 would show even stronger growth.

Bob Tarzey, analyst with Quocirca, said this was good news for the US, but things were looking even brighter in the UK.

"If you look at the UK economy in general, it is perking up but actually the UK is doing better than the US," he said. "This is reflected in the IT industry [as] we have seen an uptake in marketing spend, a clear sign that [IT companies] themselves think business is there for the taking."

However, Tarzey warned the political situation on our shores may damage this positive outlook.

"Software and IT companies have done well off of the largeness of the UK Government," he said, "but this is set to be hit quite hard."

"Over the next year or so we will see growth for companies reliant on the private sector, but those with public sector [contracts] will suffer."

Proofpoint has upgraded its business email archiving solution with a new offering to incorporate support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.

The Proofpoint Enterprise Archive product will support mixed environments that use various versions of Exchange as well, including 2003, 2007 and 2010.

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) archiving release is designed to help businesses cut legal discovery risk and cost, whilst offering a manageable, searchable backlog of messages.

One advantage the new offering has over other products is in its automated storage of data in active legal holds, meaning human error is practically eradicated.

Peter Galvin, chief marketing officer (CMO) at Proofpoint, told IT PRO workers should not be spending too much time on security, so automation can help them get on with other business processes.

"You don't want workers spending all their time on security," Galvin explained.

"Security should be very light in the sense that it shouldn't be a burden on the worker."

The search function has been improved as well, allowing for complex searches when looking for specific emails.

Galvin claimed other archiving products on the market do not place a heavy focus on search capabilities.

This means the IT department is stuck looking through emails over a long period should a search task be required, Galvin said.

"In some cases you have a very limited amount of time to find these emails and this data. With a system like [ours] it takes only days and weeks rather than months or years," he added.

The Proofpoint Enterprise Archive solution works on a hybrid model, combining on-premises and SaaS functions.

Storage and search is kept in the cloud, while an in-house appliance adds an extra layer of security. The company's patented DoubleBlind Encryption provides protection for static or in-transit data and only the customer has the key to unlock the archive.

Galvin said the hybrid model gave companies more room to deal with the raft of spam that comes through to them.

He questioned: "How do you absorb spam volumes with an on-premise model?"

To meet their targets, professional investors create portfolios of shares. Within the portfolio, the fund manager picks shares with different performance characteristics, and manages each accordingly.

Much the same logic can be applied to business software. Some applications are critical and high performance, some more commoditised, and some lie somewhere in between.

Yet IT departments often run their applications, as if all are mission critical or core to the business. They assume that all applications have similar lifecycles. But just as the investor will hold some shares for short term gain and some for the long term, there are apps that need to run for decades - and those that run for just a few months.

This is an area that is being examined by the analysts at AMR Research, part of Gartner. According to AMR's Dennis Gaughan companies do tend to maintain the one size fits all approach to enterprise software, despite the fact that it adds to costs, increases complexity, and makes IT less responsive to change in the business. The answer is to manage different applications as different parts of a portfolio.

Analysts at AMR and Gartner have developed a straightforward - and workable - classification for enterprise software. This is based on the role of the app and its lifespan, as well as where it is most likely to run.

First there are "systems of record", transactional systems that control the business' financial functions. These could be accounting, sales, or enterprise resource planning (ERP). These systems usually run in house, and have a lifespan of decades.

Next there are "systems of differentiation", which go behond the core financials and help the business to stand out in the marketplace. This could be customer relationship management, salesforce optimation, parts of manufacturing or the supply chain or even marketing.

In the UK, Tesco's Clubcard loyalty system is a good example. These apps can be run in the cloud, and usually operate for three to 10 years.

The third tier of apps, and perhaps the most loosely defined, are "systems of transformation". These apps set out to change the business, or a part of it, can have lifespans as short as months, and are very likely to be delivered by external providers, including via the cloud. They are usually funded from business budgets. A lot of web or social media projects would currently fit this category.

AMR's point, though, rests less on the classification of the apps than on the need to manage them differently. There are lots of IT departments that spend too much managing non-critical or short life applications, as well as a few, no doubt, that neglect their core systems.

