Category: Business

Business

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Business UC video voip

Unified Communications and how it made my day

I’ve just had one of those life enriching experiences. I’m currently looking at back-up and storage options to enhance our own SAAS capabilities. i365, “a Seagate company”, looked as if it would fit the bill so I called them.

As I was calling I realised it was one of the numbers provided by Timico on our VoIP platform and indeed when the Michelle receptionist answered the phone her name appeared on my screen. She transferred me to Sean O’Reilly and his name also came up.

The video then kicked in and we had a video call. Sean was using our own PC Client software and we began exchanging Instant Messages.  Sean is an intensive user of the PC Client because it allows him to keep his hands free to type. His praise of the service was fullsome and it made my day.

This really is the way forward. It was a totally adhoc video call with someone I didn’t know, had never spoken to before but that will be the norm in times to come.

Categories
broadband Business

Broadband Stakeholder Group Not Very Helpful

Broadband Stakeholder Group

Established in 2001 as a cross-sector government advisory group, the Broadband Stakeholder Group has only disappointed.

Catching up on my reading this morning I note that the Broadband Stakeholder Group sees the Government’s Next Generation Fund (ie the 50p tax on analogue lines) as a “Forward looking, innovative and proportionate proposal that will benefit all”.

I also note in the Extended Play version of it’s press release on the subject that “The BSG was established as a cross-sector government advisory group in 2001 to help the UK lead the G7 in broadband penetration and connectivity.”For reference this is what the G7 broadband leadership league table looks like today according to the Oxford University Said Business School report. The numbers are the position in the broadband leadership league table,

japan 2
usa 15
Canada 17
france 18
uk 25
germany 27
italy 38

Whilst I think we need such an organisation as the Broadband Stakeholder Group I guess the question I am asking is whether it is really doing UK PLC any favours. By it’s own measures of success it is not succeeding. The BSG needs to be more forthright in its advice to Government.

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Business voip

Hosted VoIP shootout at Convergence Summit South

I’m off shooting next week. At least I’m off to a hosted VoIP shootout at Comms Business Magazine’s Hosted Telephony Shootout.  Held at Sandown Park Racecourse on Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th this promises to be quite an exciting event.

When I originally said yes to the invite I thought it was just a VoIP demo like every other VoIP demo, of which I have done hundreds. Having just read the spiel (well in advance I hasten to add – you have to go into these things well prepared) I realise now that I am actually demoing the whole set up and provisioning process.

I haven’t really had to do that for a good four years – since we grew big enough to have a team dedicated to this type of thing. However fear not!  It is actually so easy to provision an user on our VoIP platform that I could almost do it blindfold.  Note I am not offering to do that as part of the Shootout.  Dramatic effects are one thing but blindfolds are usually only worn when you are facing a firing squad.

Anyway if you are at the Convergence Summit South next week come and see me set up a couple of VoIP phones and also demoing our online customer portal.

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broadband Business internet mobile connectivity

O2Be and the Ever-Growing Complexity of the Broadband Service Landscape

Met with O2/Be last week to discuss their LLU broadband play. O2 has been winning awards for their consumer broadband service. They have an ADSL2+ solution that already supports Annex M.

For the uninitiated Annex M allows a service provider to trade some downloading speed on a broadband service in exchange for a faster (up to 2.5Mpbs!?) upload.

O2/Be have unbundled around 1,240 exchanges and so have one of the largest LLU footprints in the UK. They also claim to have 500,000 customers so in understanding the options for the provision of broadband service in the UK they are one of the companies that need looking at.

A complex web is being woven in the UK broadband landscape. Clearly O2 is serious. When they bought Be the LLU estate numbered no more than 30 or so exchanges. A lot of cash has been expended to turn it into the figure it is today.

O2 is telling the world it wants a seat at the table and is willing to put up a stake. It does have a different approach to Carphone Warehouse, the leading LLU player in terms of size, in that it only offers the broadband connectivity. Currently O2 relies on Openreach for the underlying analogue line.

Having looked at the economics of LLU myself it makes a lot more sense if you are taking the voice path as well as the ADSL. There are other benefits with LLU in that an ISP can tailor its own services and thus offer a differentiation in a crowded market. It still needs subscriber numbers to make it pay and at the consumer end it is unlikely that the service provider will want to offer too many variants – simplicity of broadband service means lower costs to sell, provision and support.

