Categories
End User mobile connectivity

Nokia gets ready for winter offensive

Bumped in to an old colleague (platform 1 Newark Northgate – location, not name of old colleague) who now has Nokia as his biggest customer. Pontificating that business might be slow I was surprised to hear otherwise.

Of course Nokia still does very well in developing parts of the world. His main excitement though was regarding “the big Microsoft launch” coming apparently at the end of October.

The view from the Nokia ecosystem is that this launch is going to be highly successful. Of course they need to believe this but the argument is that the product looks great and that Nokia is relatively unencumbered by patent litigation. The Finnish company holds many key core patents in the mobile technology space.

It sometimes feels as if the companies we support because they have developed technologies that have changed our lives are strangling each other in the court rooms. Everyone watching wishes they would just get on and continue to innovate.

Although they are currently not up there in the smart phone premier league I have never totally written Nokia off (almost have mind you). It looks as if the battalions are fuelling in the wooded hills around Helsinki preparing for a winter offensive. These days battles are fought in the full glare of the media and this is one where we will all have ringside seats.

Wallets at the ready…

Categories
Business events social networking

trefor.net xmas tweetup 2011

The premier internet industry Christmas tweetup is back bigger and better than ever.

Last year we were in the Platform Bar of the Betjeman Arms.  In 2011 we are staying with a railway station theme but are moving inside to the Booking Office Bar of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.  This is a seriously cool watering hole and a far more sensible use of the space than the selling of train tickets.

This is no ordinary tweetup. Dress code is in keeping with the 5 star hotel surroundings and the drinks are sophisticated. If past performance is anything to go by the trefor.net tweetup is the party to be at this Christmas.

Try your hand at a cocktail mixed by Nick Strangeway – Master Mixologist. The former World Mixologist of the Year as voted for by experts at Tales of the Cocktail industry event & famous for his work with leading establishments Hix and Hawksmoor, Nick is London’s leading cocktail expert.

The 2012 tweetup is sponsored by a set of extremely generous friends including Timico, Newnet, Powernet, RTP Solutions, Sangoma, Fortinet, Provu , BT and Genband.

If you haven’t been the Booking Office Bar is situated just across the platform from last year’s bash. The St Pancras Renaissance Hotel was voted the Number One Hotel in the UK in The Sunday Times Magazine’s 2011 Top 100 Hotels in the World.

I look forward to catching up with you on the night. Numbers are limited so click here to sign up. You will need the password @trefbash to register. Hope you can make it. The date is Thursday 8th December from 5pm onwards.  Get there early.

photos courtesy of St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

Categories
4g Engineer mobile connectivity ofcom Regs

complexities under the mobile data bonnet and Ofcom delay to #LTE auction #4G #digitalbritain

Everyone Everywhere (pun intended) will have heard of Ofcom’s decision to re-enter consultation over the LTE or 4G mobile spectrum allocation. Issued late on Friday afternoon the statement regarding the delay caused by reopening the consultation has already attracted comments re “hiding bad news over the weekend”.

There were 64 responses that included the  A to W of stakeholders in the UK (nothing from  X, Y or Z). The  Association of Train Operating Companies was mainly concerned to ensure that good coverage at high, sustained download speeds is ensured along the whole of the GB mainline rail network. At the other end of the alphabet both the Welsh government and Wiltshire Council wanted better coverage in rural areas with the latter quoting a target figure of 99% of the population.

Straightforward right?

Continue reading “complexities under the mobile data bonnet and Ofcom delay to #LTE auction #4G #digitalbritain”
Categories
End User mobile connectivity olympics

That smell of rubber, the roar of the turbo-powered engine, smart phones and the Olympics

Tref in reception at the WIlliams F1 conference centreI attended a Telindus sponsored Consumerisation of the Workplace workshop on Tuesday on my way down to the Convergence Summit. Jean Marie Stas of Belgacom gave a talk about tablet adoption – his experiences seem to exactly reflect my own – especially when it comes to the wife always asking if she can borrow your iPad.

