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Mind the gap
In the latest edition of Real Business Insights, we ask the experts why it’s still so difficult for businesses to get from A to Z when it comes to IT investment.
Over at Silicon.com, the CIO Jury adds to the debate, in their discussion of IT priorities for 2007: “Sean Powley, assistant director for organisational development and customer services at the London Borough of Barnet, was more succinct, citing ‘cutting through supplier bulls**t’ and ‘trying to find genuine evidence to support business cases for investment in new technologies" as priorities for 2007.’
Posted:
22/01/2007 11:53:52
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New edition of Real Business Insights
The new edition of Real Business Insights has now been published and we've got the latest stories posted right here. Enjoy!
Posted:
19/01/2007 17:40:10
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Get it together
Everyone talks about "convergence" in business (especially in telecoms, of course), but straight-talking Martin Geddes over on www.telepocalypse.net has come up with quite possibly the best definition ever: "We're all heading towards the same customer wallet."
UPDATE: If you think "convergence" doesn't need defining, have a look at this research from Silicon.com.
Posted:
08/12/2006 10:45:07
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Where did you leave that data?
There's some new US legislation that could hit businesses hard in the future, according to Techworld.com – even if they're not in the US. In essense, "Companies must keep much better records of all their electronic information from now on following US Supreme Court amendments to federal rules in April that began on 1 December [2006]. They require any company involved in a federal lawsuit to produce any relevant electronically stored information in the discovery process."
And why would this affect UK Plc? Techworld explains the conundrum: "Any UK business with activities in the US could be affected by the legislation and will need to collate all its relevant electronically-stored information, from employee photos through PowerPoint decks to emails and instant messages."
Looks like it's time to go through those 1,895 un-read emails in your inbox at long last...
Posted:
07/12/2006 13:00:14
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Do more with less (more or less)
The CIO Jury over at Silicon.com has announced that "IT budgets are set to increase in 2007 on the back of technology refreshes and mobile working projects" (not exactly what they were saying in 2005, but who can predict IT these days?).
Why the extra dosh? Many, many vague reasons, apparently:
- "In order to provide a resilient service in a growing market"
- "a continued shift to get in front of the client and build on those face-to-face client relationships"
- "replacement cycles and process improvement initiatives"
And it's not all about radical spending of course. According to Mark Dearnley, CIO at Cable & Wireless: "I expect to need to deliver more for less."
So, to summarise: there'll be more money made available and expectations for ROI will be higher, but no-one's actually prepared to say what IT might be bought or needed, how it's going to be used or what level of ROI is acceptable.
Business as usual, then?
Posted:
07/12/2006 10:22:14
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Techs versus managers: the debate continues
Good points raised in a piece last week on Computerworld.com, by a "real security manager" who claims that understanding IT has made her a better manager, contrary to what some folks might argue: "I've noticed that IT and security folks will sometimes tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. If you don’t know the difference between fiction and reality, you've got a problem. By being technically informed while managing people and projects, no one can blow smoke up my skirt. I can tell the difference between a lame excuse for a delay and a legitimate reason why something can’t be done. That ability is priceless."
The only problem is that general managers with that level of IT knowledge are a rarity - so what's a non-tech minded manager to do? First and foremost, don't be afraid to ask probing questions of suppliers, especially when you don’t understand the technology involved. Second, make sure you’ve spelled out your expectations with IT suppliers in advance. Finally, realise that you're not alone - work collaboratively within your business and you'll be surprised what you know.
Posted:
28/11/2006 13:22:49
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All this data is making me hot
We should have seen it coming. Having lived through the Information Age and built our businesses during the Knowledge Economy, we should have known that all that data being processed and stored was going to cause trouble down the line. And it seems that time is now.
- First and foremost, it's a massive energy drain. From a Techworld.com report on the Power and Cooling Survey 2006 (produced by BroadGroup): "An average UK data-centre uses more power in a year than the city of Leicester."
- As a consequence, according to Rakesh Kumar (a Gartner analyst speaking at the Data Centre Technology Summit in London), data centres are set to become like overcrowded greenhouses - and it's becoming harder to cool them down. Again, from Techworld.com: "It takes between 1.2 to 1.3 times the amount of energy a server consumes to cool it, Kumar said. IT managers frequently can't fill an entire rack because of the heat generated by the servers."
- All of this is part of the push for more Green IT, which we've already covered here, but it's worth adding that there is at least one other compelling business argument for doing something for the environment: If there’s no planet left, that can put a serious dent in your sales figures.
