Velocity Conference Amsterdam

John Cooper reviews the Velocity conference

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At the end of last year I attended the Velocity conference in Amsterdam. It was paid for by UCISA as part of their bursary scheme. So, many thanks to them for having the foresight to see the benefit of these types of events.

Velocity is a conference focused around Web Application development and performance. It deals with all aspects of producing fast and efficient web applications. It has a wide audience (in a narrow field if that makes sense). I talked to front end web developers, business app producers and traditional operations folks, from companies large and small.

There seemed to be three main threads to the talks. Technical operations performance, such as server setups, monitoring and configuration. Application level changes, such as progressive web apps and image optimisation. And finally, the softer side of being part of one of those teams, such as diversity in your team, project based teamwork or team motivation. A lot of the talks crossed some of these areas but it felt to me they were the broad sections.

I'm not going to talk much about specific talks here but will try and summarise what I thought where the sub topics.

Progressive web apps

They are everywhere. Nearly all the talks mentioned them in some fashion. It seems these are going to become more and more important over the coming years. While at their most basic they let you scale your website to fit on many device types they are starting to add a lot more to apps in general. There is support for notifications and adding the "app" to the desktop or application menus in the browsers. This means that you can create what feels like a native application using web technologies. We are already seeing people ship applications that are nothing more than a thin wrapper around a web rendering engine. You should be looking at these now. Even if you are not using all the features that they suggest you can already be taking advantage of the boost in performance you get and helping future proof you a bit.

Http/2

There where a few talks about http/2 the new version of the standard that drives the web. http/2 is out there and supported by all modern browsers now. Talks varied from the W3C proposing new additions to improve performance to people writing servers and studying how browsers interact with http/2. While some of the newer and deeper technical details where overkill for general use it's still good to know how these things work under the hood. Like how a web browser will load as far as the end of the head section in a web page and then build a download map for what to do next. It might switch to download the images and stylesheets first then the rest of the page. You page, site and server can help the browser with these decisions by providing maps and hints. Push is a part of http/2. The server can push some things that it thinks the browser might need next. This leads to servers pushing things that the browser already has cached. So now there is a cache digest that the client can send with the first request so the server knows what the client has cached. While browser support is patchy there is a cacher-digest.js script to fall back on. The upcoming QUIC protocol based on UDP seems interesting as it cuts out a lot of the round trip time (RTT) for a packet to get to a client. These can all add up so by doing more things asynchronously the overall speed can be improved. There are lots of changes in http/2 some of which are easy to get the benefit from and others will only become obvious as app frameworks adapt to these new paradigms. In the meantime it looks like it's about time to turn it on.

Team diversity and development

There where quite a lot of talks about the soft side of the craft. One of the keynotes was themed on how a diverse team is a more productive team and hiring in your own image ends up creating a team that is fixed in its ways. Other talks where about how teams have scaled, switching to smaller mixed teams with cross group knowledge sharing. I think my favourite one though came from a member of the wellness team (what your enterprise might call HR) for the German company who talked about their review process and how that works when you don't have any managers. They essentially get people to volunteer to be reviewers, select the good ones, and then everybody gets to pick who does their review. The opening talk, Word Done vs Work as Imagined, touched on many things but a couple that stood out where about setting metrics and automated alerts vs an human skill and experience. On the first point they used the fact that too many alarms went off on a flight and the pilots had to ignore them and fly using experience. This maybe true to some extent in this instance but it also might point to bad alerting interface. I would recommend that you read The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande at some point though for an interesting looks at how sometimes human instincts need some backup. Next up was the measurement, reward and punishment of workers using metrics a firm favourite of the UK Government. I think it still bears repeating that you get out only what the metrics are requiring of people so be careful. If you set a four hour minimum to be seen in A&E then staff, even good ones like doctors and nurses, will bend and break all the other rules to achieve that. Systems are invented to meet the target even if that is a worse way of doing things.

Containers and system reliability

Containers have moved on and are no longer a big topic at conferences I think. I don't know where they are on the hype curve but it seems that the assumption with a lot of the talks was that you where already running them. Topics like Immutable Infrastructure and even Serverless did get a mention now and again. It feels like the technology stack has shifted slightly again. People are concerned with Docker Swarm or Kubernetes for managing applications rather than managing servers specifically. It seems assumed that you will be running on some sort of "cloud" where groups of "servers" come and go. Now we are looking at how to make systems tolerate failure rather than be 100% reliable. Gone are the Dual power supplies and redundant networking being replaced with autosizing clouds and redundant cloud suppliers. Fun times.

Metrics

Metrics are key to any sort of modern development. They give insight into what is working and what is not. They let you test changes and make sure they are not breaking things in subtle ways. Gathering and processing metrics is hard. We can very simply monitor systems and times but figuring out what is important or what an issue looks like is more tricky. It does not seem that long ago that the #monitoringsucks hashtag was all the rage, closely followed by the slightly more positive #monitoringlove one. At the time Nagios and Cacti where the tool and we struggled to make use of them where we could. Now it feels we are spoilt for choice. There seemed to be two main themes to the talks those talking about how to gather the statistics and those dealing with interpreting them. On the gathering side probably the most interesting for me was the description of the close integration of Kubernetes and Prometheus. These two tools seem to be the very hot at the moment and are starting to change the way we think about our infrastructure. Completing the move from snowflake servers that we nurture and run applications on to 'pods' that house applications that we run on clusters. With this shift in complexity we need new tools to manage this. Kubernetes handles the running and scaling of the applications themselves while Prometheus gives us the eyes into the system. The other side of metrics is interpreting them. I think my favourite talk here was 'How the users see the data'. It gave a whistle stop tour of how to display metrics. A lot of it based on the work of William S Cleveland and his Graphical Perception paper Showing how people read graphs and giving advice on how to display data to get the most meaning. Some examples included "Stacked anything is nearly always a mistake as are pie charts. Use two charts or only show the important data". Or that there is a scale on which people are better are interpreting data that goes from Position on a common scale to shading. So we are much better at recognising values and difference on a scale than we are say angles or direction. There is a lot more to it than that but I feel I learned a lot there. Anomaly detection was also a theme that cropped up, people have differing opinions on what works and what does not but when you are starting to gather large groups of statics. I attended the tutorial on the last day about using some basic AI and stats in python to spot anomalies in your data even if its not regular. While it was interesting it did feel like it needed a lot of manual work to get the best results so you might need to focus on just a few important metrics.