This brings me on to another point and that is that BT is now introducing FTTC which at 40Mbps down and 5Mbps up blows all the LLU operators ADSL2+ offerings out of the water, at least in terms of speed. There are then only two players in the game – BT and Virgin with their cable proposition. Other players will have to line up behind one of these two as a wholesale customer and note that Virgin does not yet have a wholesale proposition.

Now FTTC is in its early days of rollout but the footprint is likely to be the same Market 3 footprint as the unbundled exchanges, ie the densely populated parts of the country that make business sense.

So I think for the moment that LLU players have a market window that is probably no more than two years for their unbundled services. Two years will scream past, if the past five at Timico are anything to go by.

Coming back to O2/Be their play thus far has been very much into the consumer market. They look to be a solid player and I have heard good things about them from peers in the ISP community. Their sortie into the business market is through an L2TP play with relative newcomer Fluidata. I have nothing to say against Fluidata, not having worked with them but they are small and O2, if it is serious at the wholesale, game will want to do it in-house.

What their long term strategy is though is a difficult one to call. Owned by Telefonica they should have the deep pockets to play. Play what though? When there are likely to be only two players and one of them is BT then you either have to be satisfied with being a reseller of BT or Virgin or you buy one of them. I can’t see the regulator letting O2 buy BT, it would be ironic if they did.

They might let them buy Virgin though.  And then where does that leave Vodafone, a business that is only dabbling in broadband at the moment…

The UK communications industry has never been as exciting a place to be as it is now. Any informed comment/feedback to this post will be read with interest.

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Business internet

Digital Brital Digital Divide US Style

Digita Britain’s digital divide also exists in the USA. Regsister article dicsusses here. I need add no more.

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Business internet

Digital Britain meeting with Stephen Timms Communications Minister

I have a meeting with Stephen Timms, Communications Minister at his office next Thursday. The topic of discussion is largely going to be Digital Britain.

If anyone has a specific internet related issue they want to pitch to me to bring up then please drop me a line through the usual channels.

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Business internet

Call for FTTC trialists

If anyone is interested in taking part in a high speed broadband trial using FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) could they please drop me a line.

You have to live in Whitchurch (Cardiff), Muswell Hill or Glasgow Halfway. The service is good for 5Megs up and 40 Megs down (subject to the usual caveats – line length etc) and we will guarantee 15Megs down. You need to have an available analogue line.

I’m offering a free trial to those wanting to participate. I don’t have a restriction in numbers but will play this by ear – if I get hundereds of people put their hand up I might have to be picky. The trial will only be for a fixed period that I have yet to determine but hey, it’s free… That’s free 40Mbps broadband. Fill yer boots.

For those that don’t know this is the first manifestation of the £1.5B investment being made by BT to the initial fibre roll out in the UK. It isn’t going to get to everyone but I will publish the road map as soon as I get permission from BT to do so.

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Business internet net neutrality Regs

Net neutrality governance debate

Interesting online debate next week concerning whether Net Neutrality can be “governed”. Although it is a North American debate I imagine it will cover lots of areas that we in the UK should be interested in. If I can fit in the time I will attend. Details here and below:

“FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has expanded from four to six the principles of freedom associated with Net Neutrality. Now however these principles are now going to be codified into regulatory rules. So the question has to be asked can the concept of “open” be governed. Join us as we look at how these principles will be incorporated into policy. What companies, services and devices will be subject to these rules. And discuss if the jurisdiction of the FCC has to be modified to enable these principles.

Participants include: Todd Daubert of Kelley Drye, Hank Hultquist of AT&T and Rick Whitt of Google.
Join us on Tuesday October 6th, 2009 at 12:30 EST to 1:30 EST as we see if Open can be Governed”

Categories
broadband Business internet

Britain is 25th in Oxford University Global Broadband League Table

Britain is 25th in the global broadband league table according to a Cisco sponsored study performed by Oxford University’s Said Business School. This was one of the headlines that woke me up whilst listening to BBC Radio 4 this morning.