- And apparently, none of our data is safe, no matter whose laptop we keep it on.
Perhaps, when it comes down to it, there’s just too much information?
Posted:
23/11/2006 13:34:56
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Supporting the SME
Following on from Ernst & Young's Global Information Security Survey 2006, it's no surprise that there's more options than ever popping up to help you keep your business covered.
What's interesting, though, is who they're targeting. Case in point: IBM's new Tivoli Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway is generating a fair bit of buzz as a federated security software option for smaller businesses.
Why is this a big deal? Because SMEs are the Next Big Thing for IT suppliers and consultancies right now, so it's safe to say we can expect more of the same in the weeks and months to come, and not just in security.
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21/11/2006 17:51:43
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If IT ain't broke...
How old is your kit? For quite a few respondents to a Silicon.com poll, their offices must look a bit like tech museums, with "almost a third admitting to having kit that is more than 10 years old".
As the site spells out, "the poll of more than 500 silicon.com readers found that 33 per cent have IT equipment between five and 10 years old still in operation, and 32 per cent have fully functioning kit more than 10 years old."
Of course, the poll doesn't spell out the size of the companies involved - an SME's views on IT investment is going to be markedly different from that of a major blue chip, after all - but even so, are these results really a surprise? IT is rarely at the top of the pile when it comes to investment. And our interviews with FDs on the subject shows that the "if it ain't broke" mentality still prevails.
Posted:
16/11/2006 17:09:22
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Is IT safe?
After years of red flags from the IT department, information security is finally hitting the boardroom agenda, according to Ernst & Young's Global Information Security Survey 2006 ("Achieving Success in a Globalized World — Is Your Way Secure?"). And what are the big-ticket items you're like to take away from the survey? Compliance, integration, risk management, privacy and data protection.
But the most telling bit of the survey has to be the focus on investment. The final key driver for business is a clear-cut call to action: "[use] externally imposed compliance deadlines and security incidents as a catalyst for proactive investments in stronger capabilities and defenses". In other words: you haven't done enough and now you’re going to have to pay for it one way or another.
If you're worried about covering your assets, this is well worth a read.
Posted:
15/11/2006 17:09:48
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Innovation is not an island
We all talk about innovation, but when it comes down to it, how many of us actually bother to encourage it in our business? Maybe they need to take a page out of IBM's book, as ITworld.com reports: "IBM Corp. will invest $100 million over the next two years in 10 potential new business opportunities after conducting a massive trawl for ideas among its staff, partners, customers and academic institutions."
These ideas came out of "InnovationJam" and involved "IBMers from more than 160 countries - among them leaders from deep science and technology to the frontiers of business thinking - their clients, business partners, and even family members to join in a new form of collaborative innovation". The result was over 45,000 ideas, which were eventually whittled down to ten.
We may not all have quite as many friends and business contacts, but the fact remains that "collaborative innovation" is going to be a big part of tomorrow’s business models. And as Andy Stanford-Clark, master inventor at IBM's development lab at Hursley in Hampshire (and, you may recall, tracker of llamas), said following the first phase of the Jam, "We're doing stuff that people have never done before, that they're not trained to do in business school or technical schools. Watching people learn how to collaborate around an idea is fascinating."
Who knows – the darkest corners your business may be hiding some great ideas. What are you doing to find them?
Posted:
15/11/2006 12:50:17
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New Real Business out now
This month's Real Business features Phones4U guru John Caudwell and a handful of other European billionaires, and there's some helpful advice on how to "hire a geek" (aka boffin, nerd and/or gearhead), which is good news. After all, it's all well and good to explain how IT can help build your business, protect your assets or save you money, but without an in-house expert to help, you might find yourself forgetting what that new company-wide application was for in the first place.
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14/11/2006 15:49:59
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Bit of good news (and a flood of bad news) for SMEs
A story in today's Register announcing "three new initiatives aimed at helping small businesses make use of new technology" caught my attention recently, not because of the subject (though it's nice when government finally catches up).
What caught my eye was the list of "Related Stories":
• IT's so hard, say SMEs (28 June 2006)
• Irish SMEs bamboozled by technology (30 May 2006)
• UK SMEs clueless about VoIP (10 April 2006)
• SMEs urged to adopt flexible working (6 April 2006)
• E-commerce not relevant, say SMEs (24 March 2006)
• Small.biz ill-equipped for IT threats (2 March 2006)
• Small biz owners' stress levels shoot up (20 February 2006)
Based on that list, it doesn't look good for IT in small businesses. Maybe this explains why offshoring is looking so appealing to the SME...