Viewing applications as a portfolio - with each picked for its strengths and managed accordingly - helps IT to work more closely with the business, and saves money.

Running a portfolio does, of course, take time, as any investor will confirm. But the results, in IT as in shares, are similar. Get it right and you will outperform the market.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT PRO.

Comments? Questions? You can email him here.

Adobe has unveiled Creative Suite 5, upgrading its design and development software such as Photoshop, Premiere and more with some intriguing new features.

The entire lineup has 250 new features, Adobe said. Flagship editing software Photoshop leads the way with a clever new tool dubbed Content Aware fill, which makes cutting a bit out of a photo and filling it in with background a quick automated job. (Click here for a video of Content Aware in action.)

Photoshop CS5 also features a new tool called Refine Edge, which finds the edge of an element of an image, to make masking easier, while InDesign CS5 promises better e-reader support for documents.

In addition, Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects now also run natively in 64-bit Mac or Windows.

The suite includes a new system called Adobe Flash Catalyst, which the firm says will let designers create content without coding, and "improve the collaborative process between designer and developer."

Aside from the software updates, the CS5 lineup will also offer access to the new CS Live set up, which includes Omniture web tracking, integrating marketing and optimisation tools from the firm Adobe bought last September for $1.8 billion.

"While Creative Suite 5 continues Adobe's storied history of delivering astonishing new creative features, this release first and foremost addresses the challenges facing publishers and creatives worldwide - how to build profitable businesses around digital content," said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer at Adobe.

"By coupling sophisticated online business analytics with dazzling creative tools, we're ensuring that publishers, designers and marketers can create, deliver and optimise beautiful, high-impact digital experiences across media and devices," Narayen added in a statement.

The entire package can be picked up in the CS5 Master Collection for an expected cost in the UK of 2,303 excluding VAT, although upgrade pricing and smaller packages with select programmes are also available. CS5 will ship in 30 days.

The largest global supplier of printing inks for graphic arts and pigments, Sun Chemical, has revealed its successful adoption of new project management software in key regions.

With a turnover of $3.5 billion (1.72bn), Sun Chemical has consolidated its management of diverse projects and portfolios on a single, centralised system, eliminating a variety of non-integrated, management systems across different sites, including some that were paper and spreadsheet-based.

Sun Chemical has implemented a customised global project and portfolio management system, based on GenSight Enterprise Portfolio Management 7.0 to capture research and development (R&D) project information and business data accessible by appropriate technical and multifunctional European and North America staff.

Robin Clarke, Sun Chemical technology process manager said getting the right project and portfolio management software was vital for the company. "This tool allows us to link the business value of projects with strategy, resources and specific project deliverables," he said.

"We have many simultaneous and complex projects and need visibility across these activities for the functional stakeholders who are located at diverse sites. Since going live, we have full visibility of our global R&D effort, which has allowed us to avoid duplicity and optimise project selection, while deploying and linking resources much more efficiently."

He added that, for the first time, the company could now view resource allocation dynamically. Strategic decisions and planning are now based on a real-time global database of projects, while permissions and security restrictions maintain higher levels of governance.

Clarke also said the system's web-based reporting means "stakeholders can now sign-off projects from any location at any time".

"This has opened up our link to other functions that play a key role in project management, such as purchasing, our environmental group, marketing and manufacturing," he said.

Dr Cynthia Arnold, Sun Chemical chief technology officer, added: "We were deeply involved in trialling the new [GenSight] version, which was configured to meet our specific needs and were impressed by its functionality, project visibility and improved management capability."

She added: "We have implemented the system for our central development projects and trained users across Europe and North America. Having global project coordination supported by an easy-to-use tool aligned to our management enables us to maintain our competitive leadership."

Bolton Wanderers Football Club (FC) has migrated to a hosted email management services to improve communications, IT and security management.

The Premiership club wanted to improve its email systems and add increased continuity, archiving e-discovery and security to its management capabilities.