That in itself should be a spur for the UK to get its act together. For the BBC interview, however, Oxford University could have fielded someone  a little more conversant in the issues. The study itself, seen online,  looks to be purely factual but University don Alastair Nicholson seemed to to think that this lowly ranking was not a problem and that our broadband network was perfectly suited to our present needs.

Although this initially incensed me I’ve calmed down now.  Alastair Nicholson, as an academic overseer of some MBA students,  probably has little exposure to the dynamics of a high technology fuelled economy.  He didn’t do the country a favour though by suggesting that the hype surrounding the Digital Britain debate was partly pride and not driven by the absolute need to have faster and more ubiquitous broadband.

He is just wrong. This is extremely short sighted. Build the motorway and the traffic will come. The act of building this information superhighway will create the jobs that will help to dig our way out of recession.

Categories
Business social networking

Digital Britain feed on trefor.net

The Digital Britain feed from twitter is yielding some very interesting information. For example people are tweeting about their submissions for the  funding that is available from the Technology Strategy Board.

It is worth watching the feed for a minute or two to get a feel for what is going on in the Digital Britain initiative. If you hover your cursor over the feed it will stop scrolling and thus lets you control the speed.

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Business Cloud internet

Salesforce.com Cloud Workshop: A Final Word from the CIO Council Meeting

So should you worry about using a service — one such as Salesforce.com’s Force.com, for instance — in “The Cloud”?

Ten years ago Oracle was ahead of its time when it tried to kill off Microsoft with the Network Computer. At that time it was a combination of the cost and reliability of the underlying network together with the lack of applications to run on it that likely killed it off.

Today these barriers have all but disappeared. Connectivity is orders of magnitude cheaper and the number of uses for the network has exploded.

WordPress, for example, is the platform that I use to write this blog. WordPress has 6,760 plugins available for download and they have indeed been downloaded 52,448,569 times to date.

A plug-in or widget is a small application that is used to run on a platform to enable certain functionality. In the case of trefor.net these applications provide the functionality in the right hand column – twitter feed, add/subscribe etc. I also use applications invisible to the reader such as wordpress seo, search engine optimisation.

I think nothing of using WordPress which is a totally cloud based application, unlike Dreamweaver for example, which at one time I used to use to design websites and which resided on my PC.

So as a final note on the Salesforce.com CIO council meeting last week I thought I’d look more into their cloud offering. The Salesforce.com Force.com platform has have 200+ native apps and 550+ partner apps. Not as many as WordPress but there again many of the WordPress plug-ins will never see the light of a real website and they are free.

The Force.com applications that are used, however, are of major interest to business, at least collectively. They must be because Salesfor.com has 63,200 paying customers with 81M+ lines of code with 16M+ customizations – modification that integrate the Force.com platform with other services used by these customers.

New WordPress plug-ins appear daily whilst Salesforce.com restricts itself to three releases a year – coming up to release number 30 this Autumn. In the business world a software release needs to be bug free as possible and fully tested which is certainly not always the case with open source equivalents.

So it is clear to me that the move to the cloud is well underway and anyone looking at their information roadmap strategy should have this at the forefront of their mind. Of course this isn’t going to kill off Microsoft anytime soon…

Categories
Business internet

New Technical Operations Centre – call for ideas

Having moved the Timico Network Operations Team to Newark this summer I am looking at upgrading our facilities to provide the business with a state of the art Operations Centre. With this in mind if anyone has any inputs on how we might approach this now is the time.

If anyone out there who are proud of their own facilities and wants to invite me to visit for a look see then I will gratefully accept the invitation.

I am also happy to be approached by vendors in this space if they have something that will add value here.  This could include monitoring equipment, posh screens, ergonomically optimised workstations, electronic whiteboards or even just nice plants etc, etc.

My contact details are available here.

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Business Cloud datacentre

Salesforce.com Cloud Workshop: More from the CIO Council Meeting

In considering moving some of their business operations to the cloud the CIOs round the table at last week’s Salesforce.com cloud computing workshop voiced some interesting issues that they had had to get to grips with.

Firstly in running with a cloud based service a business is effectively entrusting key corporate data to a third party and effectively relinquishes control over it.

This means that you have to be sure of the integrity of the cloud. Salesforce.com operates 3 global datacentres in North America, Europe and Asia. These are linked with multiple OC48 fibre connections and replicate with each other on an ongoing basis. Of course this doesn’t preclude a domino effect type disaster.

