CIO interview: David Byrne, Carphone Warehouse - Connected World

Connected World Services is Carphone Warehouse's business-to-business offering, and is taking a platform as a service (PaaS) approach to supporting business partners,

IT chief David Byrne wears two hats: enterprise architecture director at Carphone Warehouse and CIO for the mobile phone retailer's Connected World business.

Carphone Warehouse is known as a mobile phone retailer and, predominantly, it operates in the B2C (business to consumer) sector. "But every so often we have done interesting things [in other areas] which have been a success,” says Byrne.

For instance, in 2003, the company launched the TalkTalk broadband business.

Connected World Services is its B2B division and runs as a one-stop-shop service to the company's clients for all their communication needs. It currently provides business telecoms and communication services, but Byrne says: “Our core business seems to be doing well and we’ve always had interest in other companies who want to do similar things.

"We have huge aspirations for Connected World."

Some of the Connected World processing uses the systems in Carphone's data centres which power the batch processing; reconciliation of the retailer's commission for selling the customer a mobile network contract; and billing on behalf of networks.

These processes run on different IT systems. “We started thinking about how a batch job started in Unix could be passed to another part [of the business process] running on Windows Server and decide what to do,” says CIO David Byrne.

Carphone Warehouse runs hundreds of thousands of scripts every night so scheduling and automating batch jobs is a priority. When the company first started building the batch jobs, Byrne says of the scheduling technology: “They could not operate over heterogeneous platforms.”

So the retailer had to write its own software to support this functionality. It recently switched to a batch scheduler called Automic , which Byrne says has allowed Carphone Warehouse to cut over 100,000 lines of code from its systems. “Automic provides much more visualisation than we had before and we can change the order of tasks.” In addition, it provides visibility and auditing.

Automic is also being used to enable Carphone Warehouse to achieve SEPA (Single European Payments Area) compliance in advance of the February 2014 deadline. The tool was used to automate the direct debit collection process.

In a similar way to how Tesco developed its "Tesco in a box" strategy to encapsulate best practices, technology and services when the supermarket wanted to expand into new regions quickly, Carphone Warehouse is encoding its know-how as a mobile retailer.

It plans to provide knowledge of mobile phone retail to business partners via the Connected World PaaS. Partners will use the platform to create their own mobile phone retail operations.

“We see Connected World Services as enabling retailers, original equipment manufacturers and network businesses around the globe to leverage all the expertise and processes that we have built into our operations over the last 24 years,” says Byrne.

One of the early partnerships was with US retail giant Best Buy. The partnership took Carphone's business competence and its knowledge of mobile phone retail and provided this at Best Buy.

"Previously we took people from our business and had them work in the partner business. We thought about a way to make it more efficient. This is where Connected World Services fits, to put the know-how into business processes packaged as the Connected World Services product,” says Byrne

Selling a phone to the public requires selling both a device and a network contract. The business processes are wrapped up in custom IT that Carphone Warehouse has built up. But, as Byrne explains, there is no off-the-shelf enterprise resource planning (ERP) that provides a system of record to capture the transactions.

The process of the sale of a handset and a mobile phone contract is handled in bespoke batch-based systems (see box), and there is no compelling business driver to modernise.

“In retail IT investment, there is a very strong emphasis on a short time to value so replacing something that works perfectly well, with something that does the same job may reduce TCO (total cost of ownership) in the IT group, but it brings no shareholder value," says Byrne. "So it is hard to make a good argument to replace the systems we have.”

Carphone Warehouse's retail business involves acquiring customers for mobile phone networks. Byrne says: “There are risks attached to different parts of the process in mobile phone retail. We have to make it predictable and error free.”

In retail IT investment there is a very strong emphasis on a short time to value so replacing something that works perfectly well, with something that does the same job may reduce TCO in the IT group, but it brings no shareholder value

David Byrne, Carphone Warehouse

This is not only about providing the correct information for the mobile operators.

He adds: “We are more likely  to get customers that the network will accept if we provide a good provider of credit checking or fraud detection.”

Part of the Connected World Services concept is about inserting these providers into the business process for signing up new mobile phone contact customers.

“We build in the steps and get it to work at scale as a PaaS. If we have a predictable and dependable process – every partner gets predictable and reliable service,” says Byrne. In addition, any improvements to the business process only need to be deployed once to benefit to all partners.

He says Connected World Services is built on a typical modern IT architecture.

“It has to be deployable to people around the world. Our main driver for the architecture is we have to go where our business partners need us to go,” he says.

Byrne chose not to build Connected World Services around a traditional three-tier architecture, where an enterprise application is separated into presentation (the user interface), a layer for the business rules and an application server that runs the business rules.