The workshop came up with a few interesting snippets. Firstly Cisco has stopped buying mobile phones  and just give staff vouchers so they can go and buy their own. They are apparently looking to do the same thing with tablets and PCs. This seems very much to be the way forward.

Some of the service providers around the table were reporting that there was a significant interest from many areas in BYOD, notably in the Financial Services market. Workers in this industry are highly paid and typically want all the latest gadgets which is at odds with the need to maintain security and compliance.

This correlates quite nicely with

Continue reading “That smell of rubber, the roar of the turbo-powered engine, smart phones and the Olympics”
Categories
End User fun stuff

What’s love got to do with it?

outside the Visited Hampton Court today. It wasn’t originally on the agenda but we stayed at a pub last night called The Kings Arms – situated just outside the back gate to Ennery 8’th old gaff. He probably used to nip there for a swift one before each marriage – just for a bit of Dutch courage, know what I mean?

Anyway after an early breakfast we still had time before the Convergence Summit South opened for business so Fraser Anderson and I went for a stroll around the maze at Hampton Court. Around the outside of the maze – it was not yet open for business.

Moving on through the gardens we found that someone had left the door open to the bit you have to pay to get in to! 🙂 We thought nobody would really mind if we nipped in for a bit of a look around so we did – some photos below. It was easy to imagine having the run of the place with few people around other than the odd gardener doing his stuff. Of course in Ennery’s day there would have been hundreds of people milling around so we probably had the best of it.

Fraser Anderson takes photo of Hampton Court with a view to applying for planning permission to convert to 500 flats Hampton Court
NewNet Wholesale stand at Convergence Summit SouthYou may have noticed I cheekily slipped in a picture that has nothing to do with Hampton Court. It’s actually of the NewNet Wholesale stand at the Convergence Summit South exhibition. NewNet is a Timico Group company and is launching it’s brand new white label wholesale portal.

The longer term plan is for NewNet to be able to support all the Timico Group technologies and services through this portal giving channel partners a single point of contact for all connectivity sales. That’s the sales pitch over. They are a very genuine bunch of lads. If you are looking for a partner for your connectivity needs you should try them 🙂

Categories
4g Business mobile connectivity ofcom Regs

Ofcom delay in holding 4G spectrum auction will cost UK £100s millions report says

More pressure has been piled on Ofcom and the government by the publication of a report by the Open Digital Policy organisation suggesting that delays to the UK 4 G license auctions will cost the country dear. The delay to the auction has been caused by apparent threat of legal action by a number of carriers including O2.

ODP looked at the speed, capacity and coverage improvements next generation mobile broadband (known as 4G or LTE) is likely to bring, and estimated that over 37 million business hours per year could be saved from faster mobile data downloads if 4G mobile technology was to be deployed sooner than is currently planned.

Earlier this year I chaired a debate on mobile spectrum allocation at Portcullis House in Westminster. The issue of 4G spectrum allocation is a hot potato. The three largest mobile carriers O2, Vodafone and Everything Manyplaces, have existing voice bandwidth that they are being allowed to reuse for data. 3 does not so this delay will not only cost UK business but will likely have a deleterious effect on the number 4 operator (this is clearly a numbers game).

Ofcom, the UK regulatory authority tasked with

Continue reading “Ofcom delay in holding 4G spectrum auction will cost UK £100s millions report says”
Categories
Business Cloud datacentre

Timico data centre update

UPS batteries in the new Timico data centreNot long to go before we start kitting the new data centre out as a data centre so I’ve chosen some a local artisan finishes off the decorative touches of the interior design of the second floor of the new Timico building in Newarkartistic and tasteful photos for your delight. Of course they might not be to everyone’s taste but there is beauty in the modern day industrial infrastructure of the country – just as we now admire the steam the view from the fire escape of the new Timico data centre in Newarkengines and rows of red brick mills that were once associated with satanic darkness.