A prudent business will also store it’s own data elsewhere. Coincidentally Timico’s own cloud storage service backs up to two secure and geographically diverse locations so customers then have their data stored in three spots – our two and their own local storage. It would be over the top for us to shift data to the Far East 🙂

The nature of the concern voiced at the workshop was not so much the safety of the data but its retrievability in the event that a customer wanted to take it’s business elsewhere. So when looking at a cloud service the portability of your Bytes is important. Whilst simply retrieving stored data is straightforward (bandwidth permitting) retrieving the business logic built into may not be so careful planning is likely to be required.

Different cloud services almost certainly offer different applications and features and it will be a while before these harmonise into a single set of features in the way that PBXs and CRM packages have done over the years. At the moment though you are unlikely to be able to move to a like for like service. Choose your partner well at the outset.

Another comment from the floor related to the fact that although part of the sales pitch from a cloud vendor was ease of scalability typically this meant that they let you scale up easily but were not so accommodating when you want to scale down. It is understandable that service providers want to maximise their take but I tend to agree that people should be able to reduce their commitment as well as grow it. It should be a stimulus for the quality of a service to be kept up.

Our VoIP service does typically allow customers to do this with one month’s notice so it can be done.

Categories
Business Cloud internet

What lies beyond the cloud?

Something for you to think about. Technology comes and goes. What happens after cloud computing? What lies beyond the cloud?

Categories
Business Cloud internet

Salesforce.com Cloud Workshop: Report from the CIO Council Meeting

You may or may not have known that I am on the CIO Council of Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com is a highly professional organisation that I believe really has its head screwed on.

This isn’t a sales pitch for them but I was sufficiently enthused by my Cloud Workshop day, held yesterday in the East Room on the 7th Floor of the Tate Modern Gallery on London’s South Bank, to gush in this post.

The meeting was attended by twenty five or so persons including some global cloud experts from our hosts but also by some heavy hitting CIOs from major international corporates.

What astounded me is the pace of the move away from Microsoft and towards Linux, Google Apps and, of course, Salesforce.com. Their cloud platform Force.com now has 750 Applications you can download. I don’t think anything in this cloudy world comes free but there are seriously well documented business cases and high returns on investment for treading this path.

In the interest of keeping my posts short I’m going to gradually trickle the seven pages of notes I made on the day into discrete bites on this blog.There are lots of really interesting tidbits. Like for example the market for cloud computing is worth $162Bn and that analysts claim that Salesforce.com has a 2 year market lead on its competitors.

I’ll finish this one by thanking my hosts for a very rewarding day and a splendid meal afterwards held in the privileged environs of the Poetry and Dream Gallery on Level 3 which included a couple of Picassos (The Three Dancers) and a Jackson Pollock.

Categories
broadband Business Regs

#digitalbritain Under the Aegis of BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT

It’s worth taking a look at this blog post at media140.org. It contains part of a talk given by @cyberdoyle, a regular commenter on trefor.net at a session on #digitalbritain at the Royal Society organised by BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT . @cyberdoyle quite rightly maintains that the BET solution for broadband over long copper lines is inadequate.

The real point that is being hugely missed by Government and which I have mentioned more than once is that 2Mbps is totally inadequate as a speed for a Universal Service Obligation for broadband. Others quote 40Mbps or more as being where it should be. I believe we should be pitching for 1Gbps. If this is not achievable short term then if we lay the national corporate fibre infrastructure then it will be doable sooner rather than later by upgrading the equipment at either end of the fibre.

Categories
Business internet piracy

Technology Strategy Board Digital Britain workshop

The Technology Strategy Board promotes the development and adoption of new technology, ideas  and applications in the UK. It has been given a pot of money to seed the development of technology that will underwrite the aims and objectives of the Digital Britain report.

The briefing was in London on Friday, the aim being to bring network providers and rights holders together to finalise the specification for the Technology Strategy Board’s Digital TestBed. About £30m is apparently available to spend and I understand that in excess of 400 application forms have been downloaded from their with a likely 80 projects to be chosen to go forward to the “feasibility study” stage.  Some applicants will clearly be disappointed.