“Three-tier architectures can be somewhat constrained since we would have to invest in our own datacentre space, which  would be a capital expenditure,” he says.

Given Connect World Services is a semi-startup, Byrne believes it is better to buy services. As such, cloud computing is the main driver behind the architecture. It takes advantage of standardisation, and is built in a way that is deployed through local cloud providers.

However, he says: “Our cloud strategy balanced against regulatory concerns.”

So the architecture follows a cloud pattern but it may not be possible to deploy in the cloud in every market. He says: “We are building to deploy onto a cloud platform but it is not the right time to go fully into the cloud.”

Byrne believes cloud computing will become a bit like a National Grid for computing, with many providers offering cloud connectivity. He feels that the key players on such a cloud grid will be the brokers rather than the cloud service providers.

So it could be a bit like the business model Carphone Warehouse has pioneered in UK mobile phone retail since 1989.

'The Butler' Fight: David Boies Claims WB Extortion in New Letter

In the latest salvo in The Butler title standoff, The Weinstein Company's litigator David Boies has responded to Warner Bros. by threatening a restraining order and continuing to press an antitrust violation claim.

"[N]one of this controversy would have occurred if Warner Bros. had not repudiated its representations and agreements not to object to 'The Butler' in a transparent attempt to hold a major civil rights film hostage to extort unrelated concessions from TWC," Boies wrote in an e-mail dated July 5 and obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

The public battle between the studios erupted last week. The MPAA's Title Registry Bureau ruled in an arbitration on Tuesday that TWC couldn't use the title, The Butler, for the 2013 release because a 1916 short in the Warner Bros. Library shares the same name.

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The move followed months of back-and-forth between the two studios after TWC failed to "clear" the title before moving forward with its release plan for the White House-set drama directed by Lee Daniels. The film is scheduled to hit theaters August 16.

Boies sent letters to Warner Bros. litigator John Spiegel and the MPAA threatening litigation over the ruling. Daniels personally appealed to Warners CEO Kevin Tsujihara in a public letter claiming that changing the title "would most certainly hurt the film by limiting the number of people who would ultimately see this important story."

The film stars Forest Whitaker as a longtime White House butler and also features performances by Robin Williams, Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack and Liev Schreiber.

TWC is appealing the arbitrator's ruling, though as THR has noted, it could face an uphill battle. Its antitrust argument -- that the arbitrator's ruling restricts competition since the 1916 film "has not been shown in theaters, television, DVDs, or in any other way for almost a century," in Boies words -- also might be problematic.

The full text of Boies' latest letter to Spiegel is below:

Dear Mr. Spiegel:

Although you do not directly respond to my inquiry, I assume that you are the counsel who should be notified in the event it is necessary to seek a TRO.

I will not try to respond to your version of the facts in part because it is so inaccurate and incomplete that such an exercise would be extensive, and in part because your letter appears to be a press release masquerading as a lawyer's letter. However, I briefly note your lack of response to three critical points.

First, if an anticompetitive "permanent" allocation of titles (and words used in titles) among competitors is a product of a horizontal agreement, that is an antitrust violation, not a defense.

Second, the purported order that TWC not use titles that it has already cleared pursuant to the MPAA's own rules and procedures demonstrates that it is Warner Bros. and the MPAA that are at odds with established custom, practice, and procedure.

Third, none of this controversy would have occurred if Warner Bros. had not repudiated its representations and agreements not to object to "The Butler" in a transparent attempt to hold a major civil rights film hostage to extort unrelated concessions from TWC.

James Gandolfini Funeral: David Chase's Full Eulogy and Other Goodbyes

James Gandolfini's wife, Sopranos creator David Chase, and others delivered emotional farewells to the late actor during his funeral service Thursday at Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York.

Chase's eulogy took the form of a letter to his former star, whom he said was a driven artist who somehow infused boy-like wonder into his portrayal of ruthless mob boss Tony Soprano.

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"People always say, 'Tony Soprano – why do we love him so much when he’s such a prick?' My theory was they saw a little boy," Chase said. "They felt and they loved the little boy and they sensed his love and hurt and you brought all of that to it."

Deborah Lin Gandolfini remembered her husband as a devoted father for whom "family and friends meant everything." The actor's longtime friend Thomas Richardson praised Gandolfini's big spirit, which took him to war zones to support U.S. troops and to homeless shelters to feed the needy. And Gandolfini's dialogue coach and longtime collaborator Susan Aston said he exemplified the truth that "one has to remain vulnerable, and to be willing to be seen as human" to be a great actor.

Find the text of the four eulogies below.

