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The Global Digital Market: changing the ICT vision.

The Global Digital Market: changing the ICT vision.

07-05-2012

Market analysts, faced with freefalling profits and weak consumer demand, have described 2011 as the annus horribilis of the Italian ICT market.

 
Market analysts, faced with freefalling profits and weak consumer demand, have described 2011 as the annus horribilis of the Italian ICT market. According to a conventional interpretation of the ICT sector, that is, as recently pointed out by Paolo Angelucci, President of Assinform, since no account is taken of the increasing convergence between IT and TLC, which is gradually redefining the ICT sector according to the new concept of General Digital Market, capable of also measuring the new digital demand components and sending signals of optimism.
 
We have discussed the issue with Roberto Saracino, CIO of AlmavivA’s ICT Division.
 
Can you paint us a general picture of the trends under way in the Italian ICT market?
 
The situation is all but reassuring, although we shouldn’t underestimate certain encouraging signs, such as the opportunity to implement the Digital Agenda within a definite timeframe, to develop new business models grounded on the spreading of digital services and content, besides the enormous growth of Cloud Computing.
We are convinced that if we continue looking through the eyeglasses of conventional IT, which comprises investments in technologies managed by CIOs and the IT departments of enterprises, what we see, in the best of cases, is a stagnant market.
But this view no longer coincides with how the market actually is and how it’s evolving. I’m speaking of a new approach that will unavoidably transform demand and the positioning of the ICT leaders.
These radical changes will feature the changeover from IT to business management, an opportunity AlmavivA intends to grasp in full. The new mobile technologies, through consumers, are already prompting public and private organizations towards implementing radical changes in IT spending, according to an approach increasingly focused on ideas that can create new services, by integrating consumer and enterprise technologies.
Cloud Computing solutions are also contributing to this transformation, by removing the need for geographical proximity between the service and the client. Mobility can pave the way for an “everywhere” logic and entails a flexible, secure and smart platform for providing services to the public and businesses by exploiting the great wealth of data that has not yet been fully tapped.
Cloud, Social, Information, Mobile: these are the keywords of the forthcoming years.
 
About Cloud Computing, what is the state-of-the-art of the cloud?
 
Clouds undoubtedly make for an evocative metaphor, but the focus should be on the new paradigms of information technology, the family of hardware and application software resources that come together to provide a set of web-based functionalities: an evolution of IT outsourcing via the Internet, an ICT solution suited to both government and businesses of all sizes, but especially SMEs.
The actual breakthrough of cloud services is the total application of Utility Computing: users can pay for the services as they go, in terms of cpu cycles, ram, disk space, just like you pay for water, electricity and gas.
Today, the virtualization of hardware and software resources can deliver innovatory technologies without the need for large investments, with obvious economic advantages: infrastructure start-up costs are practically nil, scalability is on demand, the management of traffic peaks and server resources can be optimized (in view of the fact that, normally, they are used for no more than 20/30% of their actual potential), and businesses no longer have to worry about updates, maintenance and licensing.
A whole spectrum of services are available round the clock, ranging from basic hosting to platforms ready for application deployment, to SaaS - Software as a Service, an all-round customizable software, and X as a Service, the global services.
Cloud Computing has now reached its maturity and is ready to go widespread: the forecasts, in fact, predict a constant growth of 30% per year until 2014.
 
The perfect solution then?
 
Let’s not get carried away: it’s not the solution, but part of the solution. According to the new approach to the IT market I mentioned earlier, basically until now people tended to focus only on the technological aspects and new methods of payment for services, disregarding the government of business-oriented IT, integration and the exportability of services.
Moreover, the path of Cloud Computing is littered with hurdles, primarily in connection with the protection and security of the externally managed corporate data, the guarantee of business continuity, the very regulations, which can differ significantly: for instance, Europe prefers the private cloud, which guarantees confidentiality of information, while the US have adopted the public cloud, which costs less but also offers less guarantees. In between the two options is the hybrid cloud, with features of both the private and the public clouds, featuring technologies that can ensure easy, secure and fast communication between the two worlds. This is the alternative that seems to have caught the market’s preference.
 
How is Italy positioned, with regard to the development of Cloud Computing on the global market?
 
A recent study by the Bsa Global Cloud Scorecard (February 2012) ranks Italy sixth in the global league table, third in Europe, regarding policies promoting the development of Cloud Computing on the national markets. The study included 24 countries, accounting for 80% of the ICT market worldwide, based on 7 key areas: data privacy, cybersecurity, cybercrime, intellectual property, technological interoperability and regulatory harmonization, trade policy freedom, availability of ICT infrastructures.
Italy ranked sixth – after Japan, Australia, Germany, the US and France – thanks to the favorable evaluation of our copyright laws, which also protects cloud services, and the constantly updated cybercrime regulations.
 
We are living in a period of great change. How does AlmavivA support its clients?
 
AlmavivA has designed a “transformation program” to help businesses and government entities manage the present and prepare for the future, i.e. manage ICT as a cornerstone for developing their business. The key points of the program are: careful cost reductions, infrastructure flexibility, investments in technological solutions in line with the market trends and business needs.
We have developed a single integrated platform, an open multivendor development environment capable of offering new services, cutting costs, but also providing new opportunities for fostering communication with the public and clients. An important competitive element for both businesses and the country as a whole.
We have also envisaged phase two of the program, during which processing will be transferred to the end – point and a public cloud created, in which everyone can simultaneously deliver services and content.
We are aware that opening a communication channel between the information system and the public is an opportunity, which, however, entails a risk for information security, but which we are prepared to effectively combat. We are also aware that the “transformation program” is a complex project and our aim is to involve the academic world and innovation-focused enterprises in its implementation.
 
Let’s tackle the issue of security then. Which threats are there in the Cyberspace today?
 
The Cyberspace has eliminated the geographical dimension, it is the space in which the physical and logical entities meet up and use new communication processes. Over the years it has been seen that this space can be easily violated, with serious damage to the data of enterprises and government entities, and even the infrastructure of entire countries, with increasingly frequent attacks.
In 2011 alone a total of a billion digital thefts via the Internet were recorded.
 
Which are the factors of growth of Cybercrime?
 
Firstly, the low cost of cyber weapons and their reproduction. This means that, once they have been created they become available, in many cases, to a large group of people and can easily be replicated in different places.
We consider that, in the case a country is attacked through the cyberspace, this cannot absolutely be compared to a conventional wartime attack. The action that blocked the production of nuclear energy in Iran, for example, seems to have cost only 10 million dollars…
The problem of ICT security has always been at the top of the agenda, especially for ensuring the security not only of one’s organization, but of a digital system as well, which represents the new model, today, of public and private economic interaction.
 
Can you tell us about AlmavivA’s ICT security offering?
 
AlmavivA has an interdisciplinary approach to the issue of ICT Security and an independent position, compared to the solutions offered by the global market vendors. This gives us a high degree of reliability for choosing the best solutions and system integrations, placing us head and shoulders above our competitors.
AlmavivA’s ICT Security team has three key areas of expertise: first of all, Security Consulting, which develops and manages our top-level consulting services, focusing on major risk areas, especially fraud and cybercrime; secondly, ICT Security Solutions, based on various technologies, effectively responding to the needs of our clients, on the different markets; last but not least, our Managed Security Services, offering solutions for designing, implementing and managing safety services – typical of a Security Operation facility – delivered by AlmavivA cloud experts.