Whilst I think that his activity is to be applauded I did hear of one interesting bit of feedback from the day.  The representative from Sony, who presumably was there to discuss ways of making music more easily available online in a legal manner, suggested that if it was licensing models that were up for discussion, he would need to get the lawyers on the case. 

The whole issue of legal online access to music is indeeed all about licensing models. The cost of the licenses basically. I get the feeling that the rights holders aren’t really interested in making this easy or lowering the costs. Once you get lawyers involved things take forever. You can’t talk about licensing without lawyers. ergo it will never happen.

Categories
Archived Business

TechTrack success again for Timico

I’m excited to tell the world that Timico achieved 23rd position in this year’s Sunday Times/Microsoft TechTrack 100 League Table of the fastest growing tech companies in the UK.

Last year we were an amazing 4th and the year before that we were 10th. The table is based on 3 years compound growth so to be in the top 100 for three years running is a fantastic feat let alone three years in the top 23!

We still have a fair bitof work to do to get where we want to be which is to be the number one partner for businesses looking for communications services in the UK but I’d say that the message from the Sunday Times must be that we are very much heading in the right direction.

Categories
Business voip

2009 ITSPA Awards – get yer entries in

The first Annual ITSPA Awards bash last year was a huge success, not least because Timico won the Best Unified Communications provider award!  The event was held in the House of Lords Members Dining Room and had a fantastic turnout. We ended up in a few bars around Westminster and succeeded in not losing the trophy.

This year we are doing the same again and hopefully will have another great turnout.  If you are reading this and are in the VoIP business you should think about entering. There are categories for both Service Providers and equipment/solution vendors, details of which can be found here. This year’s entrants are also going to be subject to expert testing by Epitiro.

The winners will be announced in the House of Commons Strangers Dining Room where the ITSPA Awards will take place on 10th December 2009. I look forward to seeing you there. Come and tap me on the shoulder to say hello.

Categories
Business datacentre internet ofcom

Video Streaming Regulation: Is Ofcom Going after YouTube?

This may be something that has been going on for sometime in the background, but Ofcom today launched its consultation into regulation of video on-demand (VOD) services.

Following the Audio Visual Media Services Directive, the Government is to regulate VOD services which are ‘TV-like’. The consultation is looking at whether the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) should regulate advertising in VOD services and is proposing that VOD services be regulated by the Association for Television on Demand (ATVOD).

The regulation will consist of a range of minimum content standard, new VOD rules delivered through a co-regulatory framework,  and Ofcom will be given primary responsibility to ensure the effective operation of the co-regulatory framework.
VOD regulation has to be in place by December 19 and Ofcom is seeking views by October 26.

I did wonder whether this meant that Ofcom would be trying to regulate the likes of YouTube. The consultation document does tell us that whether a service is in scope for regulation is defined by a range of criteria, including: whether the principal purpose of a service is to provide “television-like” programmes, on an on-demand basis, to members of the public; whether such a service falls under UK jurisdiction for the purposes of regulation; and whether the service is under a person’s “editorial responsibility”.

I suspect that YouTube falls outside of the UK for jurisdiction but this might not be the case in my mind if a specific video was stored on servers based in the UK. I don’t know where specific bits of the YouTube cloud are but it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that some of it could one day be in UK datacentres. Looks like another potentially messy situation to me.

PS I note that my post titles are getting more and more tabloid-like and sensationalist. I rely on my friends to tell me when it is getting out of control 🙂

Categories
broadband Business internet online safety piracy Regs

UK Government Efforts ISP Regulation Gets Opposition from Unexpected Sources

There has been a lot in the press recently regarding Government plans to regulate the ISP industry. ISPs have been vociferous where they consider that this regulation is unnecessary and adds cost burdens that will have to be borne by consumers.

Quite pleasingly other industries which the Government is likely to think would be the beneficiaries of the legislation have also come out against it.

For example the high profile “three strikes” approach to Music Piracy whereby persistent file-sharers have their broadband cut off is attracting a lot of opposition from the music industry itself. The BBC reports:

Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien, a member of the Featured Artists’ Coalition (FAC), said: “It’s going to start a war which they’ll never win.”

Feargal Sharkey’s UK Music allegedly has a war chest of up to £20 million a year to lobby Government on the subject of ISP regulation. This FAC stance seems to be clear disagreement within that industry.