Posted:
14/11/2006 15:07:03
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Go greener
Silicon.com highlights a Gartner report that calls the IT industry “unsustainable” due to rising energy costs.
This is just one of a string of recent stories about the cost – both financial and environmental – of IT, from leaving PCs on standby overnight in businesses (no surprise that the UK tops the list of worst energy wasters in Europe, then) to data storage.
As the Silicon.com story points out: “Environmental pressure will force organisations to
act, with data centres wasting almost two-thirds of the energy they use
to cool equipment, and three-quarters of the 512 million PCs that will
be disposed of in the next five years ending up in landfill sites
rather than being recycled.”
It makes you wonder if pen and paper are due for a comeback...
Posted:
09/11/2006 14:25:35
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Security: by the book
Everyone talks about IT security risks, but how many businesses are actually doing anything about it? For those lagging behind, the British Standards Institution (BSI) is launching a new book on network security, Delivering and Managing Real World Network Security, which provides an overview of the guidance given in the five parts of ISO/IEC 18028 (Information technology. Security techniques. Securing communications across networks using Virtual Private Networks.). Standards are becoming increasingly important in the IT realm, as the business world tries to keep the pace with the ever-changing world of tech.
As BSI's global website explains: "With the ever increasing need to use IT systems to communicate within and between organizations to operate effectively - making your IT network secure is a top priority. Your network should be protected against malicious and inadvertent attacks, and should meet the business requirements for confidentiality, integrity, availability, non-repudiation, accountability, authenticity and reliability of information and services."
Is your business up to speed?
Posted:
20/10/2006 17:24:16
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Green IT
Big players are stepping up in their efforts to go green, and that includes IT.
According to Tom Kelly, managing director of IBM business partner Logicalis, one of the big culprits is that old bugbear, storage: “There is currently a 44 per cent year on year growth in the amount of storage purchased in the UK, yet much of the time most of the capacity remains unused but still consuming power.”
And while taking a position on the environment is often dismissed as a PR exercise, Logicalis is practising what it’s preaching, inviting climate change experts Global Action Plan to join them at their stall at this year’s Storage Expo 2006. Visitors will be invited to pedal the Global Action Plan Energy Bike to see how much effort it takes to produce the energy just to power a laptop. The company’s also offering independent environmental training to clients.
What’s your business doing to make a difference?
Posted:
18/10/2006 17:36:05
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DIY IT? Let's hope not.
Silicon.com is reporting that "oil giant BP is pioneering a 'digital consumer' initiative that will give some employees an allowance to buy their own IT equipment and take care of their own support needs."
This, coupled with the comments made by futurist Peter Cochrane's at the silicon.com CIO Forum – that "corporate IT departments are going the way of the typing pool" as tech-savvy young employees enter the stream – has a lot of tech types hot under the collar.
Does this mean you’ll eventually be able to tear up those IT support contracts and hand over control to the next generation of employees? Let's hope not.
From security issues to email storage overload and even the ever-exciting data management, there's a vast difference between the individual, day-to-day issues of IT support and turning tech into a strategic business tool.
On a positive note, the rise of "iPod and Google generation" employees could free up the tech team and allow it time to shape your company’s long-term business building IT strategy – instead of wasting time on the typical "Is it plugged in?" problem solving issues of the front office for the less tech savvy.
And remember: your tech support is also going to include young'uns from the "iPod and Google generation" – if it doesn't already. The way your business uses tech is changing, but there's every chance that the next generation of tech support teams will be the ones helping your business to change along with it.
Posted:
13/10/2006 15:28:05
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Who's filched my files?
It's an old story, but given the raft of security breach stories around these days – from the call centre worker in India offering to sell the credit card details of 200,000 people to the "83,000 email addresses, credit card numbers and online transaction files" found on a "computer recovered from criminals in the US" – it seems a good time to drop a reminder about one other oft-forgotten security area:
discarded hard drives.
John Adey, chief technology officer at Star, explains: "Employees store business information and work related files on their C-drives, but we know from experience that most businesses fail to control access to them. Result: nobody knows what's left on those drives. The implications are grave. We know, for example, that there's a thriving industry in India for salvaged passwords and other credentials from discarded hard drives. These businesses buy discarded equipment with the explicit intention of dredging any legacy data from them - rich pickings for them, no doubt."
So if you're going to get rid of that PC or laptop, says Star, there are a couple of critical things to remember:
1. Harvest data from those hard drives before decommissioning: "Sadly, this doesn't often happen, meaning businesses lose valuable intellectual property at best and put themselves at risk via data protection issues at worst," says Adey.
