Category: Business

Business

Samsung Chromebook special offer not very customer friendly

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 10 November, 2013
5 Comments on Samsung Chromebook special offer not very customer friendly

I bought my Samsung Chromebook via Tesco.com. What particularly attracted me to the deal was the offer of a free Samsung Galaxy phone. The model of phone wasn’t specified so my expectations weren’t high. The Chromebook was only £229 so it wasn’t going to be a high end phone but I figured it would be ok for one of the kids.

The Chromebook itself came very quickly – Anne collected it from our nearest store (400 yards from our house!). The phone however didn’t materialise. Hmm. The Tesco portal told me that the order was only part fulfilled so I assumed the phone would follow. It didn’t.

Tags Chromebook, Samsung

Business fun stuff

Communication modes for the 21st century

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 4 November, 2013
3 Comments on Communication modes for the 21st century

Just rang to book my car in for a service. After navigating an auto-attendant and then holding for some time I eventually got through to a receptionist who was clearly not at the department I’d navigated to. Ok. It happens. Phones get busy etc etc.

She asked me if I’d like someone to ring back which is fair enough. I do want to get my ~~tire~~ tyre pressure sensor system sorted out. It’s annoying being told that one of your tyres has a problem when it doesn’t. I readily gave her my mobile number and said my name was Tref (actually I pronounced it Trev but it doesn’t matter for the purpose of this conversation – I don’t want to complicate the spiel). What she really wanted was my surname which in case you don’t know (she didn’t, obvs) is Davies.

She then politely referred to me as Mr Davies and said someone would get back to me. Fine.

It’s interesting though how people communicate isn’t it? I’m not particularly having a go at the dealer. It’s an honest enough business (did I really say that?) earning a few hundred quid for doing not that much to your car because you are hamstrung by having to use a dealer for the particular problem.

It’s interesting how we, the business community, communicate with people, our customers. I didn’t really want to talk to someone at the car dealer, other than I wanted at least a ballpark understanding of how much they were going to charge me for the service. I’d rather have been able to book online or chat to someone via IM.

I want to be able to go to someone’s website, see that a relevant agent is available to chat to me, be shown a list of available time slots I could book for the service by that agent, see the range of charges and then agree to book the car in. This might be an interface through the Facebook page of that organisation, where there is a ready made IM system, or it might be through another platform – Google+ say, or Skype or it may be all of them.

I as a punter would clearly be willing to share some of my personal details with that business by virtue of the fact that they would now have my Facebook/G+/Skype address (etc). After all I’m willing to let them have my mobile phone number to call me back. From a business perspective this is great. It’s what Salesforce.com with it’s social media integration is trying to get at. Lots of information about customers.

From a punter’s perspective it would make things a lot more convenient than having to hang on the phone. I could be waiting in a window whilst doing something else. I could always escalate the conversation to a phone call if needed once connected.

Back to my immediate needs this car dealer, a substantial business in the East Midlands, was not on the front page of a Google search for Lincoln car dealers – not even for “Jeep car dealer in Lincoln”. I didn’t bother looking on page 2. So it has some way to go before understanding how to navigate a web orientated world. It looks therefore as if I will have to continue to use its existing booking service as long as I have to use that dealer. An hour or more later I still haven’t been called back.

Now before anyone starts thinking about leaving a comment re how Timico works (it’s happened before) hold your fire. Whilst I’m happy to be proved wrong I suspect that nobody has the system I have just described, yet. We do have web chat as do many other companies but it is not integrated with any social media platform. It can’t be far off general realization though and I do accept there are a few stumbling blocks such as the fact that people may not want to open up their Facebook selves to third parties. But it has to be the way ahead¹.

As far as being called Mr Davies it doesn’t sit comfortably with my inner kid. My business card, such as it is, mentions only my twitter handle @tref and my websites. It’s not a Madonna-like branding thing. It’s just that I’m not a formal kind of guy.

That’s all for now folks.

PS my tyre pressure sensor system has needed doing for a while. I’ve been putting it off because I know it’s going to be expensive. Call it an early Christmas present!

¹ Specifically irksome as I very specifically don’t trust Facebook. It doesn’t have to be Facebook. It could be LinkedIn or Google or Microsoft et al. None of them are really trustworthy but you have to go with one of them. It’s unavoidable unless you want to pick up that plain old fashioned telephone and wait…

Tags dealer, Jeep, media, social

Business Cloud hosting

WHD.local event in London – free Samsung Galaxy Tab

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 1 November, 2013
No Comments on WHD.local event in London – free Samsung Galaxy Tab

Earlier this week Lonap agreed to promote a WHD.local event that is being held in London next week. It’s the baby brother of the big one in Germany in April. Lonap Director Will Hargrave is doing a very interesting talk that you should all go along to. Also there is a free lunch and free drinks at the post conference networking event.

The old adage has it that there is no such thing as a free lunch but on this occasion it needs to go further because they are also offering a free Samsung Galaxy Tab!!!!!????? wtfwtfwtf (that’s a NLA).

The only thing is you have to visit every booth on at the trade show and get a stamp on a card. So you do have to do something but in my mind that’s a gift horse you definitely should not look in the mouth. I’ve not looked to see who is exhibiting or how many there are (ok if it is hundreds of companies I’d look that horse in the mouth but I doubt there are).