This time around the jobs created will be highly skilled and professional at a  time when we could do with some good news in the local economy.

We are in the process of hiring for the extended shifts that will be necessitated by the 24×7 operational nature of the  expanded Network Operations Centre.

Last week we ok’d the purchase of a wall of monitor screens for electrical switch gear in one of the new data halls at the Timico data centre in Newarkthe operations room itself. I’m quite excited about this as it will have a high visibility impact on the place –  all controlled by an iPad or similar (I asked what they would be using for a remote control for all those TVs – more on this in due course).  As I said not long now.

part of the fire suppression system for the new Timico data centre in Newark

part of the cooling system - only expected to be used 4 months of hte year due to free air cooling that adds to the green credentials of the Timico newark data centre

view of Timico HQ building across the car park of the data centre It will also be worth talking about our expanded sales structure as we move in to 2012 and I will do this as some important new hires come on board.

Bye for now.

Categories
End User fun stuff

Friday afternoon blogging and the Royal Military Tournament

Timico, sales, marketing,We bloggers when it comes to Friday afternoon begin to think about the weekend. For most of us the two precious days off are a chance to recover from the stresses of the week, recharge the batteries and quietly begin to compile the ideas for posts in the week ahead.

By the following Friday afternoon these ideas have been applied, consumed, absorbed and  subsumed into the national consciousness (depending on how many readers you have 🙂 ).

So come Friday a blogger, especially of the tech variety, starts to look around for one last idea to fill his WordPress quota for the week. This is where the truly creative post are born. The cake competition results, details of the lunch with Viv Richards etc etc.

On this occasion I can offer you

Continue reading “Friday afternoon blogging and the Royal Military Tournament”
Categories
Business Cloud datacentre

We Want #ITIL Service…And We Want It Now!

New Timico helpdesk ServiceNowMany years ago I worked at Marconi Electronic Devices in Lincoln. The purchasing manager there, a canny Scotsman,  had a certain approach when it came to the acquisition of software. His opening bid in a negotiation would be the cost of the physical tape required to carry the software to our premises.

These days software doesn’t come on a tape. In fact it often doesn’t come at all but resides somewhere remote and fluffy in “the cloud”. What’s more it can’t even be described as software – more a set of APIs and capabilities. When it comes to estimating a value for such an entity it has to be in terms of the benefit to your business.

It wasn’t so long ago that Timico was a small ISP. The company has been growing quickly to the point that

Continue reading “We Want #ITIL Service…And We Want It Now!”
Categories
broadband Business Regs

Superfast Broadband for All – UKNetCo

The UK is in the middle of the annual round of booze ups known as the autumn Party Conference Season. High in the mindset of our political leaders will be the UK’s internet economy particularly as we await the next Communications Bill Green Paper. Stakeholders at the conference socials are I’m sure already lobbying, positioning and generally trying to get their message across.

The Eds and Daves of this world whilst being wooed by corporates with vested interests would do well to focus on basics that very much include decent and ubiquitous internet connectivity for the whole of the UK.

We are already seeing cracks in the government’s resolve to have “the best superfast broadband network in Europe by the end of this parliament” (2015). Actually it isn’t fair to call them “cracks in the resolve”. The resolve is there but the execution isn’t  and anyone who thinks that we would get anywhere near this goal without a radical change in the UK’s approach to internet connectivity is kidding themselves.

The only way we are going to achieve this is if UK plc, ie the taxpayer, invests in a full fibre infrastructure for “the final third”. This is not to say give money to BT. The only sensible approach

Continue reading “Superfast Broadband for All – UKNetCo”
Categories
broadband Business

Gigaclear Set to Show UK How to Build FTTP Broadband Network at Hambleton, Rutland

Matthew Hare of gigaclear feeds fibre into the UK network infrastructure in HambletonThe sleepy village of Hambleton lies in the heart of the old county of Rutland. In the winter Hambleton, surrounded by Rutland water, can feel quite a remote place. The wind whistles eerily across the choppy white topped waters of the lake and the snow can drift deep on the single road that leads into the peninsula. It it not unknown for the village to be cut off from the outside world and this has indeed happened during the harsh winters of recent times.