Sopranos creator David Chase

Dear Jimmy,

You family asked me to speak at your service and I am so honored and touched.

I’m also really scared and I say that because you of all people understand this, “I would like to run away and then call in four days from now from the beauty parlor.

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I want to do a good job because I love you and because you always did a good job. I think the deal is I’m supposed to speak about the actor artists work part of your life. Others will have spoken beautifully and magnificently about the other beautiful and magnificent parts of you, the father, brother, friend. I guess what I was told was that I’m supposed to speak for your castmates who you loved, your crew that you loved so much, for the people at HBO. … I hope I can speak for all of them and give credit to them and to you.

Experts told me to start with a joke or cite a funny anecdote. “Ha-ha-ha.” But as you yourself so often said, I’m not feeling it. I’m too sad and full of despair. I’m writing to you because I’d partly like to have your advice because I remember how you did speeches. I saw you do a lot of them at award shows and stuff and invariably I think you used to express the thoughts on a sheet of paper and put in your pocket and then not really refer to them. And consequentially, many of your speeches didn’t make sense.

I think that could happen except in your case it didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense because the feeling was real, the feeling was real, the feeling was real. I can’t say that enough.

I tried to write a traditional eulogy, but it came out bad. So I’m writing you this letter and now I’ m reading that letter in front of you. But it is being done to and for an audience that will give the funny opening a try. I hope it is funny. It is to me and I know it is to you.

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One day towards the end of the show…season four or five…we were on the set shooting a scene and it was you and Stevie van Zandt. I think the setup was that Tony had received news of the death of someone and it was inconvenient for him. It said “Tony opens the door angrily and closes it and starts to speak.”

The cameras rolled and you opened the refrigerator door and you slammed it really hard. You slammed it hard enough that it came open again and you slammed it again and it came open again. You kept slamming it and slamming it and slamming it and slamming it and went apeshit on that refrigerator. The funny part for me was, I remember Steven van Zandt – cause the cameras are now going and we have to play this whole five minute scene with the refrigerator door open. And I remember Steven van Zandt just standing there with his lip out and trying to figure out “Well, what should I do first as Silvio, cause he just broke my refrigerator” and  then as Steven the actor cause we’re about to play a scene with a refrigerator door open, people don’t do that. And I remember him going over, trying to tinker with the door and it didn’t work.

We finally had to call cut and we tried to fix the refrigerator door and it never really worked because then the gaffer tape showed inside the refrigerator and it was a problem all day long. And I remember you saying “just roll just roll with it. The places it take me too the things that I have to do it’s so dark.” And I remember telling you, “Did I tell you to destroy the refrigerator? Does it say anywhere in the script, ‘Tony destroys refrigerator?’ It says, ‘Tony angrily shuts the refrigerator door.’ That’s what it says. You destroyed the refrigerator door.”

Another memory image of you that comes to mind is very early on, we were shooting in that really hot summer in humid New Jersey and I looked over and you were sitting in an aluminum beach chair with your slacks rolled up to your knees and black socks and black shoes and a damp wet handkerchief on your head. And I remember looking over there and going, “Well, that’s really not a cool look.” Then I was filled with love and I knew then that I was in the right place because I said Wow, I haven’t seen that done since my father used to do it and my Italian uncles used to do it and my Italian grandfather used to do it and they were laborers in the same hot sun in New Jersey and they were stone masons and your father I know worked with concrete. I don’t know what is with Italians and cement. I was so proud of our heritage.

It made me so proud of our heritage to see you do that and when I say that you were my brother, this has a lot to do with that. Italian-American. Italian worker. Builder. That Jersey thing, whatever that means. The same social class. I really feel though that I’m older than you I always felt that we were brothers and partly based on that day. I was filled with so much love for everything that we were doing and what we were about to embark on. I also feel you’re my brother because of the things we both loved. Family. Work. People in all their imperfection. Food. Alcohol. Talking. Rage. And a desire to bring the whole structure crashing down. We amused each other.

The image of my aunts, uncle and father reminded of something that happened between us one time because these guys were such men – that was the point of it – your father and these men from Italy. And you were going through a crisis of faith about yourself and acting and a lot of things. Very upsetting. I went to meet you on the banks of the Hudson River and you told me, “You know what I want to be? I want to be a man, that’s all. I want to be a man.”