Other than the fact that I am a Director of Lonap I have no vested interest in promoting WHD.local, and all Lonap is getting really is some exposure unless enough Lonap members sign up in which case we get a private room in which to have our own private lunch.

The reason I have posted this is because I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a trade show giving each of its attendees a Tab before. Is this a first?

Click on this link if you want to go. LWGVWE4 – Click here to sign up for WHD.local 2013!

Also let me know if you do sign up. I’m not going to be there due to other commitments but if enough people get in touch I’ll arrange the private get together.

html of the official invite is linked to here – Mailing_LONAP_EN. There’s some more photogenic stuff in there including a picture of Will. I couldn’t be bothered to work out how to embed it so you just get the link.

Hasta la vista baby…

PS my signoffs are getting somewhat off the wall. I must be going crazy hahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Tags Galaxy, LONAP, London, Samsung, WHD.local

Business mobile connectivity

Train wifi too congested but 4G fine

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 30 October, 2013
2 Comments on Train wifi too congested but 4G fine

Just a 4G quickie. Catching a busy commuter time train back nowf and couldn’t even get a sniff of a connection on the on board wifi. Almost certainly a good thing – if it can’t hook up using DHCP then there are so many people trying to access it that the performance will be so bad as to effectively be unusable.

Tags 4g, train, WiFi

4g broadband Business mobile connectivity voip

4G as fixed broadband replacement? – successful case study

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 30 October, 2013
11 Comments on 4G as fixed broadband replacement? – successful case study

4g broadband can be used as a replacement for a fixed broadband service

Blog reader Mitch left a comment about how he now uses VoIP over a 4G line that has replaced his fixed broadband connection. His broadband had always been rubbish and 4G is now giving him speeds as fast as fibre broadband. I asked if he would be willing to tell the story. It makes for a very interesting read that many will be able to identify with. It may also give hope to those folk in the “final third” who are the 2nd class citizens of the UK when it comes to connectivity.

It’s Mitch from here on:

Tags 4g, fixed, line, replacement, voip

Business voip

Mobile VoIP client is a no brainer when travelling abroad

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 29 October, 2013
5 Comments on Mobile VoIP client is a no brainer when travelling abroad

This is an out and out advert for mobile VoIP services. If you haven’t already noticed I am in Helsinki at the moment.

My phone won’t pick up a mobile service. Bit irritating but not the end of the world. I dropped my wife an email letting her know I missed her already but she was probably not going to hear from me and not to worry.

The WiFi is great here, everywhere in the hotel and in the conference room. I’ve been able to carry on working. Then hey presto I remembered I had my Timico mobile client on my Samsung Galaxy S4.

I called home. The call quality was crystal clear. Had a nice chat with Anne and was reassured that everything was ok.

Not only did the call cost nothing, or worst case a local UK call charge, but the quality was much better than a cellular call would have been.

Only problem now is the two hour time shift & coordinating calls when we are both around and available.

Että kaikki ihmiset.

Tags client, hosted, mobile connectivity, Timico, voip

Business Cloud datacentre virtualisation

Joe Baguley of VMware is guest speaker at CTO Lunch

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 25 October, 2013
No Comments on Joe Baguley of VMware is guest speaker at CTO Lunch

VMware CTO EMEA Joe Baguley was the guest speaker at my monthly CTO Third Thursday lunchtime discussion session yesterday. These are hugely useful debates over lunch on a subject relevant to today’s IT Director. We have a guest speaker and on this occasion it was Joe Baguley, CTO of VMware.

We heard about developments at VMware and the strategic direction in which the company is going. This isn’t good news for everyone. VMware are currently pushing out software defined networks and software defined data centres. The idea is that all the smarts are provided by VMware and all the end user IT Director has to do is provide low end commodity hardware. Not what the likes of Cisco, who are VMware partners, would want to hear.

The lunch lasted from 12.30 until 5pm so we covered a lot if stuff. I’ll leave you with one interesting snippet. Apparently Googler uses laptops for its cloud services. In this way if the power to the datacentre goes down the machine itself provides the UPS via its own battery. Innovative I say. I don’t know any more detail than that but it certainly sounds plausible.

The header is of me and Joe at the Timico Cloud launch earlier in the year. I forgot to take pics yesterday!

PS very personable bloke Joe 🙂

Tags baguley, CTO, joe, lunch, vmware

4g Business Cloud mobile connectivity

4G remains impressive

Using up the last of the battery on this Chromebook from my garret at a Travelodge in London. I’m hanging off the Huaweii MiFi with a 4G sim. I’m sure I’ve said it before but I have to say it again the experience is terrific. Seriously useful for business. Pages load up almost instantly. It’s as if I was using my home WiFi and my FTTC line. Fair play:)

Tags 4g, Chromebook, EE, Huaweii, MiFi, Samsung

broadband Business

Does FTTP on Demand compete with Ethernet fibre connectivity?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 23 October, 2013
7 Comments on Does FTTP on Demand compete with Ethernet fibre connectivity?

FTTP on demand – will customers go for it?

Yesterday was at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton to give a talk on connectivity to a community of businessmen and IT types. Hampshire is, like many counties, very rural and there was a degree of complaining from the audience regarding the availability of decent connectivity.

Although the BDUK funded Next Generation Access project is rolling out to supposedly cover 90% of the country that still leaves a lot of people without access, or at least with the pitiful 2Mbs that the government it its wisdom has decided is good enough for the last 10%.