Continuous Security

The concept of Continuous Delivery is well established in the DevOps world. Keeping the software always deploy-able at all times. Security on the other hand is much more of a mixed bag. The tag DevOpsSecBiz was proposed and while the name will probably not take off it does point to a different approach. First things first you have to get a commitment from the project sponsor or manager that security is important. Then you can start to apply all the techniques that you learned from DevOps to add in security. Sit your teams together, all working towards the same goal including security. Don't make it a "security team" problem that you tack on at the end. Start the project with threat modelling, get your developers to buy into this. Then automate the tests, add them to the infrastructure. Start adding tests to your code for security, unit tests that reflect your goals. Start running checkers for bad code smells and practices in the builds. Add in automatic scanners in test and production. Code reviews, OWASP ASVS is a good starting point. I think one of the final points of the talks was interesting a focus on the security team not being off somewhere "handling security" and probing and testing but being part of the teams improving process and culture.

Tutorials

The final day was tutorials. This was a mixed bag. I chose to do a mixture of topics so I would get a taster of each. It was great to learn about optimising images for the web lots of good things in that one. Getting to explore the basic data science allowed me to think about some of the talks from the previous couple of days. The first tutorial was a programming one using eBPF, which is a low level kernel task that is really powerful. I could have spent most of the day playing with that but it seems to be at odds with the worlds of containers and disposable infrastructure. It does highlight how the split is forming, there seem to be now companies that provide large infrastructure and have the need to dig that deep and a move for most companies to consume those container or even functions hosting services. I do wonder how long my role as a generic systems administrator will exist. Where should I aim for next?

Overall

The conference felt very large and quite anonymous. I managed to speak to quite a few people over lunch and I think things like the birds of a feather (BOF) tables at lunch helped open people up a bit. As ever with techy conferences though I think this can be an awkward time for a lot of people. It felt a shame that there was not something on after the event. People stood around chatting to their peers or the vendors for a while then went off. I have been to other conferences where that time seems better spent in a group. (Having said that by day three I was shattered!) The packed schedule gave little time to thinking, which may seem weird but as I read through the notes I managed to scratch out in between sessions it seems I could have done with some more time to digest some of this. Not sure there is a sensible solution to that one though.

Knowing what you think

Joanne Casey explains why your thoughts matter to us, and reports on changes made in response to feedback.

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We are a customer-focused service, and we work hard to ensure that what we offer - in the Library, IT Services, or the Archives - meets your needs. So getting feedback from you, whether it's positive, negative, or a request for a new service, is important to us. It helps us to find out more about what you want and to identify how we can make improvements to our services.

How we gather feedback

We collect your feedback in a variety of ways; by email, in person, on comment cards, via Facebook and Twitter, or on the new comments board at the Library entrance. We respond directly to any comments that are submitted with contact details, but we also bring all the feedback together in a monthly report, reviewed by managers, and decide how we can act on it.

The well-used Library comments board

What happens next?

We look at what you tell us, we discuss whether improvements are possible, and we respond.

If we can change in response to feedback, we will...

In the past year, we have:

• Adjusted loan limits, so that you can now borrow up to 75 items at a time (previously 50 items)
• Increased the initial loan period from four weeks to eight weeks
• Edited the wording on the renewal screen in My Library account to make the renewal process for interlending items clearer
• Begun providing IT support in the evenings and at weekends, and introduced an appointments system for more complex IT queries
• Increased student spaces in the Library buildings, by opening up former staff offices and the old IT Support Office for student use, as well as opening up the meeting rooms on the second floor of Fairhurst to be used as study spaces in the evenings and at weekends. Over the coming year, it’s likely that other staff will move out of the Fairhurst and these spaces will also become available for study use.

...but sometimes we have to say no

The answer to your comments won't always be 'yes', but if it is 'no', we'll explain why.

For example, we've had a few requests for a microwave in the Library. There are lots of reasons why we can't provide this; the lack of a suitable space, problems with keeping it clean (it's not the responsibility of University cleaners to clean kitchen equipment), and cost (a standard domestic microwave wouldn't be a suitable choice). However, we've passed on this feedback to the University, and there's now a discussion underway about allowing students who live off-campus to access College kitchens.

We've also had lots of feedback about our turnstiles, and we know that several of you don't enjoy having to scan your cards to leave the Library. However, the information that we collect on use of the Library - how long people spend here, which departments or student groups are using the Library most, when people are most likely to come in - is really valuable to us in identifying how we need to develop our services (rest assured, we don’t retain any personal data from the turnstiles). So, whilst we understand how you feel, this isn't something that we plan to change.

The positives

We get lots of good feedback, about our staff and about our services. This matters to us, because it shows what we're getting right. We always make sure that these comments are shared both to managers and teams, so that our colleagues know that they're making a difference. Recent highlights include:

• Thanks as ever for the super speedy response! 1
• Thank you for the years of endless support #uoygraduation 2
• A huge thank you to @UoYITServices who have been brilliant helping with our move. Great team!
• Exceeded expectations, teaching was excellent and fun 3
• You are THE MOST WONDERFUL IT SUPPORT SERVICE IN THE WHOLE OF YORKSHIRE
• Brilliant library and very helpful staff. I just love wandering around exploring the books and journals on the shelves. A great atmosphere for learning.

Thank you all, and keep telling us what you think!

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More information

Who the compliments were for, where not stated.

1. Library Twitter feed
2. Library
3. Borthwick Institute for Archives

Find us on Twitter:

• Library Twitter feed
• IT Services Twitter feed
• Borthwick Institute for Archives Twitter feed

Read more about how we gather & respond to feedback:

• Information Services feedback

Before you leave...

Jamie Clark of IT Support explains what you need to do with your IT account when you're leaving the University.

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'Goodbye' by woodleywonderworks
used under a Creative Commons licence

If you're leaving the University soon, you might have wondered when you'll lose access to your IT account. This depends on whether you are a member of staff or a student. Students can still access
their IT accounts for 90 days after their official course end date. Staff accounts will close one day after their employment ends (as required by research funders and auditors).


We would encourage anyone leaving the University to think about the data you have stored in your account. You might have data in your University filestore, Google Drive or email account. What will you still need after you leave?