Now this is so odd because you are such a man. You’re a man in ways many males including myself wish they could be a man. The paradox about you as a man is that I always felt personally that with you I was seeing a young boy, a boy about Michael’s age right now. Cause you were every boyish. At about that age where humankind and life on the planet are really opening up and putting on a show, really revealing themselves in all their beautiful and horrible glory and I saw you as a boy, as a sad boy, amazed and confused and loving and amazed by all that and that was all in your eyes. That was why I think you are a great actor. It’s because of that boy that was inside; it was a child reacting. Of course, you were intelligent, but it was a child reaction and your reactions were often childish. By that I mean they were pre-school and they were pre-manners, they were pre-intellect, they were just simple emotions, straight and pure.  And I think that your talent is you can take in the immensity of human kind and the universe and shine it back out to the rest of us like a huge light; and I believe that only a pure soul, like a child, can do that really well. And that was you.

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Now to talk about a third guy between us, there was you, me and this third guy. People always say, “Tony Soprano – why do we love him so much when he’s such a prick?” My theory was they saw a little boy. They felt and they loved the little boy and they sensed his love and hurt and you brought all of that to it. You were a good boy. Your work with the Wounded Warriors is just one example of this. And I’m going to say something because I know you’d want me to say it – that no one should forget Tony Sirrico’s efforts with you in this. He was there were you all the way and in fact you said to me just recently “you know it’ more Tony than me.”  And I know you and I know you’d want me to turn the spotlight on him or you wouldn’t be satisfied, so I’ve done that.

So Tony Soprano never changed, people say. He got darker, and he tried and he tried and he tried. And you tried and you tried more than most us and harder than most of us and sometimes you tried too hard – that refrigerator is one example. Sometimes your efforts were a cost to you and to others, but you tried and I’m thinking about the fact that – how nice you were to strangers on the street, fans, photographers, you would be patient, loving and personal and then finally you would just do too much and then you’d snap and that’s of course what everybody read about, was the snapping.

I was asked to talk about the work part. And so I’ll talk about the show we used to do and how we used to do it. You know that we always ended an episode with a song. That was kind of like me and the writers letting the real geniuses do the heavy lifting – Bruce and Nick and Keith and Howlin Wolf. So if this was an episode we’d end with a song. The song, as far as I’m concerned, would be Joan Osborne’s‘”What If God Was One of Us?”

The setup for this – we never did this and you never heard this  -- was that Tony was somehow lost in the Meadowlands and he didn’t have his car and his wallet and his car keys – I forget how we got there, there was some kind of a scrape – but he had nothing in his pockets but some change. He didn’t have his guys there; he didn’t have his gun. So mob boss Tony Soprano is just one of the working stiffs getting in line getting on the bus and the way we were going to film it he was gonna get on the bus and the lyric that would’ve gone on with that would’ve been – and we don’t have Joan Osborne here to sing it – “If God had a face what would it look like? And would you want to see if seeing meant that you had to believe? And yeah, yeah God is great. Yeah, yeah God is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

So Tony would get on the bus and he would sit there and the bus would pull out of this big billow of diesel smoke and then the key lyric would come on: “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on a bus trying to make his way home?” And that would’ve been playing over your face, Jimmy.

But then – this is where it gets strange – now I would have to update because of the events of last week and I would let the song play further and let the lyrics be “Just trying to make his way home like a holy rolling stone back up to Heaven all alone nobody callin' on the phone 'Cept for the Pope maybe in Rome.”

 

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

Gary David Goldberg's Death: Hollywood Mourns 'Family Ties' Creator

TV industry insiders are taking to Twitter to mourn the death of Family Ties creator Gary David Goldberg, who passed away Sunday at 68.

Goldberg died from brain cancer at his home in Montecito, Calif.

Goldberg re-teamed with Michael J. Fox on Spin City and co-created the critically acclaimed Brooklyn Bridge. He also wrote and directed Dad, starring Jack Lemmon, and the Diane Lane-John Cusack romantic comedy Must Love Dogs.

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The Brooklyn native also wrote episodes of The Bob Newhart Show and M*A*S*H in an illustrious career in which he collected seven Emmy nominations and two wins.

Goldberg's series credits famously ended with a photo of his beloved black Labrador retriever in front of the Louvre in Paris and Goldberg saying, “Sit, Ubu, sit! Good dog,” followed by a bark.

Among those paying tribute:

Everyone has a mentor (or two hopefully) that touches his/her life. Gary Goldberg passed away today. Wish I had thanked him more.

— Bill Lawrence (@VDOOZER) June 24, 2013

Lawrence was recruited by Goldberg to create Spin City.

RIP Gary David Goldberg. One of the greats in this business and in this world.