One chap mentioned that he had 20 rural sites that needed connecting. My answer to him was Fibre To The Premises on Demand which is currently being trialled by BT. FTTP on Demand has a fibre connection from the cabinet to your premises. The comparison is with Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) which has a copper cable between you and the cabinet. FTTP therefore, in principle offers the prospect of much faster throughputs than FTTC. Initially FTTP on Demand should provide 330Mbps down and 30Mbps up, once you’ve paid for the connection. The connection charge will almost certainly not be the few tens of pounds you might fork out for a new phone line. It’s more likely to be in the low thousands of pounds.

Notwithstanding that there is a fair chance that FTTP would do the job for many rural areas. This then prompted me to compare an FTTP solution with a standard Ethernet fibre connection.

What is the difference between FTTP and a fibre Ethernet connection?

FTTP whilst being fibre all the way to your premises runs over the BT 21CN Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) network. This is the backbone network that carries most BT broadband traffic. Because BT has a near monopoly the pricing for this is regulated “to ensure a level playing field” but is fairly expensive (regulated price is £48 per Mbps). To make broadband services economic to provide an ISP will rent a certain amount of bandwidth over WBC and use it to service multiple customers. It is therefore a shared network.

In reality this works very well, most of the time. Although FTTP isn’t a production product yet the mechanics are similar to Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC). A network with say 40Mbps amount of capacity to carry FTTC traffic will be able to serve multiple 40Mbps FTTC lines because they won’t all be using it at the same time. Ok if everyone was online downloading torrents at the same time that is likely to cause problems but by and large that doesn’t happen and ISPs have their own ways of dealing with the situation.

ISPs productise this type of connection and normally limit the data transfer bandwidth in a bundle of Gigabytes. They do this because a given sized backhaul connection will be able to handle a certain number of bytes in a given time period. This usage capacity is usually determined for a window at the busiest time of day.

Some ISPs offer “unlimited” packages. BT is one. BT offer an unlimited data bundle for their 80/20 FTTC product (they quote something like “up to 76Mbs down and 17Mbps up”) for £61 plus vat including calls and line rental (plus another fiver for a static IP). The Timico equivalent is £60 for the same product with 500GB a month of data. The Timico version might not sound as good as BT’s but the reality is that very few people ever come close to 500GB in a month. My “best” ever month was 250GB last December and I am a very heavy user. Also if average usage grew to levels unacceptable to BT you can bet your bottom dollar that they would either increase their pricing or stick in a limit.

There is a point to this bit of the discussion which I will come back to later.

Ethernet, as opposed to FTTC is a different product altogether. It is still fibre to the premises but relies on an unregulated backhaul network that very much has competition. The cost of the backhaul on Ethernet is anything up to ten times lower than that of FTTP (that’s what a bit of competition can do). Also Ethernet provides symmetrical uncontended connectivity. Ie it is the same speed up and down and you don’t share the connection with anyone else (though you can buy contended Ethernet which will be slightly cheaper).

Although the backhaul bandwidth is cheaper for Ethernet the fact that you are paying for it all means it is more expensive than FTTx (P or C). The flipside is that you can shift an awful lot more data in the month. A 100Mbps Ethernet connection should let you transfer 32Terabytes a month – massively more than the 500GB bundle I quoted earlier for FTTC. Also remember that Ethernet is symmetric – a 100Mbps connection is 100Mbps in each direction, whereas FTTP is 330 Mbps down and 30Mbps up.

Although there isn’t an official line on this it seems clear to me that BT has set the asymmetric levels for two reasons. Firstly so that they can boast a 330Mbps product in their commercial battles with Virgin Media’s cable service and secondly so that the product doesn’t clash with Ethernet.

A business buying Ethernet will be doing so for a number of reasons including reliability, Service Level Agreement and latency but also because they need faster upload than FTTX provides.

A 100Mbps Ethernet service retails at around £750 plus VAT. A business using the 80:20 FTTC service (in the absence of FTTP it’s the nearest one I have a price for at the moment) and based on £60 for 500GB (we have to assume some kind of benchmark for this calc as I don’t think it is realistic to assume unlimited bandwidth for £60 – as I say the price would go up if people started hammering it) a company would have to be using around 6Terabytes of data a month to justify the move to Ethernet, unless they needed the symmetrical performance (and the other benefits). They might also want a lower latency product which Ethernet provides. If my memory serves me right the round trip time between a site using Fast Ethernet and docklands will be a fifth or lower than that of FTTX. That’s less than 10milliseconds compared with 40 to 50 milliseconds. Ethernet could be even faster depending on location.

It is easy to envisage a chart that plots where the cost of FTTX will intercept that of fibre Ethernet based on the growth in usage. FTTX bandwidth costs may well come down but it will also do so for Ethernet. I don’t know when the lines will cross but they will do so and that point will tell us when the country will move entirely to a fibre based network.

My forecasts for my own personal data storage needs suggest I will be adding nearly 2TB a year in storage by 2020. Unless I start consuming a lot of Ultra high definition video it suggests to me that it’s going to be a very long time before I need to upgrade to a symmetrical Ethernet service. A 30Mbp uplink as provided by the current FTTP capability would let me upload 10Terabytes in a month (all these numbers are approximate) which my calcs suggest is more than enough for my forseeable needs. Even my 80:20 line which only gives me 35:7 due to the distance to the cabinet will be good enough until at least 2020.