Fortunately when this does happen the foolish, unwary and now stranded individuals are able to seek refuge by the warmth of the log fire and bask in the friendly welcome that is characteristic of Hambleton Hall. The Hall, “One of England’s finest country house hotels” has luxury overnight accommodation (a snip at between £245 and £360 a room) and their Michelin starred chef will assuage the needs of the hungriest. To round off the perfect enforced stay the Hall has free wifi for all guests.

Of course how fast an internet access guests will get from this wifi is another thing – Hambleton really is in the middle of internet nowhere.

This is all about to change

Continue reading “Gigaclear Set to Show UK How to Build FTTP Broadband Network at Hambleton, Rutland”
Categories
End User fun stuff

Me and Sir Viv Richards go way back

Sir Viv Richards, Umar Bajwa, Trefor Davies,Timico,MurcoOne of my massive cricketing heroes is Sir Viv Richards and I was privileged to sit at the same table with him at lunch in the City yesterday. Click on the header for a bigger shot – the guy on the left is my friend Umar Bajwa who is IT Director at the Murphy Oil Company (Murco).

We were treated to four hours or so of entertainment that included very interesting anecdotes from Sir Viv and also from Australian Fast bowler Rodney Hogg (41 wickets at 12.85 during the ’78-79 Ashes series for those who like to know these things).

This being a Friday I have another competition for you.  Who is the black guy to the right of Viv Richards in the small inset photo?Sir Viv Richards, Australian,Rodney Hogg I had not heard of him myself but I’m sure that many will have seen him in action. Again click on the photo for a bigger image. Usual prize is up for grabs (while stocks last). He is also in a couple of the photos below.

friend appears again in bottom left of photo but who is he?

The final photo  is of the auction of a signed print of a photo of Rod Hogg taking the wicket of Sir Geoffrey Boycott. There was not much love lost between both speakers and the bold Sir Geoff. The photo was  signed  by Rod not Geoff.

Print of Rod Hogg bowling Geoffrey Boycott auctioned for charity

sir viv richardsI have to sit on my hands on these occasions otherwise I end up coming away with auction prizes as a “surprise” for my wife.

At a Lincoln rugby club charity dinner I was once used as a stalking horse by an auctioneer trying to drive the price up. Having made the initial bid for a signed photo of the Red Arrows I firmly sat on my hands. The whole room, however, thought I had bought the photo and imagine my wife’s surprise when, after picking the kids up from school the next day, she was asked if she liked her new photo.  Funnily enough she could think of better things to do with a couple of hundred quid 🙂

By the way if you are wondering about the title of this post what I really mean is that I went to see Viv Richards play at Trent Bridge in 1984. He had just scored a massive 189 in the game at Old Trafford and received a standing ovation from the crowd as he walked out to the the crease. Despite being England fans we were there to see the great Viv Richards score a big one. You have to imagine the stunned and disappointed silence of the crowd when he was out caught behind for two runs. Ah well at least I saw him play and have now had lunch with him 🙂

PS Nobody won last weeks competition but  I did get two comments so if you can let me have your address there will be a mug in the post for you.

Categories
Apps chromebook Cloud End User

An Everyday Story of a Family, its Clunky Old Computer, and Cloud Based Services

My wife’s PC has nearly ended it’s useful life. It was bought for our oldest son at the age of 10. He is now about to start his second year at university and is already on his second laptop.

During the intervening ten or so years the PC has been flattened and rebuilt a couple of times. For a few years it was the “family” computer and thus had every kind of game added and removed and goodness knows what other software.

Now it is clunky, takes ages to boot up and a source of frustration for the love of my life. To make things worse last weekend my daughter did something to it and now Microsoft Office does not work. The original CD was lost some time ago. Doesn’t sound good.

Last night I went all cloud based services on the dodgy old thing.