Whilst it's tempting to take everything with you, you need to be aware of the University's Information Security policies. You must ensure that you do not take anything that would be considered restricted or confidential information:

• Information classification and handling

A common query we get from leavers is how to export University emails to a personal Gmail account. We recommend a tool called Got Your Back if you want to keep the labels you've assigned to your emails. Got Your Back is a command line tool, so it looks a bit daunting at first, but we've put together step-by-step instructions. Or you might prefer to use the simpler Google Mail Fetcher method, but keep in mind that this is much less flexible. It can't export a subset of your emails (it will take everything in the All Mail section of your account) or keep any labels.

You also need to think about whether you own any files that will still be needed by your colleagues and transfer these to someone else. We often get requests from people who need to access files in a former colleague's closed account. We can only provide this once we have received the appropriate authorisation. This creates a delay which may cause problems for your colleagues.

The same applies to any non-personal accounts. For example, if your team uses a shared email address you need to make sure you get in touch with us to nominate a new owner. If you don't this account will also close when you leave. Then we can only transfer the account after we receive authorisation and in the meantime your colleagues won't be able to access it.

It's best to start thinking about all this as early as possible and make sure you leave enough time to take care of everything before you leave. Don't put it off until your last few days, as this doesn't give us much opportunity to help you if there are any issues.

For further guidance (including instructions on how to export data from your account) take a look at our website:

• Information for staff leavers
• Information for student leavers

Space Apps working with IT Services

Pedro Ribeiro of Computer Science writes about live-streaming at the Space Apps Challenge.

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This year is the fifth edition of NASA's International Space Apps Challenge. For the fourth time the local event, on Saturday 23 April, is being hosted by the Department of Computer Science at York. We expect up to 60 attendees to sign-up, making this the biggest edition of the Challenge at York. Attendees form teams and collaborate with other locations and or virtual participants all across the globe. On Sunday 24th April, teams present their solutions to our panel of academics and industrial representatives, with the winning teams receiving prizes locally, but also competing globally with other locations. The global winners get a chance to attend a NASA launch.

Traditionally, locations have been encouraged to live-stream from their sites, so that people all over the world can get a feeling for what it is like to compete at each location during the weekend. York is no exception, and so we have live-streamed our event every year and published recordings of every team presentation on our YouTube channel. The facilities provided by YouTube to do live streaming are fantastic and accessible to everyone. Here at York we have, year after year, improved on our solution, starting with standard webcams, and ending with a multi-cam Raspberry Pi-powered solution.

An excerpt from last year's live stream:

We are very grateful that this year IT Services have offered to supply us with a dedicated 8-core virtual machine to accommodate our video mixer and live streaming solution. Essentially our set-up consists of Raspberry Pi cameras streaming H264 (encoded in hardware) to a local server, where we can conveniently decode the stream, overlay additional text and graphics, and re-encode it in a format suitable for YouTube. This year we are aiming to have a fully fledged streaming capability by having a live video mixer hosted on the IT Services-provided VM. This is something that can only be successfully achieved by allocating dedicated resources to the task. The video mixing software we use is called Snowmix (with an underlying dependency on gstreamer) and has originally been developed by Copenhagen Suborbitals, an amateur space agency, who specifically developed this piece of software to cover their rocket launches.

We plan to start our live-stream on Saturday morning (23 April), provided everything goes according to the plan. Much testing has been done over the last few weeks, but of course, in the spirit of a hackathon we are also raising the bar for ourselves and trying new ideas.

If you would like to join the Challenge at York you can do so by registering at:

• https://2016.spaceappschallenge.org/locations/york-england 

The event is free, but the number of places is limited, so hurry!

You can follow us on Twitter @SpaceAppsYork or at facebook.com/SpaceAppsYork, and of course you can watch the live stream at the link below once the event is underway:

Cyber Essentials: IT security across the University

Matthew Badham explains why Cyber Essentials accreditation puts the University ahead in bids for research grants.

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Maintaining good cyber security - and being able to demonstrate that we do so - is increasingly important. It protects your account and data, and it's a requirement of many funding organisations when they consider allocating research grants. Good news then that in December 2015 the University of York was awarded Cyber Essentials accreditation covering all managed desktops and laptops.

What is Cyber Essentials and why do we need it?

Cyber Essentials is a government supported scheme which is designed to help organisations protect themselves against security breaches. It considers everything from the infrastructure of our network to your desktop PC or laptop. Our compliance with the standard demonstrates that the University meets fundamental security standards for all supported IT provision. Gaining Cyber Essentials certification gave us the opportunity to review all the precautions we have in place, ensuring that we provide an optimum level of security.

Having worked through the checklist of standards required, we can now be confident that we meet all the key requirements, both for the certification, and for funding bodies.

How does this help me?

If you are a using a managed desktop you can be reassured that you are protected by the systems that the University has in place. Increasingly, funding bodies and organisations are seeking assurance that the IT systems of those applying for research grants are compliant with basic security standards. Quoting the University's accreditation is a useful way of providing this assurance and of enhancing your bid.

Who has Cyber Essentials?

Developed by the government and industry, the accreditation is held by an increasing number of organisations who want to demonstrate to customers and external companies that they are taking essential precautions with their IT security. We are one of the first Universities to gain it.

What does Cyber Essentials cover?

Any managed Windows desktop or laptop, and the infrastructure behind your connection. If you are using an IT Services managed desktop or laptop, and saving your files on central filestore, then you are covered by the certification and can specify this on grant applications for sensitive data. If you are using managed iMacs, managed Linux desktop, or unmanaged devices (eg OS X or unmanaged Windows laptops) you are not certified. Unmanaged devices can't claim this certification because we can't ensure that they meet the required standards in areas like updates, patching, and use of anti-virus software. However, we will look at including certification for managed Linux and Apple devices in a later phase of this work.

Image courtesy of www.itgovernance.co.uk

What comes next?

Having successfully achieved the first stage of accreditation, we are now working towards the next stage of accreditation called Cyber Essentials Plus which will require us to meet an even higher level of security standards.

Any questions…

If you'd like to find out more, please contact IT Support who will forward your query to Arthur Clune, the Assistant Director of IT Services (Infrastructure).

A chance to develop your skills with Google Summer of Code

Google Summer of Code offers you an opportunity to hone your software development skills - and get paid for it. Gavin Atkinson explains more...

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Google Summer of Code is an innovative program dedicated to getting university students from around the world involved with open source software development.