There are other factors which will drive the world towards fibre (as opposed to FTTC). The cost of running the network will be one – fibre has a much lower operating cost once it is in place as it is more reliable. The speed of adoption of download bandwidth heavy services such as streaming Ultra HD video is another.

I didn’t really know where I was going when I started this post. I am a big fan of rolling out FTTP. It is the most sensible long term proposition. It certainly still make sense in the near term for areas of the country that can’t get FTTC. That’s 10% of the population at least.

I’m going to leave it at that. I’ve rambled on long enough.

Ciao baby.

Tags Ethernet, FTTP, FTTX, usage

Business fun stuff

Online marketing – it’s in the DNA

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 19 October, 2013
No Comments on Online marketing – it’s in the DNA

The Davies house is yet again at peace. Child 4 is upstairs, no doubt playing on the XBox, having been soundly beaten at table tennis in the conservatory. Number 3 is out a band practice – they have a gig tonight at the Lincoln Drill Hall. The other two are no longer at home.

I’ve whizzed through my jobslist. Apples picked, wood sorted in back garden, ski gear purchased for #4, tree moved (yes), methylated spirits sourced for tonight’s cheese fondue. Mrs Davies is down town foraging for some provisions in the market.

I have to pick the band up at 4.45 to transport them to the venue – drums and double bass and 5 lads. That’s ok. They are called The Pylons – check out their Facebook page. Their website is here. They are also on Twitter.

Uhuh you say. Well I guess where this is going is that these are 15 and 16 year old lads and they already have a handle on all the tools they need to promote their band. Their EP is currently in production, being recorded in a friend’s garage. They have more technology than your average pro studio would have had only a few years ago. They are a connected generation. They know how to make it work.

Tags marketing, online

Business scams

From +447456272496 Please call 08445718136 quoting your reference 776811

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 18 October, 2013
6 Comments on From +447456272496 Please call 08445718136 quoting your reference 776811

ATTENTION! We have tried to contact you, It is important we speak to you today. Please call 08445718136 quoting your reference 776811. Thank You.

Gah this is sooo frustrating. The person didn’t say who it was sending the text and I don’t have the number in my address book. What am I going to do now? It will be so embarrassing if I ring and get their name wrong – I don’t like to just say “hi” do you? It gives a far better impression if you can call them by name. I realise that they didn’t use my name either but that’s understandable in a text message isn’t it? Using my full name, Huw Trefor Davies would take up far too much space though they could have just said Tref and I would have been fine with that. Maybe they didn’t think of that.

Perhaps their name is a really long one that would take up most of the message – like Mr Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. It’s plausible, isn’t it? People do get called after place names, maybe they were born there or summat!

I don’t think I’ll bother.

Business online safety Regs security

Government Minister responsible for leaking secrets to enemy spies?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 17 October, 2013
3 Comments on Government Minister responsible for leaking secrets to enemy spies?

I note that old Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister, has taken his communications services into his own hands and installed a WiFi connection. The Telegraph article doesn’t go into any great detail as to what the WiFi is connected to. You get the impression he has ordered a separate broadband line to his office.

I was pondering on a comment on this article. Should we the great unwashed have a view on this? On the one hand if he is just using the WiFi to hook up his iPad etc just to catch up with his pals on Facebook and Twitter what’s the harm in that? I’m not sure he uses Twitter mind – I could only find a couple of parody accounts in his name. Maybe he uses an alias. I digress.

On the other hand he could be opening up the whole government communications infrastructure to foreign spies hell bent on infiltration and bad things. FM could be the cause of us having enemy sleepers (is that the correct terminology, it’s been a while since I read Le Carre – curse you #Twitterthiefoftime) deep into Whitehall ready to spring into action when the activation code word is broadcast on the BBC Radio4 Today programme or in a classified ad in The Financial Times (or Telegraph).

It might be argued that all the security that makes Government systems so clunky as described in the Telegraph article is all a waste of time anyway when it seems inevitable that Edward Snowden will one day leak all the secrets. We may well find that most of the info is routine stuff like what is Francis Maude’s favourite sandwich filling. Could of course be of use to an enemy seeking to poison him. Look out for yourself Francis. Take care now.

Whatever happens I’m all in favour of reducing the cost of Government, especially if he is paying for the broadband himself which I doubt but don’t know really. If we the unclean are paying lets hope he got a good deal – 50% off for the first six months or something like that. Maybe even unlimited calls to geographic numbers bundled in.

It’s not a Friday afternoon but I feel a competition coming on here. What keyword will our fiendish enemies use for a wakeup call and where will they publish it? It might be a phrase.

“The snow geese have arrived early this winter” is not an eligible entry – that one is too obvious and would immediately put MI5 on the alert. Or is it MI6?

Entries in the comments section please. Winner gets a terrific Timico megamug which they can collect in person at #trefbash2013. As a supplementary question if you want to guess what is FM’s favourite sandwich filling then I may use that as a tiebreaker in the event of a draw.

Your mother wears army boots.

4g Business chromebook mobile connectivity

54 minutes 315 Megabytes 4G conference call using Google+ Hangout

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 17 October, 2013
5 Comments on 54 minutes 315 Megabytes 4G conference call using Google+ Hangout

Google Hangout for 54 minutes using Samsung Chromebook and EE4G Huaweii MiFi clocks up 315Megabytes.