I set Mrs Davies up with a

Continue reading “An Everyday Story of a Family, its Clunky Old Computer, and Cloud Based Services”
Categories
Business piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

@EdVaizey opens up web blocking talks to wider stakeholder community #deact

There has been widespread criticism of discussions being held between the ISP industry and RightsHolders over the latter’s desire to effect blocking of websites being seen to promote copyright infringement. It is natural. An activity conducted behind closed doors is bound to arouse suspicion.

The latest of these meetings happened yesterday but today communications minister Ed Vaizey chaired a session that allowed alternative voices to be heard.

Present at the meeting were representatives of the Taxpayers Alliance, Open Rights Group,Pirate Party,COADEC, Open Digital Policy.org, Featured Artists Coalition,LINX and of course me.

I think Ed Vaizey found the level of debate far more constructive than he had been expecting. The gist was

Continue reading “@EdVaizey opens up web blocking talks to wider stakeholder community #deact”
Categories
End User gadgets

testing testing can you understand me at the back?

Here for your delectation and delight are some experimental video shorts. I’m looking at ways of moving the blog content on and this is one of them.  These videos are approximately 60 seconds long, that being the attention span (max) of many people using the internet these days. This is being somewhat unfair as readers of trefor.net spend on average 90 seconds on the site with some days hitting 4 minutes.

The videos are unedited – single take recordings. I don’t want to spend hours making each video but I wouldn’t mind receiving some feedback on the content and the unstructured/unedited approach. More videos banged out quickly is better in my mind.

I used used a Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910 and also wouldn’t mind hearing what you think of the audio quality.

There are six of them and you don’t actually have to listen to them all though doing so does buy you brownie points and we all know what points mean 🙂 Following some useful feedback I have also put links in for the moment as well as the embed code.

Continue reading “testing testing can you understand me at the back?”
Categories
Cloud Engineer servers

This networking kit is good enough for Jehovah

Timico,data center,Juniper,MX80,SRX 3400The word Juniper always makes me think back to the Monty Python and The Life of Brian movie where a hermit has been living on juniper berries for years and Brian’s followers trample all over his bush.

Juniper has a totally different connotation these days, at least when we talk networking. Clicking on the header photo will reveal some equipment we are currently playing with in the lab before it goes live in the new data center core network.

Timico’s core network actually encompasses multiple vendor equipment but there are a few neat things

Continue reading “This networking kit is good enough for Jehovah”
Categories
Apps competitions End User

My camera keeps ringing – massive prize competition

Horseguards,Parade,changing,guard,Galaxy S2,Timico,competitionI had a full day of meetings in London on Wednesday. At 2.30pm I finished one and I needed to be in Westminster for the next one at 3.15. It was a beautiful sunny day so I decided to walk and made my way down through St James’ Park to Horseguards Parade.

We do have an impressive capital city and I happened to be there as they were changing the horseguards. With a few minutes to spare before the meeting I joined the tourists and got my Galaxy S2 camera out. As I was taking a photo the camera rang! Annoying huh? They will add phone functionality to useful personal gadgets.

That particular photo was lost but

Continue reading “My camera keeps ringing – massive prize competition”
Categories
Business voip

SIP Trunks go mainstream

I went to my first VoIP meeting in (as far as I can remember) the summer of 1999. It was a pulver.com “Executive Retreat” located at the ETSI HQ in Sophia-Antipolis near Cannes in the South of France. It’s a tough life but someone has to live it.

Since then we have been through a couple of recessions and a long hard climb for VoIP technology to become accepted. I knew the day would come but VoIP is now so mainstream that businesses think nothing of installing “VoIP only” voice solutions with no legacy ISDN or analogue lines as backup.

They are doing this because of two things:

Continue reading “SIP Trunks go mainstream”
Categories
Business Cloud mobile connectivity security

Mobile Working Report — CoIT and BYOD Trends

mobile,working,report,CoIT,Consumersiation,IT,BYOD,Bring,Your,Own,Device,TimicoThe mobile communications market has for years been characterised as a commodity space. Selling mobile services was largely a matter of who offers the best price.  The rise of the smart phone and the pursuant growth in mobile data is changing this.