Google offer a $5,500 stipend to students in exchange for them working on open source software over the Summer. Running every year since 2005, nearly 11,000 projects have been accepted from students in over 100 countries by over 500 organisations, and several students from the University of York have participated in the past. This year 180 organisations are involved, in such diverse areas as compilers to operating systems, web applications to virtual reality, FPGAs to games, databases to genetic research. There are projects written with Python, Ruby, Java, C, assembly, JavaScript, and everything in between. Whatever your areas of interest, experience and knowledge, there is likely to be a project that fits your skill set. Students submit proposals to participating organisations to work on projects suggested either by themselves or by the organisations, and if selected they are paired up with a mentor from that organisation to help them throughout their twelve week project. Summer of Code is a fantastic way to spend your summer earning money writing and releasing open source code for the benefit of all.

Two organisations in particular participating in Google Summer of Code this year have a special connection with IT Services. Arthur Clune is involved with The Honeynet Project, a security research organisation dedicated to learning the tools, tactics and motives involved in computer and network attacks, and developing open source security tools to improve Internet security, with a focus on honeypots and threat analysis. I am part of The FreeBSD Project, an advanced operating system for modern server, desktop and embedded platforms which can be found powering everything from the PlayStation 4 to huge Juniper routers. It's at the core of Apple's OSX and powers the servers Netflix use to stream movies worldwide.

Even if neither of those projects interest you, do take a look through the full list of organisations, available at:

• Google Summer of Code participating organisations 

The closing date for applications is Friday 25 March.

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Useful links:

• Google Summer of Code 
• FreeBSD's GSoC page 
• Honeynet GSoC page 

That sinking feeling...

The horror of losing your work can give you nightmares. Tamsyn Quormby and Pritpal Rehal tell you how to save safely and avoid that sinking feeling...

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See ya later, alligator by Jason Mrachina
Used under a Creative Commons license

One of the most common problems that the IT Support team come across is people losing their work, or finding that their files have become corrupted.

Recently, a student came to us when she was unable to access the work stored on her USB stick. She'd been working for hours, and saving her files regularly, but when the thin client she was using was accidentally rebooted, the USB stick became corrupted. We used every trick in our armoury, but we weren't able to restore the files for her. She showed remarkable forbearance at receiving this news; a single tear, and a muttered curse. But it was desperately frustrating to know that if she'd been using the virtual desktop to save to her central filestore instead, the sudden reboot would have caused her no problems.

A single tear by Lauren C
Used under a Creative Commons license

Not everyone is able to be so sanguine in the face of lost work. Every member of our IT support team has had to console a student or member of staff in tears of distress and frustration when their work has been lost - this can happen when a USB stick becomes corrupted or lost, or when a laptop is stolen or irreparably damaged.

Our advice is simple and unchanging:

Don't rely on a USB stick as the main storage method for your work: Not only can the data easily become corrupted, but the device itself is also easy to lose or break.

Don't save the only copy of your work to the local drive of your computer. If work isn't backed up elsewhere, it will be lost if your computer is stolen or damaged.

Where to save your work

So, how should you save and back up your work? We recommend the following:

Central filestore

Every member of the University has a central filestore, their H: drive, with 2Gb of storage allocated to them. Your central filestore is regularly backed up and you can access it from pretty much any device (PC, Mac, Linux, mobile devices...) whether you're on or off campus:

• Filestore access

Google Drive

Google Drive offers storage 'in the cloud' (hosted and backed up in multiple locations) that you can access via a web interface or an app wherever you are. As a member of the University of York, your Google Apps offers unlimited quota.

• Google Drive

Lessons learned...

If you lose your work, always contact IT support for advice. We'll do our very best to help you. But to avoid disaster, keep your work safe by saving it to your central filestore or Google Drive.

Five reasons to consider buying a Chromebook as your next computer...

Thinking about your next computer? Planning your Christmas list? David Barrett has some advice for you...

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Acer C7 Chromebook by Luis Roca
Used under a Creative Commons license

Almost everything I do at work makes use of Google tools - Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive
(containing docs, sheets, presentations), or is browser based (Jira, LucidChart, HipChat), so when my Windows laptop needed replacing I decided to give a Chromebook a go.

It's been nearly a year now and I don't regret that decision. In fact,
if you don't need to install and run specialist software as part of your job, I'd recommend doing the same.

Here are five reasons why:

Number 1: It does pretty much everything I need it to do

Pre-Chromebook, my use of Microsoft Office was dwindling. Using Excel to enter my working hours into a spreadsheet was the highlight. But now my timesheet is a Google sheet, so problem solved. Drive is a great way to collaborate on, share and store docs and sheets I'm working on. I've found it far more flexible than working off a shared drive.

  HDMI to VGA Adapter by SparkFun Electronics
Used under a Creative Commons license

All I needed to add were a couple of cheap, plug & play accessories; an HDMI to VGA adapter lets me connect to projectors or screens in meeting rooms, and if I need a wired connection, the USB to ethernet adapter sorts that.

But what if you're not online? The Chromebook and Google Drive does a reasonable job of caching recently used docs so you can type away when offline and changes are synced when you connect to the Internet again.

Printing? When I really have to print something I use the York Print Plus EPrint service. This works by emailing a copy of the doc you want to print to ypp-eprint@york.ac.uk. It's as simple as that.

It's also just as easy to take files away as it is on a traditional laptop. The Chromebook has its own internal storage if you really want to store files, or downloads outside Google Drive and my device has an SD card reader, and of course USB for external storage.

Number 2: You can use the Virtual Desktop Service if you really need to use Windows

A couple of times I've had to attend a webinar using GoToMeeting, or Blackboard Collaborate, both which require a Java client to run. In these cases I've logged onto the Virtual Desktop Service (VDS) and accessed a Windows 7 desktop in a browser tab.

The technology used to access the Desktop is called HTML5 and is a core part of the Chromebook which does not require installing any special software. IT Services have enabled the HTML5 feature on the VDS so anyone on "any client device" can access Windows/Linux desktops and applications.

Number 3: Price

Chromebooks are really cheap compared to mid-range Windows laptops. The cost of the laptop I replaced could buy six Chromebooks.

Number 4: Performance

From pressing the on switch it's ready to accept your login details in seven seconds. Once logged in, it's another couple of seconds before it's loaded the Chrome browser and you're ready to go.

The battery goes a long way. The longest period of time I've managed to use it without recharging is two days. Its internal storage is a solid state drive, which provides fast read times and low battery demand.