Just had a very pleasant 54 minutes video call with Sweyn Hunter using Google+ Hangout. My Huaweii 4G MiFi (courtesy of EE) tells me that it used approximately 315MB of bandwidth – probably slightly less as I did some emails before hand.

At Sweyn’s end he had “good old fashioned BT ADSL” with maybe 512k uplink speed. He lives in Orkney. The video quality was great though it did freeze two or three times in the 54 minutes. The only slight issue was an element of half duplex/one way speech in that if he was speaking and I tried to speak at the same time. I quickly got used to that and it didn’t detract from the quality of the conversation.

Also 54 minutes was a long hangout for what was just a casual chat – I’ve never met Sweyn but converse with him from time to time on Twitter – @sweynh – I’m sure he won’t mind me telling everyone. The point being that if we were comfortable having a 54 minute video conversation the quality must have been good – otherwise we would have cut it short.

Sweyn is an interesting bloke I’m sure he won’t mind me saying – you should follow him. He is organising an Island Govcamp in Orkney next year on 6th and 7th September.

Might try a hangout using O2 and Vodafone sims in my various phones next time. It will be interesting to see if personal video calling is going to at last get mainstream with 4G. Bandwidth cost is still going to be an issue. You can work out for yourselves how quickly you will eat up your own data bundle.

Tags 4g, Chromebook, EE, google, hangout, Huaweii, O2, Samsung, Vodafone

4g Business mobile connectivity

4G better than hotel WiFi – official

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 16 October, 2013
2 Comments on 4G better than hotel WiFi – official

Sat in my garrett at the Cromwell Hotel in London getting ready to to a 5.30 meeting. There is great 4G coverage here from O2, Vodafone and EE. The hotel WiFi is totally pants. It’s so slow it won’t even connect.

During my 4G test trips I already concluded that it is better to use 4G than the WiFi of a pub or cafe. I can tell you after my scientific survey (sample size one) that this is also the case in hotels.

It’s such a pleasure to have the connectivity on the move. This post is coming from my Samsung Chromebook hooked up to the Huaweii MiFi loaned to me my EE. On the train on the way down I also used the MiFi – it was tucked in my coat pocket so to all intents and purposes the Chromebook was “just accessing the internet directly”.

Now all I need to do is to figure out how to convert Microsoft presentations to Google format (see previous post).

Pics below are screenshot of speedtest on O2 4G on Samsung Galaxy S4 plus screenshot of “error” message when it failed to connect to Cromwell Hotel WiFi.

It’s offical, at this Best Western Hotel, 4G is best 🙂

Tags 4g, Cromwell, EE, hotel, London, O2, speedtest, Vodafone, WiFi

Business chromebook Cloud

Samsung Chromebook test #3 – writing presentations

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 16 October, 2013
1 Comment on Samsung Chromebook test #3 – writing presentations

Is the Samsung Chromebook any good for creating presentations? I’m about to find out. I have one to finish and am now off out to London for a couple of days – IPExpo and a dinner in Westminster ce soir. I also have to finish a presentation I’m doing next week on behalf of NewNet so it needs to be done whilst travelling.

I have my old Dell laptop out but the weight difference between it and the Chromebook is making it a no brainer. The Dell stays at home. I guess it is possible to buy thin, light laptops but not at £229.

I’ve moved the original presentation, started using Microsoft, onto my Drive. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Tags Chromebook, google, presentations, Samsung

Business events

Champagne drinkers outselling the rest 22hours into #trefbash2013 launch #bigdata

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 15 October, 2013
No Comments on Champagne drinkers outselling the rest 22hours into #trefbash2013 launch #bigdata

Bigdata is trendy and I have a little bit of big data here for your interest (or not – might be totally boring). Out of 75 tickets “sold” in the 22 hours since the announcement of #trefbash2013 went live 24 were “champagne drinkers”, 17 “volume beer drinkers”, 14 Hard core vodka types”, 13 “friends of Tref” and 7 “sophisticated cocktail drinkers”.

Considering that most of these people are in the tech industry the fact that champagne drinkers are leading the way says volumes about the amount of cash sloshing about in this business. I suspect that had there not been a champagne category then most of them would have gone for the cocktail drinker tickets.

In a male dominated engineering world there are always going to be a fair number of volume beer drinkers. These guys I guess are more likely to stay the pace than any of the other ticket types except perhaps the friends of Tref. Considering this was the teetotal ticket type (poetry there) I am both surprised and touched by the fact that 13 of you have held up your hands and said we were pals. Thanks guys 🙂

Like the two year run up to the US Presidential Election this is a story that will run and run, at least until all the tickets have sold out and we have recovered from the party.

Ciao baby (puts middle finger into mouth and makes champagne cork popping sound)…

Tags party, trebash2013

Business fun stuff

NHS IT

Had my annual check up at my local GP today. You’ll all be relieved to know I have the thumbs up. Amazing I know.

The nurse was having a real problem with her mouse as she tried to navigate her way through the NHS computer records system – it must have a name (white elephant, major cost overrun IT disaster, I dunno). So I asked her to move over, opened up the mouse, cleaned it and put it back together again. Worked perfectly. She was very happy.

What’s more she is now fully trained in mouse maintenance. The surgery would previously have probably had to call out the IT department or more likely a contractor at an exorbitant rate.

It’s nice to give something back every now and again – we should all do our little bit:)

That is all.

