Key technology issues
"We have a lab that runs a LAN of open source technologies — there is no proprietary technology there at all. We run it to see how well it operates and look for areas that we can deploy it across the organisation," says Dew. "Would we see an SAP replacement in open source? If we see competition that's valid we would use it."
But Dew does not envision a future where open source supersedes proprietary software. "We would never see a world dominated by open source," he says. "A pragmatic approach is needed — we will continue to need and desire proprietary software."
A move towards a fully open source desktop appears unlikely at BOC, as Dew is a self-confessed fan of Citrix. BOC uses Citrix's software extensively to serve up Microsoft, SAP and other applications onto thin client PCs. It has, however, tested one potential replacement for Microsoft desktop software — Sun's office productivity suite, on which the open source OpenOffice.org productivity suite is based.
BOC completed an evaluation of StarOffice six months ago and the application has been used on 100 PCs in its Indian office since then. Dews says the evaluation proved that it is interoperable with Microsoft software, but the company has not yet decided whether to extend this deployment.
RFID
Another technology area that BOC is interested in is RFID tagging. The company is considering the application of RFID to uniquely identify the 7 million cylinders that it uses worldwide. It is currently trialling the use of barcodes on cylinders in Western Australia, and is likely to trial RFID tags later, according to Dew.
Already, BOC lays claim to the world's largest RFID implementation in the retail sector — its logistic subsidiary, Gist, worked with retail firm Marks & Spencer (M&S) to trial RFID tagging of food products.
The trial, which started in 2003 at Gist's Barnsley depot, has tagged around 3.5 million M&S food trays with microchips that store information about the product, according to information on the BOC Web site. The product information in a stack of trays can now be read in about five seconds by merely wheeling the stack past a RFID sensor, rather than the 30 seconds it used to take to read the information using hand-held bar code readers scan.
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
Dew says that BOC has spent a lot of time making sure it is compliant with the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance regulations. BOC is "getting towards the end of the first phase" of bringing in the company into compliance and is now working out how to sustain Sarbanes-Oxley into the next financial year, according to Dew.
Since ZDNet UK's original interview with Dew, the BOC Group has admitted that the costs of complying with SOX have been higher than expected, with the company expecting to spend around £20m over the next two years to bring its financial reporting and internal controls up to scratch.
Security
Dew was unwilling to speak in detail about it security strategy, but said that BOC's spend, commitment to and capability in that area of security have increased over the last two or three years. BOC's biggest areas of concern are DoS and virus attacks, he says.
"We have a global network and operate in a number of countries, including countries where virus attacks emanate from. We can see the spread of viruses across the global network. We're aware of it and have plans and technology in place to prevent it impacting us," says Dew.