It also doesn't appear to get slower the longer I use it, which seems to be a feature of Windows machines, as updates are layered over each other, week after week.

Number 5: Security

The device is encrypted, security is built in, and the whole device is self updating. This is all out of the box and doesn't require you to do anything.

Conclusion

So far, so good. I've found my Chromebook to be an excellent bit of kit and easily up to the job.

If you cannot use one for your main day to day computing requirements, it's certainly worth having one for general office use, taking to meetings or conferences. With its low cost and in-built security, it's a much lower risk than taking an expensive laptop out and about, and is also highly shareable.

Cockatiel sadly not included
Acer Chromebook 11 by Kenming Wang
Used under a Creative Commons license

Wifi: not as easy as you might think

Why is managing wifi on a large scale so tricky? Matthew Seymour explains.

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Netflix would need more than 23 days to buffer
an episode of Game of Thrones (1)

For those who remember a time before wifi, when internet access was via a slow modem and viewing videos an impossible dream, it often seems amazing we can move so much data, so quickly, without wires.

Wifi is now everywhere, almost... It's such an ubiquitous technology that we just expect it to be there, we rely on it and make the mistake of thinking it's an easy thing to implement.

The impression of simplicity is understandable because on a small scale, wifi is pretty easy. Scaling it up to a large building and campus is a different story.

There’s always a place to escape from wifi (2)

To understand why wifi gets tricky for big networks it's helpful to know a little bit about how it works and one crucial way in which it's very different to a modern wired network. So here's a tiny bit of history.

Most computer networks are built with Ethernet. It was designed in the early 70s and has seen a lot of development over the years. In its early days all computers on an Ethernet segment shared the wire with everything transmitted on the network visible to all machines.

Because it was a shared wire, only one computer could talk at once and part of what made Ethernet so successful was the simplicity of the system for handling this. If two computers talked at the same time, both detected the resulting collision on the wire almost immediately. They'd both stop, then wait a random amount of time before trying again and hoping for the best. This is really effective, up to a point.

Network switches - loved by network technicians and kittens alike (3)

As you might imagine, as you increase the amount of data traffic you can reach a point where collisions become so frequent that all the machines spend most of their time waiting to try again. A previously fast Ethernet network could be brought to its knees by excessive collisions caused by too many computers, too much traffic or even a faulty computer belching out rubbish onto the wire.

Fast forward a few years and we no longer use a shared wire, each computer connects to a network switch capable of two-way communication and collisions are (or at least should be) a thing of the past.

But what has this got to do with wifi?

If I tell you that wifi uses a shared medium (the air) and that only one station can talk at a time… does that sound familiar? Because we haven't yet found a way to provide a separate universe for each wifi user to occupy, this time there's no option but to share the air.

How different wifi devices use the network affects this shared air time. Older devices that connect at a slower speed therefore take up more air time. They talk more slowly, and while they’re doing so nobody else can get a word in. But even the latest, super fast Macbook with AC wireless will drop to a slow connection speed if the signal level isn't so good, or there's a lot of interference. What people do is even more significant: a single access point might support 150 clients happily if they're just doing email and a bit of web browsing; bursty traffic works well on a shared medium. The same setup might only support two clients streaming Netflix, which requires a reliable high speed connection.

Wifi design for Ainsty Court, Halifax College

Looking at the building in 3D shows that we don't have
enough channels to avoid overlap

Just as you begin to see how complex the picture is, there's a whole other challenge presented by the shared medium: wifi works in three dimensions.

Imagine our wifi network is a group of people sitting around a table. We know only one can speak at a time without words colliding into garbled nonsense that nobody understands, but it works because everyone's polite.

Now another meeting has started up next door. Because both groups can hear each other the number of people who can cause a collision by talking at the same time is increased.

Then another meeting kicks off in a room above. Because all three groups can hear each other, collisions become even more likely but worse still some of the people upstairs can't hear some of the people downstairs and vice-versa so collisions become almost guaranteed.

Wifi segments the network by using different channels so our three meetings could all take place on separate, non-interfering channels. But it's rare to have enough channels to go round, so for wifi to cover a whole building there's going to be some channel re-use going on across different access points between floors and they'll be in range of each other. This is known as channel contention.

Not only is wifi design challenging, it's also an iterative process because nothing stays the same. Not that long ago most people had one wifi device (laptop) now it's common to have a smartphone, laptop, tablet, console… and maybe throw a desktop into the mix too.

The way people use the network has changed dramatically too. More of us stream audio and video to our devices, placing a much greater demand on that shared air time.

As a result we're seeing some areas where a network design that worked really well for a few years starts to struggle as more is demanded from it. Because of the channel contention issue, just installing more wireless access points doesn't work, and often makes the problem worse.

IT Services are working hard and investing a lot of money in wifi but essentially all this boils down to: getting wifi right is hard and even when you get it right, it won't be right for long.

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Image credits:

1. By Ralf Kühne - used under a Creative Commons license
2. By Dushan Hanuska - used under a Creative Commons license
3. By Michael Himbeault - used under a Creative Commons license

Customer Service: being excellent

Jackie Knowles talks about our ongoing mission to maintain excellence in the service we provide to our customers.

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We are proud to announce that the Information Directorate has successfully been revalidated for the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) accreditation.

In the twelve months since first achieving our CSE accreditation in April 2014 we have been working hard at ensuring we maintain our focus on our users and striving for excellence across everything we do. This has meant continuing to listen and engage with our users, making more improvements based on what we find out, continuing to share our good practice and maintaining our overall culture of putting customers at the heart of everything we do.

Our CSE revalidation visit took place in March and took the form of a 'health check' looking both at areas where we had identified where there was room for improvement and those areas where we excel. Our assessor came on site for a day and a half to meet with our staff and customers. We arranged a packed programme of discussions, tours and meetings for the assessor, including focus groups with users of York Minster Library and telephone interviews with some of our archives depositors and users. We also took the opportunity to showcase some of our best practice projects and ongoing work.