PS the photo is one I found in my library. These nurses aren’t the same ones that work at my GP’s surgery. Thought you would want to know.

Archived Business

We are looking for a head of Technical Pre Sales – gimme a call

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 8 October, 2013
No Comments on We are looking for a head of Technical Pre Sales – gimme a call

Timico is looking for a head of Technical Pre-Sales. This is a great opportunity to join a business that is showing great organic growth despite the fact that the country has been going through economic woes.

We need serious Cisco Network Architecture/Design background and sound experience of leading and managing teams. Timico delivers large-scale networks (500+ sites) so experience in delivery of such projects is key.

Obviously I can guarantee a great working environment with great people and you get to make suggestions for blog post content

Drop me a line if you want to chat about it. More details here.

PS I only want direct contact from techies interested in the job. If you are a recruitment consultant please go through our HR department.

broadband Business UC

USA market for VoIP 3 years ahead of the UK #8×8

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 7 October, 2013
No Comments on USA market for VoIP 3 years ahead of the UK #8×8

Availability of high speed broadband has driven the market for hosted VoIP telephony in the USA which is 3 years ahead of the UK.

Had dinner last week with Huw Rees, VP Business Development of 8×8. If you don’t know them, 8×8 are the largest provider of Over The Top VoIP services in the USA with over half a million subscribers. That’s almost as big as the whole UK market.

What’s more 8×8 are putting on subscribers at a terrific rate – over a thousand new businesses a quarter at approximately 18 seats per business. This is all public domain stuff. 8×8 is a publicly quoted company that turns over around $120m and with a Market Cap of $800m. Overall gross margin is 71% with GM on services up at 80% which is how they can achieve the market valuation.

This business performance is achieved in two ways. Firstly all 8×8’s technology was developed in house. They don’t have large licenses and royalties to fork out. In fact 8×8 owns a lot of patents. Secondly everything is low touch, automated and web based including the marketing. They do have an inbound sales team because business customers like to talk to a real person before committing to this kind of technology.

The final interesting point to make is that 8×8 saw a trigger point that stimulated business growth and this was the availability of high speed broadband – better quality and more reliable broadband connectivity. The USA went through this milestone around 3 or maybe four years ago. We are only now seeing it happen with the BT rollout of FTTC.

Since we started to sell FTTC at Timico we have seen it become a lot easier to sell VoIP seats. Reliability of the serviced is much better. VoIP even becomes a lever to sell people FTTC – they call in for one and we sell ’em both.

Our model as a one stop shop is different to that of 8×8 who pass on the connectivity and hosting revenues. The 8×8 success in the USA does bode well for the rest of us over in Blighty.

Tags 8x8, market, USA, voip

4g broadband Business mobile connectivity net neutrality

4G adoption in UK businesses

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 4 October, 2013
3 Comments on 4G adoption in UK businesses

4g for business offers backup facility for superfast broadband

Why should business use 4G?

Yesterday I sat on a panel discussing 4G at the Convergence Summit South trade show in Sandown Park. The audience was largely resellers of communications services. What you would traditionally call a PBX reseller.

In terms of expectations of what 4G would do for this channel it would appear that it was very much a case of wait and see. There are some sceptics who go as far as to that “4G is just a faster version of 3G and won’t really have any specific applications and uses”.

Well I think they are wrong. 4G may well be “just a faster bearer” but it is going to open up opportunities in the communications market that weren’t there before.

For example Timico does a lot of good business selling 3G cellular back up solutions for broadband lines used to carry credit card transactional data. This type of application doesn’t need the bandwidth capabilities that 4G can offer (although 4G’s faster ping times could have a role to play here).

This type of back up application is not used nearly as much to back up ADSL lines to offices. 3G just isn’t good enough for this other than as a very basic means of accessing the internet. If you rely on your broadband for VoIP then it ain’t going to be any use over 3G, as much as anything because half the networks block VoIP (note to self to do net neutrality update post).

Now something is happening in the communications market in the UK and that is FTTC, Fibre to the Cabinet, fibre broadband, call it what you will. The superior speeds of FTTC make a huge difference to how businesses and indeed consumers use the internet. They are starting to make use of online resources like they have never before.

Witness the aggressive promotion of the Samsung Chromebook. Not only did I get 100GB of free Drive storage (ok only for two years by which time Google hopes I’m hooked enough to buy more) but I also get a free Galaxy phone. When I got my Samsung Galaxy S4 they gave me two years of free 50GB Dropbox which I am very much starting to use.

All this is driving the market towards using more and more of the cloud.

Now businesses when they start to rely more on cloud services are not going to be happy if their internet connection goes down. These things do happen, regularly.

With an increasing availability of 4G it is going to be a no-brainer for business to have a 4G backup for its FTTC connection. The speeds, assuming you can get coverage, are pretty much identical. In fact 4G is likely to give a better uplink speed than FTTC.

4G networks do not (currently) block VoIP applications such as Skype and have latencies that are going to be able to support other real time applications. I can’t see 4G replacing FTTC in a business connection because of the cost of bandwith.

This may not apply for certain demographics in the consumer market. The only reason we have a phone line in our house is because it supports our data connection. The only people that phone it are scammers from Indian call centres and anti social pariahs trying to sell me PPI miss-selling compensation.

For a single person leaving home, saving on the cost of a phone line and broadband might well be enough to offset the additional bandwidth costs of a 4G subscription. I digress.