The leak in the Independent this week that the Queen’s Speech currently is planned to propose mandatory blocking of consumer broadband connections for child abuse images has also created a bit of a stir.

The vast majority of consumer broadband connections already have such screening and it seems that the Government is trying to make political capital out of a subject which everyone will of course support in principle.

The issue is how much effort and money will it take to cover the last few consumers not already “protected” particularly as it is smaller ISPs who are most likely to be affected. This is particularly relevant considering that all we are not talking about stopping hard core child abusers who already know how to get around the blocking.

The Register has come out with an interview on this subject with Jim Gamble, Chief Executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), and effectively the UK’s leading investigator of online child abuse who has come out against legislation in this area.

There is potentially a lot more regulation in the pipeline. Somewhere in a Government office near you someone is plotting to gain more control ever our every day lives. It is at least nice to see that there are people out there with some common sense who are willing to stick their hands up and say “this is not right”.

Categories
broadband Business

Broadband Types: ADSL versus FTTC versus FTTP

As we begin to discuss the merits of broadband types — Fibre To The Cabinet and Fibre To The Premises compared with ADSL — there are a few points worth noting.

First of all there is the speed of the connection. ADSL2+ offers “up to 24Mbps”, FTTC “up to 40Mbps” and FTTP, which has no copper in the loop, is initially 100Mbps with an upgrade path to 1Gbps. I’m not predicting when any reader will have access to these services but those are the numbers. Also the 100M should not need the “up to” inverted commas.

Speed apart the biggest win for me is likely to be in the reliability of the service. Copper based broadband connections are very prone to service interruption due to water and electrical storms.

Believe it or not fault rates do actually go up during summer heatwaves and the thunderstorms that these unbearable periods of British summer weather tend to attract:-). Fibre does not care about water or electromagnetic interference.

Fibre bandwidth delivery is also not dependant on distance in the way that copper based ADSL is. So the overall customer experience is likely to be much improved as we move to FTTP.

BT are assuming that more of their NGA rollouts are going to be FTTC. I think that once FTTP is readily available it will supersede it’s partly copper based sibling. Uses for the bandwidth are going to come along in their droves.

Categories
broadband Business ofcom

The Demise of Fixed Broadband

A lively time is being had today at the BT Wholesale ISP Forum. The ISP world is fast moving and with so many changes going on – the move from ADSL Max to 21CN, the introduction of Fibre To The Cabinet, Ethernet in the First Mile – there are always lots of things to talk about.

We had a market presentation given by John Kiernan of the BT Market Research department.  This was largely a regurgitation of this year’s Ofcom Market Report but he also spoke about the move away from fixed broadband to mobile broadband. During the debate from the floor someone mentioned that at the Broadband World Forum in Paris yesterday the talk (presumably by the wireless network operators) was that  wireless broadband was expected to kill off fixed broadband by 2012.

I can’t see this happening in the UK anytime soon although I’m sure that wireless broadband is going to have a big part to play – I use it myself on the move.  Consumers especially are getting more and more tied in to bundles that include their fixed line, TV and broadband. Also fibre brings the potential to provide much faster speeds than are being discussed with wireless broadband (and I know that someone will now tell me you can get Gigabit wireless).

What does concern me is the increase in the pollution of the airwaves which will come with more and more wireless.  I realise we are told it is safe but…

Categories
Business security

Internet security – a synonym for sleepless nights

How do we sleep at nights? Everywhere I turn I seem to come across security issues relating to my use of the internet.

In catching up on my reading I find that a team of Japanese researchers have figured out how to crack the WPA encryption technology that up until now I had considered to offer my home wireless network a safe and secure browsing environment, at least from the next door neighbour.

As it is the wireless performance of my home router is suspect because I suspect that it is finds it harder to cope with WPA than the previously less secure but more performant WEP.

Next I’m writing a blog post and a security warning flashes up in front of my eyes on the WordPress console telling me about a vulnerability in older versions of the blogging software that has caused some bloggers to lose large numbers of posts. Fortunately I am up to date with my patches.