Email had become a crucial communication tool used between staff and players, including commercial negotiation and transactions with suppliers and sponsors, using security and filtering software at the email gateway.

Bolton Wanderers FC IT manager, Dave Atkinson said archiving compliance was also an issue: "There is a very real threat of fines and points can even be deducted from any Premiership club as a penalty for breaching the strict laws regarding new player signings," he said.

"I was looking for a solution with a comprehensive, easily accessible record of all contractual discussions that would stand up in court as evidence if necessary."

But the need to look for alternative email management systems became apparent when the number of 'false positives' - legitimate emails incorrectly categorised and quarantined as spam - became an administrative burden.

"My wish list included the requirement for a resilient system with no single points of failure and true integrity of data which could be relied upon should it ever be contested," said Atkinson.

Working with local systems integrator Network Defence, Bolton Wanderers' IT team dispensed with its on-site email hygiene gateway and connected its Microsoft Exchange Server to the Mimecast unified email management service.

Atkinson said: "The service enables the club to retain all emails in a highly secure system that is easy to access, with 10 year archiving. In the event of any planned or unplanned Microsoft Exchange Server downtime, our people continue to send and receive emails [with Microsoft Outlook] as normal through the Mimecast service and can even access and easily search their own historic archived email."

He added that the club has cut administration time by 50 per cent, while spam is being blocked at source. "Email traffic now moves quickly and viruses are virtually eliminated," he said. "The system automatically archives all emails and audit trails that can be accessed in an instant and used as evidence, should the business ever need it."

The marketing team use outbound email facilities, including club branding and customisable formats for different individuals, with their own signatures incorporated within the email. The Mimecast service has also overcome the problem of external email filters blocking any email containing images and 'false positives', allowing the club to feature merchandise and other images within their emails.

A report claims that email is the UK's worst channel for customer service, with telecom, insurance and utility companies coming under particular criticism.

Research found that out of 100 leading businesses, 28 per cent failed to respond at all to emailed questions. Even companies that did answer emails did so slowly: the average response time for customer queries was two days.

In less than half of emailed questions (46 per cent) were answered properly. And questions asked through websites were answered satisfactorily only half the time.

"Our research has uncovered shocking failings in the customer service email channel," said Dee Roche, director of marketing at e-services software company Transversal, which did the research.

"Companies are playing ping pong with email enquiries, pushing them back to the web and forcing consumers to call contact centres. What is the point in paying staff to respond to customers' questions badly?," asked Roche.

Transversal found that in eight out of 10 industries, service standards had deteriorated since last year.

Insurance companies ranked lowest, with only one email reply successfully answering a question and 50 per cent failing to respond at all.

Telecom companies also faired badly. Although from 2005 to 2007 the average reply time fell from 32 to 26 hours, successful answers also fell: from 70 per cent to 20 per cent.

Utility companies followed a similar pattern, with email response times getting better but successful replies falling, in this case from 70 per cent to a mere 15 per cent.

"Our analysis demonstrates the scale of the problem and how dramatically the usefulness of email replies has deteriorated over the last three years," said Roche.

One factor, Roche said, was the outsourcing of many contact centres.

"Companies that are paid a set amount for every email answered have no incentive to ensure agents are providing detailed, useful responses," she said.

Cadbury announced today it has signed a global deal to extend the successful UK of a multichannel digital marketing platform worldwide.

The deal comes a year after Cadbury began using the software platform in the UK to deploy and manage campaigns across all digital channels, including email, the web, mobile and interactive TV.

The company has already used the Traction platform from digital communications provider MassMedia Studios for digital campaigns including Cadbury Crme Egg and to communicate with the Wispa fans. And it is now rolling it out globally to achieve better control and consistency in its consumer marketing activities, beginning with the USA, Australia and New Zealand.

Frances Dovey, interactive and emerging media manager at Cadbury, said: "In addition to giving us greater control and efficiency over our activities it has helped us improve our understanding about Cadbury consumers. MassMedia itself has provided valuable consultancy and roll-out advice, which will allow us to really embrace digital marketing in all Cadbury territories."