The upshot is that I think that the combination of FTTC and 4G is going to be a real driver for sales of mobile subscriptions and that the resellers sat in that room listening to the panel discussion should all be thinking of how they can add mobile into their portfolio. If you like think of it in terms of increasing ARPU for broadband sales.

On a similar but different note I met with EE last week for a chinwag on life, the universe and 4G. I had been pretty critical about the EE efforts to sell 4G (see post here). However soon after I wrote that post their subscriber uptake rocketed and I think they may well have now reached a million subs.

It would seem that this increase in interest is due to a combination of market reach (ie more people can now get 4G), growing awareness due to the continued marketing effort and more people coming up to contract renewal. The entry of the O2 and Vodafone into the market will also help by creating even more market awareness.

This same dynamic is going to happen in the business comms market. There will come a time where 4G is generally available, more or less, to all businesses and they will start to use it.

Obvious really. Ciao.

PS if you want to talk more about this drop me a line.

PPS I was driving past Coventry earlier this week and noticed an O2 4G signal on my phone. Hey Coventry, it’s on it’s way to you next 🙂

Tags 4g, backup, broadband, Business, EE, FTTC, growth, O2, Vodafone

Business UC voip

The next few days – Convergence Summit South @SandownPark

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 1 October, 2013
No Comments on The next few days – Convergence Summit South @SandownPark

Off to Sandown Park for the Convergence Summit South over the next few days. Swing by and see me – and the NewNet stand at the trade show.

Tags Convergence, Park, Sandown, South, summit

Business internet mobile connectivity Net

Trains to get faster internet connectivity #networkrail

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 30 September, 2013
5 Comments on Trains to get faster internet connectivity #networkrail

Internet access on trains to be upgraded by 2014

My auntie told me today that the rail network is upgrading its wireless internet access or at least it will have done by 2019. I’ve mentioned the rubbish connectivity on trains more than once – here and here for example. I’m a bit of an expert because I spend so much time on the train between the office in Newark and London.

Apparently we are going to get 50Megs which is a big uplift on the pathetic 2 Meg we have to share out amongst the whole train today.

The BBC news item tells us that apparently “A new fibre optic network should be capable of handling up to 192,000 gigabit per second (Gbit/s) of data once the upgrade is complete in June 2014.” Pretty advanced stuff a 192Terabit per second network (no quibbling over definitions of what is a Terabit please). I wonder which router they are going to use? Perhaps someone from Network Rail could get in touch and I’ll do a blog post on the subject.

Internet access on trains. Can’t wait. Ciao bebe.

Tags broadband, cellular, connectivity, internet, network, Rail, WiFi

Business phones

RIM – what is there to say?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 24 September, 2013
1 Comment on RIM – what is there to say?

RIM is being sold to one of its existing shareholders who will take it private and in theory reshape the business away from the public glare. The same is happening, or trying to happen, at Dell. Nokia is being bought by Microsoft. All three brands may well fade away into the distance.

Shed no tears. Shit happens. Move on. We live in a very fluid world where aside from technological advances that can in theory be forecast because of historical trends – Moores Law etc – nobody can really predict the future. It takes remarkable vision to be able to move with the times, especially if you are a huge company – it’s like trying to do a handbrake turn with an oil tanker.

I remember when I worked for Mitel I was in pub in Kanata and one of the Execs had a Blackberry that he was constantly referring to – a bit like how I am these days with my droid. What went through my mind was “hmm I need one of those”. It was more of a status symbol thing than me wanting to be able to read my emails when in the pub.

Timico gave me a Blackberry in the early days. It didn’t last long. Devices like the Nokia E65 and E71 soon overshadowed it. The E71 was a good phone. Not as good as my SGS4, or the S3 or the S2. It’s all progress innit?

I used to think that the future was all about phones replacing PCs. PCs sales are in decline. Phones and tablets on the up. Maybe I was right. Easy really. However in trying to decide where on earth this thought process (and thus the blog post) is going I’ve realised that phones are probably not the way forward either, at least in the form factor we see today.

The screen on my SGS4 is cracked – happened when it was in my pocket. The casing is chipped and dented – it isn’t an old phone, just not a very robust one. I occasionally leave it places and have to go back looking for it. It has to have access security to stop others using it when they shouldn’t and to protect my personal data.

Surely this is a form of device ripe for obsolescence. Although I poo poo’d the Samsung Gear smart watch maybe that is the form factor that will be where all the action is in future. It won’t be long before technology is such that we will have better processing power in the watch than we have in the handset today. If we want to type we should be able to dig out cheap portable screens/keyboards that hook up with the watch. These could even be disposable or so cheap that they are everywhere and you just have to pick one up and hook your phone.

A phone is less likely to be left somewhere and won’t suffer the same knocks as a handset.

There you go. Maybe people running big brands just need to get back to the basics of what influences people to buy something. Play in the forecastable tech developments and hey presto, you are still in business. Not as easy as that I know but it’s all that’s on offer this morning:)

Ciao.

Tags Blackberry, RIM, sale

Business datacentre

Timico gets Royal Visitor – Duke of Kent

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 23 September, 2013
No Comments on Timico gets Royal Visitor – Duke of Kent

Just had a bit of a Royal visit from the Duke of Kent. He came over specially for a butchers’ because he’d heard of our growth/work with apprentices/new datacentre/NOC/awards etc etc etc.