Price is still important but these devices are so expensive that the amount of hard cash people (consumers) are willing to spend on their mobile contract has grown considerably. I know this from first hand experience having a 19 year old student son who spends not an insubstantial amount of his monthly budget on an iPhone4 contract.

This in turn is a source of angst for businesses who have not traditionally provided the bulk of their staff with top of the range handsets. Unless you have been in a media vacuum over the last six months you will know that this has led to a phenomenon known as Consumerisation of IT and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) revolution.

I have written about this before. As a provider of mobile services

Continue reading “Mobile Working Report — CoIT and BYOD Trends”
Categories
Business Cloud datacentre

The Cloud — Now is the Time to Invest

cloud,investment,datacenter,Timico,NewarkI attended a “Cloud Computing – security, market development and prospects for the G Cloud” forum in Whitehall yesterday morning. It’s a big topic and there were lots of messages to take away.

The G Cloud programme is the government’s effort to move away from an expensive and silo’d server centric estate that in 2009 comprised 90,000 components in central government alone. We, the UK, are after cost savings and an agility that will allow us the flexibility to take advantage of market and technological developments whilst creating a secure platform that will facilitate new and productive uses of data held by our masters on our behalf. Bit of a mouthful. My words really but also my interpretation of what I’m sure is an elongated brief.

Transport for London’s API that allows train locations to be published on Google maps is a good example of the use of public data made available through an API.

Continue reading “The Cloud — Now is the Time to Invest”
Categories
End User phones

Importance of good web design – effect on a sales campaign

BlackBerry,technical,support,contract,UK,TimicoInteresting to see the importance of good web design in action. We have been running a campaign to sell BlackBerry Technical support. Despite not being trendy anymore many businesses out there use BlackBerry and we sell support.

Initially we were seeing quite a bit of interest but not seeing page views convert to new business. The old landing page was too much like a brochure with not enough “call to action”.

This was changed and we have immediately seen a substantial increase in business taken via the web. Over time we are going to systematically evolve our whole web strategy taking on board lessons learnt.

Continue reading “Importance of good web design – effect on a sales campaign”
Categories
Archived Business

Timico named by Telegraph as one of Britain’s Brightest Businesses

Timico,Telegraph,Britain's,Brightest,BusinessesTimico, as the post title says, has been named by The Telegraph as one of Britain’s Brightest Businesses. That is good to hear.

The research was compiled with the help of NESTA and Dunn & Bradstreet together with inputs from more than a dozen membership organisations and is intended to highlight medium sized companies that the Telegraph thinks will be the backbone of economic recovery in the UK.

Timico has in recent years regularly featured in league tables such as the Deloitte Technology 50 and the Sunday Times/Microsoft Techtrack100 fastest growing private technology companies.  These tables don’t necessarily mean much but as far as I am concerned every bit of positive promotion helps when it comes to growing the business.  It’s a tough old world out there.

It’s also worth noting another article in the Telegraph that says “Impatient entrepreneurs are not the answer“. You should read the article but a well written headline gives away the plot and in this case it’s all about growing at a pace that ensures ultimate success.

Having been been part of a start up in 2004 one always wants things to happen faster. However at Timico we have always taken the long view. We want a business that provides value to our customers and we work hard on that in the belief that this is ultimately what will create value for our investors (me included).

Watch this space 🙂

Categories
Business Cloud gadgets

PC Market Gartner slashes PC market forecast – my wife would agree

Research firm gartner has cut its PC Market forecast citing a move away from traditional computing towards tablets. I think we are not far off the tipping point. My 11 year old son’s laptop may well be the last PC we buy for the family.

My wife, whose PC is about 8 years old, keeps asking to borrow my iPad. She uses it primarily to look up recipes for family meals and sometimes has it propped up in the kitchen when she is cooking.