Highlights of the work we presented are:

• A full review of our feedback routes and complaint handling processes. We have refreshed our complaints policy and created a series of new user friendly complaints pages to explain what to do when things have gone wrong. We are also following up individually when people have complained to check that they are happy with how we handled things:
• Complaints
• Ensuring that we are measuring and reporting against our agreed service standards:
• Service Standards
• Sharing the results of some work we had been doing on understanding whether our users felt they were fairly treated.
• Explaining how we are working to track more of our customer interactions through building a Customer Relationship Management database to track our interactions with academic departments, and through the introduction of enquiry logging in the Borthwick.
• Outlining the creation of the White Rose Libraries office based here in York as a case study of our working in partnership with others:
• White Rose Libraries
• Sharing the details of our reviews and improvements to the start of session experience for users across both the Library and IT Services.
• Presenting information about negotiations we've undertaken with suppliers to ensure we can offer improvements to functionality, value for money and the user experience of software.

We are happy to report that our assessor was impressed with the range of work we had completed and commented that the Directorate continued to display a "culture of customer service and continual improvement". This continued success is something that we celebrate and is a strong reflection of the hard work of all our staff.

Three of the four areas previously rated as being of partial compliance will now be rated as fully compliant with the standard. In addition, two further areas will now be rated as being Compliance Plus (areas of best practice), these are:

• We have made the consultation of customers integral to continually improving our service and we advise customers of the results and action taken.
• Our staff are polite and friendly to customers and have an understanding of customer needs.

Looking ahead we are keen to keep up the good work and look forward to more CSE assessment visits in the years to come. We are already starting to think about our revalidation for spring 2016 and planning for our full re-assessment which will take place in 2017.

Further information

Customer Service Excellence is a government backed industry standard that assesses (against 57 different criteria) whether services are efficient, effective, excellent, equitable and empowering – with the users always and everywhere at the heart of service provision.

If you're interested in learning more about Customer Service Excellence we'd be happy to share our experiences. Please contact Jackie Knowles, Head of Customer Services.

Macs-imising IT rooms

With a smattering of terrible puns, Adrian Young explains how we're going about providing iMacs for students.

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Delicious Apple by cheriejoyful
Used under a Creative Commons licence

Some months ago, a student asked why IT Services don't provide Apple Macs in our IT rooms?

Good question I thought, why don't we do this? Is it because the hardware is too expensive, or that the systems to provide the service aren't available or are equally expensive? I decided it was worth having a look into this further to see exactly what we could do.

Putting a managed Windows PC onto a desk is pretty easy for us - we've been doing it for many years and the systems we use to manage them are effective and powerful. To do the same for Macs needed thought and investigation. We couldn't use the same systems to manage the Macs as we do the Windows PCs as obviously they use different technology. We had already experienced this when developing the managed Linux desktop. The fundamentals are the same - it's still some hardware with an operating system and some applications - it's just that the hardware and the operating system are different.

Where to start?

iMac by Adam Maracz
Used under a Creative Commons licence

The first thing to look into was how much more would it cost to buy Apple hardware as opposed to the PCs we get from Stone. If it was far too expensive then this wasn't going anywhere, and we would use the budget to buy more PCs instead.

Well, it turned out that it wasn't too bad. Yes, the iMacs cost more but not horrendously so - especially with the educational discount we get from Apple. Mac minis were cheaper but the spec for the hardware was lower than we wanted. iMacs provided the necessary spec and are a neater solution - an all in one system, without separate monitors or keyboards.

So, the financial aspect was ok.

Next question was would we be able to provide a similar service to that of the managed Windows PCs? What systems did we need so that people could log in, get to their filestore, use applications, and print? A quick proof of concept seemed to say we already had available systems to do most of the things we wanted to do.

So, the technical aspect was ok.

The practicalities

Once we had established that this could be a viable option we needed to look at some of the practicalities of doing this.

First of all where would we put the iMacs? Somewhere in the Library seemed the logical solution, it's a popular study space and a good place to try out new services.

Ok, the Library looked promising, but would we use one of the existing IT rooms or find somewhere new? Space is an issue and taking out some of the existing PCs could be problematic. What about the Fairhurst? There's some space there that we could use, and this means that the iMacs are close to the IT Support Office if anything goes wrong.

So, the practical aspect was ok.

Next question. What software do we put on there? Well we already have quite a few applications installed on the Windows PCs that we could use, so MS Office, SPSS, Endnote. That would be a good start. What about the old cliche of using Macs for creative stuff? Should we look at the Adobe Creative Suite? As it's expensive and we don’t have much call for it academically, we decided that we could look at that later. We'd launch the service with a standard set of applications, and see what feedback we receive.

So, the software service aspect was ok.

Now we know what hardware we want, we know what systems we want to run it, we know where to put them, we know what we want on them. It sounds like we're pretty much there.

The trial iMac service

Pixel and her iMac by Mik Ayre
Used under a Creative Commons licence

The outcome of this is that we will be providing a small trial of iMacs on the 2nd floor of the Fairhurst building over the summer holidays. You'll be able to log in with your normal IT username and password, and you'll have access to your personal file store (H: drive): there'll be some familiar applications on there, and you'll be able to use York Print Plus.

We'll see how it goes and see if there is a sufficient demand to continue with this as a service. If budgets allow, maybe we'll expand it a little to other areas, especially for staff, and perhaps look at other software.

It's been an interesting journey to get to this point, there have been many discussions about the best way to do this, hopefully we will deliver a service that will be useful... we will certainly be pushing IT to the Macs.


UPDATE: The new Apple Macs were installed at the beginning of August 2015 on the second floor of the Fairhurst building (where the PC thin clients are). While we finalise the software suite for the Apple Mac service you can use the iMacs for browsing the web, printing and editing documents.

We need your feedback on the service, including suggestions for software and comments on your experience. Have you used the iMacs yet? If you have, please complete our survey here: bit.ly/imac-feedback

A wonderful new tool for our online research surveys

SPRU have found a new tool to manage research surveys (and organise Christmas parties too!) Rachel McAllister tells us more...

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The Social Policy Research Unit sends out a lot of surveys. In the past these were on paper, and this can still be the preferred medium, depending on the target audience. More often now we will want to provide people with an online survey to fill in. We had used Survey Monkey and Jotform in the past, until a particular need and an international collaboration brought us to Qualtrics.

Back in 2013 we were working with colleagues in Melbourne Australia to deliver a tool to measure stress in people who worked in paediatric oncology units. It was a very carefully produced scientific measure and part of it needed to be in a particular format; a central column of statements flanked on either side by a scale of frequency and a scale of stress. None of the online survey systems that we had access to could reproduce this format until we found Qualtrics, which had a great amount of flexibility in its design interface. Another great benefit is that all the data warehousing for Qualtrics is in Ireland and so within the European Economic Area.  This is an important requirement of many of our research funders and ethics committees.