2. Get a specialist to wipe the hard drive – "Embedded information should not be recoverable," says Adey.
Posted:
12/10/2006 16:32:33
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What the tech are you talking about?
Given the recent BBC News online headline, "Geekspeak still baffles web users", it's only fitting to point out that there are quite a few in business who are in the same boat when it comes to tech talk.
Case in point: according to a recent report from IT and business analysts Quocirca on Service-oriented architecture (SOA), over 50% of business respondents were "completely unaware of SOA". Within the technical community, "this lack of awareness is running at nearly 25%".
Nonetheless, "SOA is making some real inroads", according to Clive Longbottom of Quocirca, writing in The Register. "Just under 25 per cent of respondents in the Quocirca research stated that all new functionality is being implemented as SOA, and a further 17 per cent are migrating some legacy over to SOA as well."
So, not understanding IT isn't preventing business owners from investing in it? Perhaps that's why the CIO Jury over at Silicon.com reports that "companies are spending too much on IT and not putting enough energy towards delivery and business value, according to leading UK IT executives."
Perhaps they should Ask a Guru before making the leap?
Posted:
06/10/2006 17:25:44
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Is your IT worth it? What does your gut tell you?
Thought-provoking new survey out of the Cranfield School of Management (in association with Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Belgium), which claims that "companies are failing to capitalise on the business benefits from IT projects – and have made little progress in this area in the last 10 years."
Some notable stats from the survey:
• 57% of respondents (equally split between business and IT managers) reported that they are not satisfied that they are getting value from IT investments.
• 31% didn't know whether they were they are getting value from IT investments or not.
• Overall 73% said significant improvements were needed if their organisations are going to deliver satisfactory value from their IT investments (this is the same result as from a similar survey conducted by Cranfield 10 years ago).
As Professor John Ward, who led the research, points out: "For all the talk about getting value for money from IT, it appears few organisations are actively doing anything to increase the value they obtain."
Not surprising really. We had similar feedback in our article on FD's views of IT spend. As one interviewee pointed out: "There are
lots of benefits you can’t put a number on. But when we're
evaluating IT spend, we do try to get people to at least describe what
the effect of the investment will be, even if they can’t attach a
number to it. We try to look at it holistically and it often comes down
to gut feel."
Posted:
06/10/2006 15:07:48
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Do you suffer from "C-Drive Syndrome"?
Tough talk from Star Technology these days. The UK-based tech company is urging "smaller, growing companies to strongly consider a ban on access to company C-drives, in order to combat the rising problem of 'C-drive Syndrome'." This is the habit we all have of keeping our most important documents and data on our own PCs and laptops, and failing to keep them on networked drives or acessible through secure portals that offer controlled access to authorised people.
Is this really a problem? According to Star, it can be, when it leads to "poor information sharing amongst colleagues, security risks and difficulties with regulatory compliance."
And given the number of stories we’ve heard about people losing laptops – including the infamous revelation back in 2003 that hundreds of the slippery suckers (some containing sensitive data) had been lost by or stolen from the UK Ministry of Defense – it’s fair to say that it’s an issue that should be addressed.
Are your employees still hiding in their IT silos? Maybe it is time to review your data policy – it could mean the difference between ongoing growth and a sudden sharp stop along the way.
Posted:
06/10/2006 12:16:47
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Looking for publicity in all the wrong places?
Interesting points raised in FT.com about businesses “getting noticed” online: “Corporate films or audio broadcasts made for the web, known as webcasts, have become an important tool for many companies. Some use them for education, sales or news of corporate events such as financial results.”
And as David Berger, manager of strategic communications for IBM, points out, “YouTube [the user-generated video sharing website] is the gateway to external corporate video. I think you are going to see more companies use it for [broadcasting] non-confidential video.”
This is all fair enough. After all, recent research published by Nielsen/NetRatings confirms the growing importance (in the UK at least) of online sites featuring user-generated content:
- YouTube is the fastest growing brand in the UK this year – and its based on user-generated content.
- 42 per cent of the people using YouTube are over the age of 35 (not just for pimply teens, despite what you may think).
But while it's a tempting for businesses to try to reach as wide an audience as possible through the web, keep this in mind: a lot of your employees are likely to fall into the "YouTube" demographic. And given some recent employee activity made public on the site – from the on-duty fireman in Manchester taking a ride in a dryer to the phone tech in the US who fell asleep while on hold with his own company – your company's “online presence” may not be the one you want after all.
