Waikato Business News April/May 2021

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28 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS April/May 2021 Is serverless right for you? By RACHEL PRIMROSE Serverless. It’s a buzzword. Love ’em or hate ’em, buzzwords give us crucial clues into what is trending, and this one is loaded. Serverless computing is a cloud computing model in which the cloud provider dynamically allocates computing resources based on demand, and where the provider also administers the underlying servers on behalf of its customers. To some it means “little to no maintenance”, to others “cheaper technology infrastructure”. While both are true, serverless is by no means a panacea. Across all three major cloud infrastructure providers, there is no set monthly pricing for serverless infrastructure. Pricing is based on how much resource (generally number of seconds that code runs, throughput, and memory) that each request consumes. Serverless is not necessarily going to be cheaper for code that runs 24/7, but there are other benefits. You won’t need a systems administrator and developers won’t have to learn how to install, run, secure and patch a Linux server (an increasingly rare skill). Running and maintaining servers is at a minimum a monthly maintenance job, and at worse a drop-everythingall-hands-on-deck for highrisk issues such as the recent security vulnerabilities. Equally important is the supporting services. Serverless workloads have limits, and don’t always provide features such as internet access, traditional storage and security. While handled differently across cloud providers, these costs are additional to the cost to run the code written by your software developers. The great news though is that compared to the cost for multiple virtual machines, container services or physically hosted servers, this is generally lower until you get into extremely high workloads or if you are willing to significantly compromise on performance. The cloud infrastructure cost aside, operational costs for serverless are a success story but also introduce items on your risk register. When you select serverless computing, the updates to the underlying hardware, operating system and base programming runtime are done for you. This doesn’t mean that software maintenance doesn’t exist – you’ll be informed and asked by your cloud provider to upgrade or face the consequences, which starts with an inability to release new functionality, and can end up with your code ceasing to run. You have two important risks to consider. You will be forced into upgrading platforms at some point. This will usually be several years in the future if your software is deployed on up to date platforms. The timing and inescapable inevitability cannot be ignored commercially. The second risk is that you are effectively outsourcing your systems administration to your cloud provider. Professional consensus is that due to scale and customer volume the cloud providers will do a better job than your single sysadmin, but this is not guaranteed. With risks acknowledged, we come to the true advantage in operational expenditure. There’s no requirement for a dedicated systems administrator. The entire ecosystem from deployment to maintenance can be looked after by your software partner or developers, with a little help from your cloud provider in the form of proactive notifications. Another common question about serverless is the cost to develop and scale. This is highly dependent on the languages, frameworks and type of problem you’re solving. Swapping out traditional servers for serverless solutions may not give a good solution. In general, there should be no additional cost to implement serverless code, provided that serverless is the correct technical fit for the problem. And finally, onto a good problem to have: a fast growing business. In this area serverless technologies really shine. With a support ticket (and a good explanation), well designed solutions can scale from 1,000 concurrent requests up to 10,000 in hours. With traditional infrastructure, building for scale can be cost prohibitive during the initial design and build, whereas serverless solutions are largely intrinsically scalable. The key to a successful serverless implementation is good architecture. Serverless should always be considered in a holistic way, starting with good technical fit, but always looking at the business fit as well. At Company-X we have great success passing on serverless solutions to clients with feedback that onboarding time is low due to great TECH TALK tooling, the inherent modularisation that serverless code and infrastructure provides, and that the low infrastructure entry cost has made an agile approach a reality. > BY RACHEL PRIMROSE Rachel Primrose is a software architect at software development specialist Company-X. Working from home and copyright rights: the need for certainty of ownership In pre-Covid days, if you created copyright works such as drawings or source code as part of your job, the odds are you would have done so during ‘normal office hours’ at your desk rather than at 9pm in the comfort of your own home. It would have been straightforward to establish who was the owner of copyright (TOOC) in those drawings or source code. In these Covid-affected times, however, many officebased employees now work flexible hours and work from home (WFH). Indeed, the 8.30am-5pm day in the office has almost become a rarity rather than the norm. As a result, ascertaining who is the owner of copyright in drawings or source code may be a little harder to discern; or at least, the topic may be open for greater debate. The need then to be sure of who owns what in an employment context is perhaps more INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ISSUES > BY BEN CAIN Ben Cain is a Senior Associate at James & Wells and a Resolution Institute-accredited mediator. He can be contacted at 07 957 5660 (Hamilton), 07 928 4470 (Tauranga) and benc@jaws.co.nz. important now than it was in the old days. The recent case of Michael Penhallurick v MD5 Ltd [2021] EWHC 293 in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in England, although relating to events pre-Covid, illustrates this need. Penhallurick, a former employee of MD5, claimed ownership of copyright in eight works relating to a technique he named “Virtual Forensic Computing” or “VFC”.