Our collaborator in Australia suggested Qualtrics to us as they used it and knew its capabilities. Alongside this flexibility of design, it was very easy to learn how to use it. Our initial training session caused a real buzz of excitement amongst the researchers in the Unit as they grasped the possibilities that it provided for future survey work. As you use it, and the further into it you explore, it tends to reveal ever greater abilities, whilst remaining a very quick and easy way to do a plain, simple form such as "Who wants what food for the staff Christmas meal?".

We found it such a good tool that we invested in a license to cover the whole SPRU staff. It has been used to survey NHS providers about their services for people with dementia, social services practitioners about their reablement services, local authorities about how they allocate services to support carers, as well as to register people for conferences and events. One very useful facet is that it allows you to share the survey that you are creating with anyone (they do not need to have an account) which is excellent for collaborative working with other research institutions. As well as very sophisticated piping, looping, and merging functions within surveys it also allows you to distribute individual surveys to named people within panels of survey recipients. Responses are tracked and notifications sent to your email inbox if required. There are options to export the survey results into CSV, SPSS, Fixed Field Text, XML, HTML and zipped files which helps enormously with the further analysis of results.

We like it so much and saw how beneficial it could be to others on campus in their research endeavours that we took it to IT Services to request that the license be shared campus-wide. I advertised a demonstration of Qualtrics around campus, via all the IT forums, YorkExtra and emailing likely departments to ascertain interest. The demonstration could either be attended in person or via desktop hook-up to the online conferencing software that the presenter in the USA was using. There followed a useful discussion of the pros and cons of central financing of the software. Following up on the interest expressed at the demonstration, we managed to get buy in from about twelve departments. IT Services funded the rest of the license and Qualtrics became a tool for everyone on campus.

• IT Services information about Qualtrics

Now it is used a lot by students in departments and its ability to handle quite sophisticated requirements fairly easily has meant a lot less support is required from staff. There is a comprehensive help facility available to all users, which benefits staff who have traditionally supported students with this activity. Central University support departments were also keen to use it, with their need to monitor various aspects of student life or support services. It has found a niche throughout the University.

We at SPRU are delighted that for a smaller contribution we can retain this most useful tool. We wouldn't be without it!

Lockers, language support, and more - we’re acting on your feedback

Joanne Casey summarises recent changes made in response to your feedback.

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Learning what you think of our services is the best way for us to find out how to make them better for you. We gather your comments and suggestions together, whether they arrive by email, in person, on cards, or via Facebook and Twitter, and see how we can act on them. These are some recent developments which grew from your comments.

Library feedback

Lockers

You've been asking us to provide more lockers, so we've added more - there are now 122 lockers available on the ground floor of the Morrell - that’s an extra 102 compared to last year.

We've also added two accessible lockers on the ground floor of the Morrell - these lockers are designed to be accessible to wheelchair users, like those provided in the accessible study rooms. They're primarily intended for temporary storage, but we're happy to discuss your specific needs, and let you use them on a longer basis if necessary.

Lots of people complained to us that lockers were locked but empty, so we consulted with both YUSU and GSA about what we could do to ensure they were used more effectively. Locker keys are now issued as flexible loans, just like books and other Library items. You can renew your locker key unless it’s been reserved, and fines are chargeable on overdue requested locker keys.

We carry out regular lockers check as we still find that some people leave un-issued books in the lockers - we scan lockers to detect whether there are any unissued items. If there are, we remove the items and return them to the shelves.

Please remember that the lockers are for everyone's benefit - only use them if you need to store items temporarily, don't borrow the key and leave the locker empty just in case you need it at some point.

Postgraduate space

Availability of study spaces remains one of the hottest issues in the Library. We're at capacity, so we can't add any extra study spaces in our buildings, but we can do our best to ensure that all our spaces are used to their fullest.

An examination of usage statistics showed that keeping a small number of individual study rooms for booking by postgraduate students only was not an efficient use of space - in terms of anecdotal evidence, we also got lots of complaints from users who saw them regularly left empty. At the same time, we were getting feedback from surveys and comment cards that postgraduate students wanted more quiet space to work in, and we were aware that the silent study space in the Humanities Reading Room (Burton) was one of our least-used spaces.


We consulted with both GSA and YUSU, and decided to make all of our individual study rooms available to be booked by all users. At the same time, we transformed the silent study space in Burton into a study space specifically for researchers - this came into use at the start of the Autumn term, and is proving increasingly popular.

We'll continue to review use of our space, as it's vital that it is well used. If you're looking for a space in our buildings, it's worth checking our seating availability app - we've now made it available during term time all year round after receiving lots of positive comments about how useful you find it:

• Seating availability

IT Services feedback

Google Chrome

Lots of you have asked for Chrome to be installed on PCs in our IT classrooms and study areas, and now it's there - this means you can choose between three web browsers (Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer) to access the web.

Start of term

The start of the autumn term is the busiest time of year for the IT Support Office. Last year we saw queues out of the door for much of the first week, with new students keen to get their laptops, tablets and phones connected to the university network having to wait a long time to be seen.

We understand that arriving on campus can be a stressful time for new students and we didn't want to make the same mistakes again. We sought feedback from students and from our own staff in order to identify the problems from last year and to make arrangements to reduce them as much as possible. Key issues were waiting times, difficulty in finding the IT Support Office, lack of support on Heslington East, and problems for speakers of other language.

This year, we:

• emailed all new students in advance of their arrival with details of the help available and of how to connect to the network before coming to York
• offered support on both arrivals weekends, with IT Help Points at Heslington East and at the Library
• offered Chinese language support (Mandarin Chinese is the second most common language at the University after English)

This worked well, with shorter queues, minimal complaints, and generally good feedback on the service we offered. We intend to do the same next year.

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Find out how you can let us have your thoughts:

• Your feedback

The weather outside is frightful...

The snow may be patchy so far, but it's cold out there. If you're staying home, Joanne Casey tells you how to access IT resources wherever you are.

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Duck on Ice by Geoffrey Kirk.
Used under a Creative Commons licence.

Did you look out of the window this morning, and want nothing more than the chance to stay under the duvet for a few more minutes? Did your car refuse to start in the cold? We have the perfect solution...

Whether you're working or studying from home, you can access a host of IT resources from the comfort of your very own sofa.