The FT.com headline says it all: "Get noticed – for the right reasons."
Posted:
05/10/2006 16:31:48
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Converging opinions
Convergence is being mentioned again and again these days, with new and improved combined services being announced faster than we can sign the 18-month fixed contracts. Now The Register wants to know "how much are people up for some of the things that are now on offer or likely to be presented to us in the future" with specific focus on business use.
It’s a fair question – players both big and small are working towards convergence with gusto and businesses are taking notice, but as ever, it will be down to the market to determine what survives and what doesn’t. Make your opinion known in their short poll here.
Update: business people in general may or may not be enthusiastic about converging tech, but a recent global survey of airline passengers commissioned by OnAir, certainly confirmed that business travellers want it all and they want it now.
"More than any other group, people travelling for business purposes want to be able to use their mobile devices during flights," according to the research. The survey found that, "among travellers flying for business reasons, over 90 per cent carry a mobile phone; up to 40 per cent carry a BlackBerry or Treo when travelling; 65 per cent of BlackBerry and Treo users would turn their devices on during flights; 94 per cent would take calls and check emails during flights; 82 per cent would make calls and send emails during flights."
For some, at least, it seems that converging technologies and services cannot come soon enough.
Posted:
04/10/2006 17:23:47
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Spam slam
Tired of an inbox awash with rubbish offers, brazen lies and suggestive subject lines? Why not follow the example of Mike Williams over at .net magazine and fight back? Sure, there’s a bit of leg-work involved, but this brief story highlights a few smart ways to find out who's been abusing your address and offers a few sensible pointers on how to do battle.
Posted:
28/09/2006 14:33:38
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Do inventors dream of electric llamas?
Think your business is innovative? Think again. IBM’s Andy Stanford-Clark lives on the Isle of Wight and is one of IBM’s Master Inventors. He lives and breathes innovation, working at IBM Hursley to produce some of the most intriguing products and services on the market. If you want to see real innovation in action, download the vodcast here – from GPS llama tracking to mousetrap text messaging, it’s refreshing to see someone so obviously enthusiastic about the idea of invention.
And if that inspires you, check out the IBM innovation assessment to find out how your business fares against the 750 respondents in IBM's Global CEO Study 2006.
Posted:
27/09/2006 11:03:52
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Does your business dotmobi?
It's been brewing for a few months now, but the internet-on-your-mobile battle has now taken another big step forward, with .mobi (dotmobi) registration now open to everyone – “the first top level domain dedicated to delivering the internet to the mobile phone,” says mobile Top Level Domain Ltd (mTLD), the global registry.
And while some debate how many users will bother actually surfing the net on their mobiles, the numbers add up: according to UK National Statistics, 78 per cent of households had a mobile phone in 2005, while only 62 per cent had a home computer (and only 53 per cent had online access).
This may explain why so many businesses are taking it seriously. According to BBC News online: “Almost 13,000 companies have already registered dotmobi addresses as part of a pre-registration process open to trademark holders.”
Still wondering whether your business should be online?
Posted:
26/09/2006 12:21:44
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2020: the world will be flat, apparently
The internet’s all abuzz talking about itself yet again, with the release of the “The Future of the Internet II” by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in the US. According to the report, among other things:
“A global, low-cost network will be thriving in 2020 and will be available to most people around the world at low cost” and “a tech-abetted ‘flattening’ of the world will open up opportunities for success for many people who will compete globally.”
“Many respondents said they accept the idea that English will be the world’s lingua franca for cross-cultural communications in the next few decades. But notable numbers maintained English will not overwhelm other languages and, indeed, Mandarin and other languages will expand their influence online.”
“People will wittingly or unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.”
All of which is important for business, but the fact remains that the 742 respondents with fairly evenly split on all the points raised, with no overwhelming agreement on any of the points.
Conclusion? No-one is really sure what’s going to happen with the internet in the next couple of decades – but everyone's willing to guess. Business as usual then.
Posted:
25/09/2006 17:46:56
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A virtual certainty?
It's a bit on the tech-heavy side, but Techworld's recent interview with IBM's Rich Lechner, vice-president of virtualisation has a few gems that will get any entrepreneurial owner-manager thinking:
"We see it as a way for clients to save money and cut costs. It'll have a profound impact on customers' future business, their data, everything."
"A customer can justify the cost of virtualisation through a single data migration. Then they can do tiered storage, disaster recovery and so on."