I was a bit disappointed to see that his car didn’t have a flag. The last time I came across the Duke was at the Farnborough Air Show where I was his guest for lunch. At the time I was on the Exec of the Parliamentary Space Committee. Lunch was on the roof of the Society of British Aerospace Companies pavilion – the spot where the Harrier jump jet used to bow to.

I was there with a group of British and French MPs – members of their respective Parliamentary interest groups. We had an extremely informative and enjoyable afternoon at the end of which we all piled into the Jaguar courtesy cars to go back to the bus for onward ferrying to Westminster. All that is except me. There was no room!

“No problem” said an able assistant. He whipped the flag off the Duke of Kent’s Bentley and drove me to the bus himself. All of which is why I was disappointed the flag wasn’t to be seen anywhere. I guess the Bentley will be knocking on a bit now and his 7 series will be far more comfortable…

Tags Duke, Kent, royal, Timico, visit

Business net neutrality ofcom Regs

Net Neutrality – Pete Farmer speaks

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 10 September, 2013
3 Comments on Net Neutrality – Pete Farmer speaks

Open Internet & Net Neutrality – both are terms that are meaningless to many and equally emotive and commercially crucial to many others.

As with many things in life, there’s a spectrum of what this means. At one end, there’s a threat to civil liberties, commercial strategies, intellectual property and safeguarding against illegal content. At the other end, there’s (for want of a better phrase) a type of technological anarchy whereby there are ideological demands that all packets of data should be equal regardless of the content, legality, source or otherwise.

ITSPA’s members all operate in the VoIP space to some degree, so the subject of throttling (sorry, I think the marketing term is “traffic shaping”), blocking etc is both emotive and important to their businesses; so I think it is worthwhile explaining what I think the average VoIP provider means by Net Neutrality.

The first qualifier is that we always talk about legal content. What is legal and not legal varies by jurisdiction and is defined by various legislatures around the world; we would not necessarily expect any definition of an open internet to include illegal content.

We would also say that prioritisation of some services is an important

Tags Farmer, Gamma, ITSP, net, neutrality, Pete

broadband Business voip

VoIP for a home office

VoIP for home office suddenly got better with superfast broadband.

I find it very productive to work from home occasionally. I have an Avaya phone in the conservatory – hangs off our Genband A2 SIP platform. I guess not every conservatory is Cat5 cabled. My patch panel and switch are in the attic but I won’t win any prizes for the quality of the cabling (it’s a good job I don’t do the cabling for Timico).

What really makes it work is the FTTC connection. VoIP is rock solid over FTTC as I may have mentioned. Last week I had a conference call with a journalist called Jessica Twentyman (@jtwentyman). Her profile says she lives in Portugal but her CLI was an 0207. I didn’t think anything of it but at the end of the chat I asked her whether she was actually working out of London.

Turns out she was using Skype-in and still very much in Portugal. The call quality was astonishingly good considering I’ve had a few quite tinny Skype calls in my time¹. The difference is that she has a fibre connection where she lives. This just goes to show what a difference the quality of the underlying bearer connection makes. I’ve had other calls with journos where they have been using their mobile phone and it doesn’t always make for an easy conversation – you are straining to hear what the person is saying rather than focussing on what to say.

As FTTC/FTTP gets more into people’s homes and businesses it can only be a matter of time before we all upgrade to using better quality voice codecs such as G722. If the bandwidth is there we might as well use it. Of course the call quality may well improve but the quality of what is said will still be down to you 🙂

Ciao…

¹ I even heard John Humphrys once on Radio4 talking to someone in New Zealand using Skype and the call disappeared completely half way through the interview.

Business mobile connectivity phones

I see Microsoft are going to buy the Nokia handset business

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 3 September, 2013
2 Comments on I see Microsoft are going to buy the Nokia handset business

I found out about 5am this morning via Twitter (under the bedsheets!). Between 5am and the time I got up, around 7.30ish is was being retweeted by all and sundry and Rory CJ was talking about it on the BBC Radio4 Today programme.

By the time I left for work I felt it was old news and had already been done to death. The line of discussion was “Will Stephen Elop be the next Microsoft CEO?” Tbh that isn’t really news and the BBC was certainly unable to do any more than anyone else which was just pure speculation.

Whether Microsoft makes a go of the handset business is neither here nor there in my mind. I’m not really bothered. I’d say it will take them years to catch up with Apple and Samsung/Google if they can do it at all.

What I think is worth a moment of reflection is the passing of Nokia as a mobile handset vendor. The brand must now inevitably fade away. In my business life I have had very few different vendors’ models of mobile phone (though that is starting to change with what feels to be an unsustainable pace of new product intros) and for most of that time my phone was a Nokia.

Nokia represented quality and had the best User Interface. Although I still own a Nokia, a Lumia 920 handset it is very much my secondary phone. I don’t like the UI or the weight of it. I only got it to try out Windows8. The last Nokia phone I can claim to have been happy with was the N97, a while ago now, it seems.

There are always examples around of major multinational companies with big market leads that fail to move with the times. Microsoft is in one of those periods now of trying to reinvent itself. It isn’t there yet.

In the meantime Nokia has failed to keep up and is now going through the mobile phone equivalent of the death roll. Stand back and watch from a safe distance. RIP the Nokia mobile phone.

Tags Lumia, Microsoft, Nokia

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