Virtual Desktop Service

Staff and students can access their University desktop from their own PC, Mac, Linux or mobile device. Connecting is quick and easy, and lets you access your filestore, and a range of applications. To keep the desktop in line with PCs in our IT classrooms and study areas, we've recently added Google Chrome to the list of available software.

Virtual Private Network

The VPN provides a secure connection allowing your computer to access the University network when you are off campus. This means that you can use services including printing, filestores, restricted web applications (eg SITS), and licence servers to give you access to University licensed software. You can download a connection app, or access the VPN via the web.

Need more?

The services that we offer to off-campus users include remote support (we can connect to your machine to help resolve issues), Google Apps (available wherever you are), and software for your own machine. To find out more, visit our web page:

• Information for off-campus users

Stay warm!

Weren’t we promised flying cars by now?

It may come as a shock to readers of a more mature vintage to learn that the classic futuristic film Blade Runner was set in 2019. Tom Grady wonders how close we are today to travelling by flying car.

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'San Diego Comic-Con 2007' by Jason Scragz. Re-used under a Creative Commons licence.

The film was made in 1982 but only 3 years earlier, the Usborne Book of the Future was predicting all kinds of interesting developments (not seen any gold mines in the sky yet, but artificial intelligence and 'space-based superscopes' weren't so wide of the mark).

And Marty McFly may have been using his hoverboard in 2015 but it doesn't look like we’re going to see them in Currys any time soon (though you can buy them on Amazon where a prominent disclaimer warns the unwary buyer: "this product does not fly"). But we might not be so far away from seeing Ridley Scott's replicants working in your Library.

Westport Public Library in the US recently unveiled a pair of humanoid robots whose job will be "to teach the kind of coding and computer-programming skills required to animate such machines". Named Vincent and Nancy, the two robots have cameras, microphones and motion sensors, and use sonar to detect walls. An article in the Wall Street Journal explains:

Vincent and Nancy can recognize faces and detect where sound is coming from. They have a "fall manager" that helps them right themselves after a tumble just as a human might, grunts and all. They can even "touch" and "feel" with the help of tactile and pressure sensors.

The robots come equipped with programming software, but embedded within that software are compatible programming languages, such as Python, that can be used to expand the capabilities of the NAO bots. Aldebaran [the manufacturer] also has a large development community continuously adding new behavior apps that facilitate everything from high-five gestures to a "wake-up" routine including yawning and stretching.

This is what they look like (they're pretty cute):

Robot manufacturer Aldebaran's booth at an exhibition. Picture by Axel Voitier, 
re-used under a Creative Commons licence.

Aldebaran robots like Vincent and Nancy (picture credit as above)

And if that seems incredible, hold on to your hats because self-styled polymath will.i.am has just designed a futuristic car! Not a flying one, sadly (though one of those exists), but one that is "equipped with four 180-degree external cameras that allow panoramic photos to be captured on your phone".

Now, your initial reaction may be similar to that of Alex Petridis in The Guardian who observed that "there are people out there who'll say that taking 180-degree panoramic photos on your phone while you’re driving sounds incredibly dangerous - in fact, it sounds like the kind of thing you would find yourself doing immediately before accidentally running someone over". But who knows? will.i.am's invention could actually just be one step behind the realisation of Deckard's hovercar.

Further reading:

The Library has a couple of DVD versions of Blade Runner (Director's Cut and Final Cut) and we also have several books discussing its significance and genesis, as well as a copy of the draft script.

• Future noir: the making of Blade Runner Sammon, Paul London : Orion Media 1999

• Retrofitting blade runner: issues in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep? Kerman, Judith, 2nd. ed., Ohio : Bowling Green State University Popular Press 1997

• The Blade Runner experience: the legacy of a science fiction classic Brooker, Will London : Wallflower Press 2005

Introducing Mobile Device Management

Pritpal Rehal investigates what mobile device management could offer the University.

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One of the biggest IT demands over recent years has been for more and more access to wireless connectivity across the University estate. This has been fueled by the fact that many - possibly most - of us are adapting a mobile way of working.

Photo by John Houlihan
johnhoulihan.com

Laptops, mobiles and tablets have become a part of our lifestyle. An important tool, they hold our personal data and become (to some) an extension of who we are. Just like your house or car keys, if you lose your mobile, panic sets in... you start checking your pockets, coat, man bag, your pockets again your coat... ahhh - you know the feeling.

Many of these devices are University owned, as well as (wait for it... another IT acronym) BYOD (bring your own device). So what's the problem? Is there a problem? What are we trying to solve?

We've worked hard to develop and improve our IT Services Desktop PC platform, to provide a fully managed, adaptable and agile solution. Now the question is - can we deliver something similar for the emerging and growing mobile platform? Key to this is how we support and protect our data. Let me introduce MDM - Mobile Device Management.

MDM is designed to manage mobile devices, support users and, vitally, protect and manage corporate data. Over the last six months, IT Services have been working with various University groups who use mobiles to access data as part of the way they work. We ran a scoping exercise to find out how staff use their mobile device, what support they'd like to see, and how we could manage the data and devices en masse.

Information gathered from the groups suggested we look at a mobile solution. We are currently evaluating one MDM product, which offers a number of features including:

• Delivery/deployment in various forms depending on the device owner - University or personal. This give us the flexibility to deliver relevant features and services, and to support a range of operating systems.
• A self service web portal allowing users to register and manage their own device
• Bulk central registration of devices
• Multiple workspaces within each mobile device, keeping work (encrypted area) and personal data separate
• Set global or local profiles, policies and access control to support the data (including mobile apps), users and devices
• Integration with our identity management system (IDM)
• Sharing single tablets to multiple users
• Create a University App Store to deliver required or popular apps to our user base
• Develop our own University apps 
• Pre-purchase mobile apps, ebooks and other content for multiple devices 
• Encrypted Secure Locker, allowing us to push University data content to all or specific users anywhere in the world. Ideal for sending documents to students during Freshers' Week. We can also 'time bomb' the data, so it will automatically removed from the device after a set period of time.
• Geo-fence a device, limiting where and when it can be used
• Remote wipe for phones that are lost or stolen

These are just a selection of the many powerful features available - implementing any of these would need to be supported by University policy on role access, usage  and security.

We will be testing the technology with a group of departments over the next few months and hope to gain a better understanding, so that we can make an informed choice about having MDM as part of our mobile strategy.

Laptop in the Grass by Simon Brown
Used under a Creative Commons license.