Her only other uses for a PC are email, banking and sites such as eBay where she is an avid participant. If the browser was reliable enough, which it isn’t on the iPad without support for flash, a tablet with keypad would be all she needed.

Categories
Cloud datacentre End User

Samsung 1TB hard drive for £54!

Samsung1TB external hard driveMy recent post on the pocket cloud was a joke. Today I have taken delivery of a real pocket cloud. It’s a Samsung 2.5inch portable external hard drive and it cost 54 quid! My aging laptop has a 232Gig hard drive that is almost full. That apart it is a perfectly good laptop and I didn’t see the point of getting a new one. I also didn’t want to delete anything and likely start the faff that would be the periodic decision making process on which files to ditch and which to keep.

Problem solved. I am now just moving my least used files onto the external drive.  They will be mostly photos and videos that are also backed up elsewhere.  It is certainly arguable that many of these files are not work related but it is difficult to separate the two lives.  Consumerisation entering the workplace again.

Storage is now so cheap that there is almost no reason for anything to be thrown away ever. Also I think I have become a Samsung fan 🙂view of construction of new Timico datacentre

On a different note our carpark is almost full today. A sure sign that the summer holidays are well and truly behind us. It won’t be long before we are overflowing into the new carpark behind the new data centre build.

Photo is a perspective from the first floor of the Timico HQ building.

PS any bets on when I will fill the TB drive?

Categories
Business internet

ONS report on internet usage shows huge growth in mobile use

I assume everyone has already read The Office for National Statistics published data on internet access in the UK issued last week :). The survey found that there have been significant changes in the way people connect to and use the Internet in recent years. No surprise there then.

There are a few “no surprises” such as the fact that the younger you are the more likely you are to use social networking and that LinkedIn is used more by men than women (with the associated equality in business issues I’m sure, like it or not).

Also over half of us (66 per cent of all adults) purchased goods or services over the Internet. Even my aged parents buy stuff online. Interestingly 31 per cent of us 2010 sold goods or services online (up from 21 per cent in a year).

The biggest wow factor was the number of people using their mobile phone to connect to the Internet. This rose by 6 million between 2010 and 2011  (fastest among those aged 16 to 24) and now amounts to 45 per cent of total Internet users. The time will come when there are more mobile internet users than fixed – my input.

What is slightly disappointing is the fact that the most recent data for business internet use is based on 2009 data in a report published on 26th November 2010 (actually entitled E-commerce and ICT activity 2009).

Perhaps the business community does work a little more slowly than consumers these days but this is such a fast moving world that data that is almost 2 years old seems positively stone aged.

On a side note my son is about to enter his second year at University and his first year in private accommodation. The communications needs of the five lads in his house are 1) fast broadband with unlimited data package and 2) an iPhone. No fixed line telephony thank you very much.

Categories
Apps Business Cloud social networking

Customer Service Twitter Style

albelli customer serviceLast night my wife was trying to upload some photos to albelli.co.uk to generate a hardcopy album. She  wanted to take advantage  an offer from the Daily Telegraph that ran out at midnight.

The uploading did take some time but I guess the albelli servers were busy because of the promo deadline. Fair  enough. Shortly after 11pm she tried to complete the order but the discount that came with the offer no longer seemed to apply. One unhappy wife pulled the plug on the deal.

I tweeted this and had a response from a follower who had the same problem. It looks as if the set up on the server had the offer timing out at 11pm instead of midnight. Not good but mistakes do happen.

This morning I got a response from @albelli_UK with apologies for the problem and asking for more details.  By 9.40am they had sorted it out and my wife is now very happy with their service.

This is a great example of how Twitter can be used as a customer service tool.  Albelli has turned the situation from having negative PR to positive one and won over a customer. Note they will still have to offer a competitively priced service – my wife can very easily find out what the competition is up to on the wild wild web 🙂

PS yes this is the same telegraph that was hit by a DNS hack last night – as far as I can see the problem is still there at 11am on Monday morning.