One of my sons then complains that his website has been identified as a source of malware by Google. I investigate and find that indeed this is the case and remove the problem. His laptop, however, is a difficult kettle of fish to clean. It has conficker and some other nasties that won’t let any of the worm removal tools on to sort it out. So we are having to reflash his laptop and I then go around the house cleaning up all 12 memory sticks that the kids have in their possession (the fruits of a number of visits to trade shows 🙂 ) .

I could go on. It’s all very well for me though because I have dozens of highly skilled engineers sat outside my office door for who all this is bread and butter stuff. Our customers can also access these resources (for a fair price). The real problem is going to be for Joe Public who, as a consumer, is going to drown in the stormy seas of internet security.

Sorry if this one seems a little on the pessimistic side – it isn’t normally my nature.

Categories
Business events internet social networking

#140 characters conference London

I’ve just left a networking event organised by my friend Jeff Pulver to promote his forthcoming #140 characters conference (#140conf )in London.  Scheduled for November 17th/18th the event will take place at the O2 Arena.

This will be the third such do organised by Jeff after the first in New York earlier this year and the forthcoming one in Los Angeles.  What astonished me was that there were more people from London at the New York event than from New York itself and London is considered to be the twitter capital of the world.  Hence the London conference.  LA was second in terms of origin of attendees.  I even met someone from London at the bash who had spoken at the NY event – Kate Arkless Gray or @RadioKate.

The number of attendees at tonight’s event was also impressive.  When I signed up for it two days ago there were 70 or so people registered.  Jeff was expecting a total of 90 but in actual fact he ended up with 190!  There is clearly something happening here. Didn’t realise that Jeff is also an investor in twitter.

Anyway I’ve signed up as part of the cast of characters for the #140 character conference.  In my mind it is definately worth taking a look at attending.  If you don’t know what it is all about just google it or visit http://140conf.com/

Categories
Apps Business storage backup & dr

Bandwidth Bandit – Offsite Backup Case Study

One of the big drivers for bandwidth usage is offsite back up and storage.

The amount of backup and storage capacity required by a business is to a large extent dependant on the nature of that business. An organisation which regularly processes a large amount of financial transaction or billing data is going to need a lot more than somewhere whose main concern is the safekeeping of CRM data and perhaps the security of information on individual PCs. Moreover as a rule of thumb the larger the amount of data that needs backing up on a daily basis the more critical that data is likely to be for a business.

One of Timico’s customers performs a 50GB daily backup to tape. The tape is removed from the premises every night to an offsite storage location. This is far from ideal. The company until recently operated over a bonded ADSL connection which gave them approximately 2Mbps uplink.

Backing up 50GB over the 2Mb connection was going to take 555 hours. This was not a practical proposition. The company has just put in a 100Mb leased line. The time taken to perform the backup would now be 11 hours which makes an overnight run a real proposition.

Not everyone has a 50GB requirement but as faster broadband technologies come along at cost effective prices more and more people will use an offsite on-net backup facility which will in turn drive bandwidth usage.

bandwidth

The chart is self explanatory. I’ve made some assumptions regarding packet overhead on the pipes

 

Categories
broadband Business ofcom

BSG (Broadband Stakeholders Group) Heads North to Talk COTS (Commercial, Operational and Technical Standards)

I suspect this post title is gobbledegook to some readers. I’m continually having to learn new acronyms myself.

COTS in this case stands for Commercial, Operational and Technical Standards for Independent Local Open Access Networks. It is the latest initiative by the Broadband Stakeholders Group to promote a standard approach to the delivery of the plethora of ad hoc networks that are going to be springing up in the UK in the wake of Digital Britain.

This is to be applauded and on Thursday 3rd of September the BSG is visiting Hull to hold a town hall meeting (it is literally in Hull Town Hall) with the citizens of the North who have felt very much left out of the debate on how to make rural broadband a reality.

The day is split into a colloquium in the morning with the actual COTS meeting starting at 1.30. The COTS agenda is still fluid but an outline is shown below.

COTS Project overview (BSG, 15-20 minutes)

Stakeholder panel (5 mins each)
Ofcom
KCOM – Guy Jarvis,
Fibrestream – Lindsey Annison
INCA – TBC

Discussion – topics

General discussion on the concept

Are we on the right track? Right objective, right diagnosis of the issues?

The scope of the work

Are the three elements right? Should we focus on particular issues? Anything else we should consider?