Traction will be used to provide Cadbury's brands and agencies with a blueprint for how data is collected, segmented, managed and used to acquire and retain customers across the different digital channels.

The vendor said Traction's campaign management tools provide brands, like the chocolate maker's, with better insight into customer behaviour and the ability to personalise responses to those customer interactions and ensure the right message is delivered to the right customer at the most appropriate time.

StudentStore, student and teacher IT equipment sales and support online retailer is using brand new web analytical software to improve its appeal to visitors based cognitive and psychological behaviour.

The software, launched Tuesday, by vendor 7 Billion People (7BP) uses behavioural psychology to give StudentStore management insight into its visitor and customer activity to help them optimise its outbound direct marketing and use of advertising through Google Adwords among others, as well as refine its website to increase sales conversion.

John Cummins, 7BP regional manager for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region said, while most web analytics software uses metrics linked to the design and architecture of websites, 7BP's MarketMaestro software maps web activity to the ways customers make purchasing decisions depending on the language of the site.

"When you consider the average 'close' rates for online sales from visitors to e-commerce sites is three per cent, it makes you think it should be better with all the analytical data retailers already have from their website systems," he said.

Mark Jordan, StudentStore chief executive agreed. He told IT PRO: " We were literally drowning in web data. But I wanted a 'heads-up' display of activity that could help with our understanding of what language and web experience were most appealing, so we could better match that on our site."

The StudentStore site offers students, teachers and academics discounted rate laptops, PCs and accessories. And, within two months of taking on the 7BP software, it is building a clearer picture of the motivations and expectations of visitors to the site so it can better match them in its marketing and site layout, design and content.

The software works by adding a single line of code to the website pages, which collects data on user activity before routing it to 7BP headquarters in Austin, Texas where it is run through neural net-based profiling models.

StudentStore then accesses the results through a portal that reflect the data as a series of characteristics according to seven profiles of common visitors to measure website performance.

"The data we're already getting is helping me answer the question of how do I convert more people who come to the site into a sale,' added Jordan. "We also build and run dedicated sites for universities as well, so we're also planning to use the software across those too."

European motorcycle company Kawasaki has implemented a new dealer intranet as part of efforts to modernise its dealer operations.

The project has streamlined transactions with dealers, improved data accuracy and removed the need for multiple, manual data re-entry using a combination of IBM WebSphere middleware and QAS address verification software.

The company embarked on a standardised operational transformation programme some years ago. But Brian Haselgrove, senior information system department manager for Kawasaki Europe told IT PRO its European subsidiaries had, up until that time, run their own, individual operational systems, each developed in-house. "Head office decided to write one set of standard systems for the region from scratch," he said.

With the establishment of a new European headquarters in the Netherlands, the company decided to create one business-to-business (B2B) extranet for the whole of Europe to look after order placement, warranty registration, back-end production, order processing, invoicing and accounting.

"We had the most experience running systems for collecting customer data from Kawasaki dealers," said Haselgrove. "We first had an old system 38 for processing orders and then, in the mid-1990s, we wrote something for the internet that was based on IBM equipment that was very successful with dealers. So the decision was taken to write a new dealer system for Europe."

Kawasaki use IBM iSeries along with Websphere software to deliver an IT infrastructure that integrates a variety of functional applications online, including QuickAddress Pro Web from Experian subsidiary QAS to validate customer address details as they are given to the dealer. By entering only the customer's house number and postcode (or European equivalent), the remaining address fields in the Kawasaki customer database are automatically populated.

"Dealers are obliged to give us the name and address of a new customer for product recalls," Haselgrove said. "Equally, there are vehicle registration requirements we have to abide by in every country. But we are also able to use the information for sending out welcome packs, direct mail and other marketing purposes. The database is extremely useful."

Haslegrove and his team are working to add new modules around financial reporting and product orders to the intranet, which is now used by 1,800 dealers. But 90 per cent of warranty claims are now conducted using it, while the only manual intervention needed in clerical areas now are for the 10 per cent of exceptions involving customer information, where before, "each country had to have an army of staff doing clerical input," he added.