* The eight works comprised different versions of the software code (literary works), a graphic user interface (artistic work) and a user guide (literary work). It was established that the first two works – the earliest version of the VFC source code and the object code compiled from this code – were created in 2005 and 2006, before Penhallurick was employed by MD5 in November 2006. The Court found these works were not relevant to Penhallurick’s claim and consequently focussed its assessment on the remaining six works created by Penhallurick after he joined MD5. The Court found Penhallurick was the author of the six remaining works and therefore was the first owner of copyright in them – unless any were made in the course of his employment by MD5 pursuant to the IP clause in Penhallurick’s employment agreements, in which case MD5 was the first owner. Which of these was the case turned on the meaning of “in the course of his employment”. Why? Because of the poor wording of the “Job Titles and Duties” and intellectual property clauses in Penhallurick’s first employment agreement. The Court ultimately found that all of the works had been created by Penhallurick in the course of his employment with MD5. Of particular interest to this author, and relevance to this article given the current (and potentially permanent?) fashion for working flexible hours from home, however, is the Court’s finding in relation to the third and fourth copyright works (“VFC Version 1” and the graphical user interface (“GUI”) for VFC Version 1) created by Penhallurick in 2007. In respect of these works, the Court said: “[66] … It seems that Mr Penhallurick took on the task [of developing VFC Version 1 and GUI] with enthusiasm, to the extent that he took his work home some of the time. His staff annual appraisal of August 2007 suggests that much of the work must have been done during working hours at MD5. But whatever the exact proportion done at home, it does not displace the strong and primary indication that it was work done in the course of his employment. The fact that an employee does work at home is relevant to the question of whether the work is of a nature to fall within the scope of the duties for which he is paid but it may or may not carry much weight. Where it is otherwise clear that the work is of such a nature, in my view the place where the employee chooses to do the work will not generally make any difference. The same applies to the ownership of the tools the employee chooses to use, here sometimes Mr Penhallurick's own computer system. If it is clear that the employee is being paid to carry out a task as agreed with his employer, he may choose to use tools supplied by his employer or his own tools; either way, the task is carried out in the course of his employment.” Although it is not stated, I am confident the same reasoning applies to the time of day the employee chooses to do the work – that is, it doesn’t matter whether you do the work at 10am or 10pm, if the work is carried out in the course of your employment then any copyright rights in it will be owned by your employer. Standing back, Penhallurick’s case identifies two important ‘take homes’ for both employers and employees: • first, if an employer is going to make use of copyright works created by an employee before that person is an employee, then the employer should have the employee assign copyright in those works to the employer at the same time the employee becomes an employee. Alternatively, execute a licence agreement with the employee at the same time the employee becomes an employee to enable those works to be lawfully used by the employer; • second, the employer should ensure employment agreements, but particularly those with employees whose job it is to create intellectual property, adequately identify an employee’s role and scope of duties so that it is clear what resulting intellectual property the employer is laying claim to by virtue of the employment agreement, irrespective of what time of day and where that intellectual property is created. * VFC is a method of retrieving an image of the hard disk without writing on it, then booting up the image on a virtual machine so that the image can be investigated. In developing the technique, Penhallurick had used a freely available product called VM Software to set up the replica of the target computer’s hardware and operating system. As computer programs generally have inbuilt safeguards to prevent them from being manipulated in this way, the method developed by Penhallurick involved a password bypass feature.
VIBRANT CAMBRIDGE WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS April/May 2021 29 Cambridge roaring ahead From page 1 Waipā section will take riders through bush and across farmlands with views over the Waikato River. Also with a recreation theme, the Cambridge swimming pool facility is opening on Williamson Street on May 15. In acknowledgement of the Brian Perry Charitable Trust’s $300,000 donation towards construction, the complex will be named Perry Aquatic Centre for the next 10 years. The centre has also been gifted the name Puna Kaukau O Te Oko Horoi by Ngāti Koroki Kahukura. The facility boasts a new 10-lane 25m indoor pool, a toddler pool, hydrotherapy pool, spa, sauna, children’s splash pad and an upgrade of the existing 50-metre outdoor pool. Meanwhile, Cambridge Town Hall is set for greater use following the Cambridge Town Hall appointment of seven founding trustees. Chaired by Cambridge chartered accountant Kirsty Johnson, the independent trust set up by Waipā District Council was appointed to help drive development and promote use of the category two historic building in the heart of the town. In April, the Waipā Networks business awards returned with a bang after a year’s absence, drawing an enthusiastic audience ready to celebrate. Held at Mystery Creek, 14 awards were dished out to a range of businesses from across the district. The awards were organised by the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, which streamlined the entry process. It was the first time the Cambridge Chamber had sole charge of the awards, and they took the opportunity for a refresh, says chief executive Kelly Bouzaid. “We just went, you know, The new Cambridge pool complex opens on May 15. what do we love about the awards? What don’t love about them? What do we need to do?” That saw them change the questions for entrants, focusing on company culture rather than financials. It also saw them keep the event moving on the night, and Bouzaid says they had positive feedback on the energy in the room. Doing business in Cambridge Supreme Award winner Rocketspark also won Excellence in Large Business, capping off a remarkable year for the tech firm since Covid hit. A single-minded focus on customer service is paying off for the Cambridge website builder, which has added 10 team members since Covid and is eyeing the Australian market. The awards came just a dozen years after Rocketspark started up in Cambridge in 2009. Co-founder and CEO Grant Johnson says Continued on page 30 We went from a point of going, ‘our clients can’t open the doors, they may not survive this,’ to suddenly being inundated. The Cambridge Town Hall Trust signs its Deed, from left, Mary Anne Gill, Maxine Nelson, deputy chair Rob Feisst, Dick Breukink, chair Kirsty Johnson, Antanas Procuta and Jenny Cave. THANK YOU for partnering with us KEYSTONE PARTNERS CORNERSTONE PARTNERS THANK YOU for partnering with us THANK YOU TOUCHSTONE PARTNERS KEYSTONE PARTNERS CORNERSTONE PARTNERS for partnering with us STEPPING STONE PARTNERS TOUCHSTONE PARTNERS NATIONAL SPONSORS STEPPING STONE PARTNERS CAMBRIDGE BUSINESS C H A M B E R P: 07 823 3460 E: ceo@cambridgechamber.co.nz www.cambridgechamber.co.nz NATIONAL SPONSORS CAMBRIDGE BUSINESS C H A M B E R P: 07 823 3460 E: ceo@cambridgechamber.co.nz www.cambridgechamber.co.nz
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Waikato Business News April/May 2021

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