Categories
dns Engineer online safety security servers

Telegraph Register and UPS DNS servers hacked

The Register DNS hackedIf you have been trying to access the telegraph online or TheRegister tonight you might come in for a bit of a surprise as the sites look as if they have been hacked.  More specifically it looks like some  Domain Name Servers have been hacked, diverting traffic to other pages.  Many people will not notice.

Click on the header to see more of what the Register site currently looks like. At this point in time the hack is less than 30 minutes old so I don’t have any more info but if I get a chance I’ll update the post as news comes in. Or just Google it. I saw it first on Twitter.

Categories
Cloud Engineer virtualisation

It’s All About Storage – datadomain #VMware

datadomain storage

Nice bit of lab kit we have just installed downstairs. This is a datadomain DD630 backup storage device.  You can see that it has 12 x 1TeraByte hard drives – that’s quite a chunk of storage compared to your laptop or desktop PC.  The box above it is running test servers using VMware (click on the header photo to see it all).

This is all lab work being done in preparation for the new data centre when it opens in January. The twelve 1TB drives result in around 9TB of useful space once RAID, hot spare and storage of the OS are taken into consideration.

The beauty of this though is that we are likely to be able to store far more than 9TB of real data once it has been “deduped”  – for example identical copies of operating systems removed. In our trials we are backing up some VMs and are seeing 2TB of data being compressed and deduplicated down to only 140GB on the datadomain. We won’t necessarily get the same savings when the system scales up but it is easy to see that it is an attractive piece of kit.

One of the nice features is that if you lose your primary VM server then the system allows you to boot from this backup whilst it rebuilds the original server in the background.  This can save a couple of hours of work – very valuable in  a problem situation.

As we start building out the virtualisation platform I’ll do some more update posts. The inset photo is the same kit with the front cover on.

Categories
Archived Business

All those who want a job get in line #Timico

I note that we have a lot of job vacancies at the moment –  Sales Director (Partners),  eBusiness Manager, Biz Dev Manager – mobile services, Telephone Sales Manager – SME Telesales and finally 3rd Line Technical Operations – IP Telephony.

Its a very exciting time to be around this industry and certainly a great time to be joining Timico.  We have been prominent for the last few year as one of the UK’s fastest growing tech companies and we plan for this to continue.

Timico is spending a lot of cash  to promote future growth.  This is not just in sales. We are talking systems, core network, a new data centre,  quality, everywhere really. The business is moving into a new phase.

If you want to know more check out or website.

Categories
End User phones

Who wants an iPhone5? or Apple smart phone market share could reach 44%?

An apple - grown in my back garden at home

Following yesterday’s Apple iPhone5 stunt we conducted a huge1 survey of Newark mobile phone users to find out how many of them would want to buy the gadget when it goes on sale. The results are as follows:

No  I’m happy with my current phone (49%)

Maybe but not for a while (20%)

Yes  can’t wait (16%)

Maybe  I’ll wait and see confirmed specs (8%)

No  I hate Apple (8%)

1A massive total of 51 people responded to the survey which was exclusively conducted on the Timico intranet. This is the biggest ever survey of its kind conducted by Timico at Timico for Timico. However I thought the results were too exciting to keep inside Timico so I’m sharing them with y’all.

If Apple want to send an iPhone5 demo model over before the launch I have an 11 year old who is totally unhappy with his newish Nokia N97 with occasionally working touch screen (ungrateful wretch).

Wouldn’t touch it myself though.  I’m one of the 49% who are content with their lot – in my case a Samsung Galaxy S2.

Interestingly Wikipedia tells us that Apple had 18.5% share of the smart phone market in Q2 11 which isn’t a million miles adrift from our “Yes can’t wait” number. Presumably their research is somewhat more scientific than mine 🙂 .

The 44% market share forecast comes from the total of yes and maybes, in case you didn’t get that – somewhat tongue in cheek I know but in keeping with the rest of this post.