Monthly Archives: August 2015

What on earth is CAMSS? – Avtar Marway

CAMSS, Deep Dive, Insight August 24, 2015 Leave a comment

Well, in short… CAMSS stands for ‘Cloud Analytics Mobile Social Security’. These are the five key strategies that IBM have in order to help their clients and be essential to the world. So how have these already helped?

Cloud

Like a normal cloud, which stores water, one of the offerings of IBM’s cloud is to allow storage of their client’s information, data and services. Rather than buying their own data storage, clients can use IBM’s Cloud to store their data and information which means they do not have to worry about it

Analytics

Do you ever think what happens with all the data we collect? The millions of data that is collected through the little things we ignore in life? By using Analytics, we are able to analyse the data we collect in order to make smarter cities and a smarter planet. So an example of this is by using traffic lights. Don’t you just hate it when you’re at a red traffic light at a junction, where there are no cars and no pedestrians waiting to cross? By using the data that is collected by traffic lights, analytics can be used to make these traffic lights smarter and better to the adapting world that we are in.

Mobile

Are you reading this from your mobile? If you are, then that’s one of the big things that mobiles are able to do. Mobile is a huge part of society today and are a big part of our lives. This is due to the growth in technology over the years which has allowed companies such as banks to integrate their services into the mobile industry. IBM helps its clients with Mobile by undertaking activities such as creation, management and testing of their mobile-ready applications. For example, if a bank were to have a new app, IBM could help to create this app, test the app on mobile devices so that when the bank releases the app, there are no problems and customers are satisfied with the application as well as it’s functionality.

Social

How often do you see the Twitter or Facebook symbol on the website of a business? The majority of businesses now link their business with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. in order to increase the social aspect of their business. IBM help to develop offerings and assets around the use of social media. IBM can analyse the data that a business’ social aspect collects. For example, say one of IBM’s clients had a twitter account where customers tweet the company. IBM could use the tweets that have been sent to their client to find out what a lot of their customers are tweeting and then use this information to help their client. For example, if tweets were about low customer satisfaction, then IBM could help the client with this problem. All this is done because the client went social.

Security

Without Security, you would have no money, I would have no money, and there would be mass mayhem all over the world. Security is very important – especially with the growth in technology. This is because if security is breached, all kinds of information can be leaked. Remember when Sony was hacked? And the bank details of many PlayStation users were held by the hackers? Imagine if your bank details were breached, how would you have felt? IBM helps to implement high levels of security to their clients. For example, if a client uses the IBM cloud, the information and data they keep inside the cloud is protected within IBM’s security platforms. IBM have done many demonstrations to display how good our security offering is.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog, and have understood what CAMSS is. If you require more information about any of these or about anything relating to IBM as well as the apprenticeship scheme, feel free to contact me on Twitter (@AvtarMarway), LinkedIn (Avtar Marway) or email me (AvtarMar@UK.IBM.COM).

See you soon!

CAMSS – Impact on working on a Public Sector Project

CAMSS, Deep Dive, Insight August 17, 2015 Leave a comment

CAMSS – Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Security and Social, is the key strategy for IBM, and one that we must all take into consideration and follow as much as possible. However, as within my role as Change Manager on a Public Sector project, this is not always easy. In this post, I’ll look at some of the challenges that are faced when trying to implement all of the 5 strategies within a large Public Sector project.

In the Public Sector, Security is the most important aspect of CAMSS, as you would likely expect. Ensuring that all data and applications serviced by the project are kept safe and secure is at the heart of the clients expectations, so following this is the most important thing that we as a project team can do. As a Change Manager it is important to ensure that any data we are looking after is kept secure, as well as any changes that we are managing has no security implications for the applications. As seen in the news in the past, there have been numerous virus vulnerabilities so it has been important to act quickly to ensure these do not affect any of the systems that we are monitoring and looking after.

Keeping security as the main focus for the project has often meant that some of the other CAMSS strategies are not able to be implemented as effectively, but it is important for the project to continue to look for areas to progress within the remainder of the five strategies. As the project takes on new accounts, they have tried to move these onto the Cloud, where they are now hosted. In some cases, it is not possible to do the need to be extra resilient, but as new smaller accounts are incorporated into the programme, they are being hosted on a highly secure cloud network.

Each project faces different challenges, whether it is a public sector project or not, so it is important to remain at the height of the CAMSS focus where possible, and if needed keep a high focus on one particular area of the strategy.