Initial thoughts on requirements

What do participants need a solution to be able to do?

Thoughts on the commercial, operational and technical requirements

Views on solutions

Blue sky thoughts, to put ideas forward

Views on the process

Any issues with how we plan to take this forward?

Thoughts on the steering group

Views on membership/composition

Role/remit, how it should operate

The meeting is free to attend. I’d go myself but have a prior appointment in London. I’m sure Lindsay Annison will provide me with some feedback.

Categories
Business voip

Skype Sold

In what must be eBay’s biggest ever sale it looks like the online auctioneer has got out of jail free with Skype which it sold yesterday to a consortium of private investors. The deal valued Skype at $2.75 billion.  eBay gets $1.9 billion cash, a $125 million note and retains a 35% stake in the company.

It wasn’t long after eBay originally paid around $3 billion for Skype that the strategic value of the investment was being questioned. This eventually appeared to be acknowledged by the company with a $900 million write-off. This latest deal will likely now show as a profit on the eBay’s books and considering the hit that markets have had over the last year must be considered to be a serious result.

Skype turned over $551million in 2008 and says it will hit sales of $1Bn by 2011. Other VoIP service providers will be interested in the valuation. Assuming an even growth between now and 2011 this suggests that it will do around $700 million in 2009 which represents a multiplier of 4.14 times sales.

Skype still very much has issues that will need sorting out. It is currently facing a legal battle with its original founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis over the rights to use the Intellectual Property that underpins the whole service.

The only real option the company has is to strike a deal to continue to have access to the technology. The alternative would be a wholesale change to SIP which would involve a huge global investment and a logistical nightmare when it came to the switchover.

Nevertheless Skype does now look to be a better bet than other high profile VoIP plays such as Vonage who also became embroiled in patent litigation and ended up paying a fortune to wriggle free.

Categories
Business internet

child internet survey

The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS – see a number of previous posts) has published a questionnaire to get the thoughts of stakeholders on what the measures for success (of the committe’s work) should be. The responses that are received will then be fed into the discussion of the Executive Board on 3rd September.

This activity was kicked off last December. I don’t know when the questionnaire was published but it seems that me things are moving very slowly in the world of child internet safety. This has always been something of a concern to me. Unfortunately UKCCIS has a huge task on its plate and when beurocracy gets involved things grind away at a snail’s place.

It isn’t just UKCCIS. I think there has to be a gear change in the whole country when it comes to matters relating to the internet. It’s about competitiveness of UK PLC and also the fitness of the internet as an environment to work rest and play.

Categories
Business datacentre voip

Discussing VoIP Strategy and Solutions

We were discussing VoIP strategy today.  Timico supplies a mix of hosted VoIP and in-premises equipment based on what is best for the specific customer need. In looking at PBXs it occurred to me that there should be a standard platform that will run anyone’s PBX software just like it is in the PC world.

Then I realised that this is where the world has been for some time now and that platform is actually the PC. With the advent of SIP trunks replacing the need for analogue or ISDN line cards all you need is a PC running a PBX software application plugged into your network somewhere (or at one of our datacentres).

I’m sorry if this is stating the blooming obvious to most of you but the fact is it has crept up on us to the point that most PBXs are now really just PCs and the vendors are trying to exit the hardeware game.  No longer do you need the specialised modules that handle conversion of IP traffic to outmoded devices and services.

The vision that came with SIP when I first started working with the protocol almost ten years ago has finally come to fruition.  You can now buy an off the shelf piece of hardware (ie the PC), run a wide variety of PBXs on it – take your pick, the choice is yours – and choose from hundreds of different handset  types at all sorts of price points and feature sets.

The problem now is that actually at the moment this choice still introduces a level of complexity to the game that will take some time to go away.  It still doesn’t make sense for a service provider such as Timico to offer a huge range of PBXs and handsets to our business customers.

When they go wrong, and this they are certainly going to do, you out there running your businesses and concentrating on what you do best need us to come and fix the problem. Or at least to send a replacement PDQ so that you can get on with life.  Nobody can do this if they have a hundred telephone handsets in their product range.

I’ll keep you posted on my exploration through different handsets and solutions. It is where I started in this game  and is a fun part of the job.