— Steve Levitan (@SteveLevitan) June 24, 2013

We have lost one of the greats, GARY DAVID GOLDBERG, gifted writer, dad, husband, family man and friend. We will miss his stories. R.I.P

— Frank Marshall (@LeDoctor) June 24, 2013

RIP Gary David Goldberg. The Keatons and the rest of us shed a tear. http://t.co/in0IAKqCoR

— Larry Salz (@larrysalz) June 24, 2013

"Family Ties" creator and "Spin City" co-creator Gary David Goldberg passed away yesterday. He will be missed. #RIP

— hulu (@hulu) June 24, 2013

RIP Gary David Goldberg. On Spin City he and @VDOOZER treated me amazingly and made me part of the family. Great, funny man.

— Mike Royce (@MikeRoyce) June 24, 2013

In Hallmark movies, 7 year old girls write Santa asking for future boyfriends. I wrote a letter at 7 to Gary David Goldberg asking for work.

— Jen Kirkman (@JenKirkman) December 25, 2012

Gary David Goldberg was a great man. I interned at "Spin City" in college. His generosity was legendary. Prayers to his family and friends.

— Mark Malkoff (@mmalkoff) June 24, 2013

 

Patrick Doyle, Hal David, 'Three's Company' Theme Honored at ASCAP Film & TV Awards

Tributes to the late Marvin Hamlisch and Hal David, an entertaining speech from composer Patrick Doyle and a performance of the theme from Three's Company were highlights of ASCAP's 28th annual Film & Television Music Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on June 20.

Doyle, who received the Henry Mancini Award for his achievements and contributions to the world of film and television music, was saluted via video by Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. Julia Rinker Miller saluted Ray Charles, her singing partner on Three's Company, with a rendition of the classic theme song; Charles, 94, was honored for his vocal ensemble work with Perry Como, Your Hit Parade and Kennedy Center Honors.

Prior to songwriter Alan Bergman singing "The Way We Were," Marilyn Bergman saluted their collaborator Hamlisch by saying "working with Marvin was like being in a large sandbox."

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Performances included Graham Parker doing a song from This is 40 (see photo below), a Brazilian jazz-style medley of Oscar nominees, Kevin Odekirk singing Marc Shaiman's arrangement of Cole Porter's "Another Op'nin', Another Show" and Jack Wall and Kamar de los Reyes doing Wall's "Niño Precioso," composed for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

ASCAP president and chairman Paul Williams offered adulation for David's lyrics on Burt Bacharach tunes and turned serious about ASCAP's efforts to secure income for composers. He said the latest target is the Internet radio site Pandora. "The gloves are going to come off now," he said.

Those honored in the Top Box Office Films category were James Newton Howard (The Bourne Legacy, The Hunger Games and Snow White and the Huntsman), Hans Zimmer (The Dark Knight Rises and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted), Howard Shore (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), Marc Shaiman (Parental Guidance) and Carter Burwell (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2).

STORY: Dionne Warwick, Mike Myers, Sheryl Crow Salute Burt Bacharach and Hal David in Song

In addition, awards were presented to James Horner (The Amazing Spider-Man); 2013 ASCAP Henry Mancini Award recipient Patrick Doyle (Brave); Erran Baron Cohen (The Dictator); Cinco Paul (Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax); John Powell (Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax and Ice Age: Continental Drift); Michael Giacchino (John Carter); Alain Boublil, Herbert Kretzmer and Claude-Michel Schönberg (Les Misérables); Nathan Johnson (Looper); Jon Brion (ParaNorman and This Is 40); Marc Streitenfeld (Prometheus); Ramin Djawadi (Safe House); Paul Epworth (Skyfall); Seth MacFarlane and Walter Murphy (Ted); Graham Parker (This Is 40); Michael Brook (The Vow); Marco Beltrami (The Woman in Black); Yasushi Akimoto (JASRAC), Jamie Houston, Henry Jackman, Skrillex and Adam Young (Wreck-It Ralph).

Receiving awards for their network, local and cable television music in the category of themes and dramatic underscore for the 2012 survey year were Jack Allocco, Joel Beckerman, David Kurtz, James Levine, Jeff Lippencott, Walter Murphy, Didier Lean Rachou, Jeff Richmond, David Vanacore and Mark T. Williams.

Among the ASCAP composers who wrote the themes and underscore for the highest rated television series in 2012 were: Seth MacFarlane and Walter Murphy (American Dad and The Cleveland Show); Marc Fantini, Steffan Fantini and Scott Gordon (Army Wives and Criminal Minds); Matt Bowen, Devin Powers and Brad Segal (The Bachelor and The Bachelorette); John Lunn (Downton Abbey); Grant Geissman and Josh Kelley (Mike & Molly); Gabriel Mann (Modern Family); Zooey Deschanel (New Girl); Jay Ferguson (NCIS: Los Angeles); Jordan Sears and Rick Smith (The Voice); and Bear McCreary (The Walking Dead).