"Virtualisation can accelerate innovation within the organisation because IT systems people don't have to spend time doing mundane tasks like data migration but can instead spend time adding value to the business."
And he's not the only one who's talking up the technology, but does that mean its success is a virtual cert? Time will tell.
Posted:
25/09/2006 13:38:19
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You are now entering MoIP space
Scanning the news, you’d think that no-one will ever need to pay to make a call again, what with all the chatter surrounding VoIP – but is it true?
Sam Sethi over on TechCrunch (UK) highlights two entrepreneurial start-ups that think so: TruPhone (“free software, you download, that enables Mobile over IP (MoIP)”) and ConnectMeAnyWhere (which lets you make international calls on your mobile using a VoIP network, which saves money, and doesn’t require any downloaded software or new hardware – “In fact users don’t even need to connect to a computer to make a call”).
Both aim to bring the savings of VoIP to your mobile (through “at the moment, Truphone is only available on the Nokia’s E-series, but there aim is to quickly be available on other compatible phones”, according to TechCrunch).
Why is this a big deal for your business? With sales staff becoming increasingly mobile and employees touching base with more and more contacts across a global economy, accessible, easy-to-use, affordable communication options are only going to grow in importance – and the range of companies trying to get on board prove it.
And with Skype now offering its new VoIP-based Call Centre model – Sky Click – the business potential of the technology looks likely to keep expanding.
Update: For some truly entertaining input into the fast-changing world of telecoms, check out Martin Geddes' Telepocalypse blog. His verdict on TruPhone? "Utterly Telepocalyptic". And Skype? "I’m increasingly bearish on Skype’s long-term prospects, but they’re
teaching new and dangerous competitors what works and what doesn’t."
Posted:
21/09/2006 15:10:49
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Next Big Thing: "Coherent Deletion"?
Bryan Betts of Techworld writes about the excitingly named Storage Networking World Europe event held in Frankfurt this month, and while storage issues can be deadly dull for most business lines, one item should catch any compliance-conscious business owner’s eye.
According to "storage guru" Jon Toigo, "the next big thing will be the need for coherent deletion. The issue here is that once your data is old enough to escape [Sarbanes-Oxley] and suchlike regulations, you want to delete it – both to conform to data protection and privacy laws, and to avoid the possibility of 'smoking guns' being found by enemies using court orders to dig through your data. The challenge is that it has to be deleted thoroughly, from everywhere, even archives and off-site backups."
So while you've been feverishly figuring out how and where to keep all those bits of data floating around your business in a clean, accessible and orderly fashion, now you’ve got to figure out how and when to get rid of them across the organisation?
Now, where did I leave that digital shredding machine...?
Posted:
21/09/2006 10:51:13
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IT is like the weather...
A gust of wind, a weather website, gathering clouds – we all check the weather in our own ways. Now two entrepreneurs from Milan, Julien Buratto and Davide Bongianni, have harnessed the power of texting to tell us whether or not to risk leaving out the laundry. According to Wired, the duo's new service "pairs a mathematical formula with forecasts from weather.com to arrive at a 'laundry index'" and they’ll text you with the results. Does it work? Does it matter? Goodness knows there are more than enough resources to find out what the day's going to be like. But according to Wired reporter Nicole Martinelli, it outperformed her best source – so maybe there’s a change in the weather after all. And with Laundry Indices for New York, Berlin and Tokyo, the UK can’t be far behind...
Posted:
18/09/2006 14:41:35
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Who moved my Treo?
The Guardian reports that the Blackberry – aka the "Crackberry" according to the report, for its addictive qualities – may be facing some real competition at last. The ubiquitous organisational device, manufactured by RIM in Canada, now represents such a powerful tool for business and is such a household name that its nearest rival, Palm, had to sign up with Vodafone and Microsoft to try and take it on.
The Treo 750v is a touch-screen mobile phone "that can handle email, web browsing and multimedia content" – basically, everything a BlackBerry can do.
RIM's response? The BlackBerry Pearl, "which includes a camera, a media player and removable storage" and is "small and light" according to one review – basically, everything a mobile phone can do these days.
Convergence is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
Posted:
15/09/2006 13:24:47
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Broadband current affairs
Is the party really over for broadband entrepreneurs? It is according to the Real Business blog. Rebecca Burn-Callander claims that, “with larger corporations operating loss-leading broadband to try and grab a chunk of the market, smaller players are being forced out”. That may be true enough for broadband suppliers in the UK, but surely there’s still room for the cagey smaller player?
Case in point: Current Communications, which has “topped a venture capital funding report for the second quarter” in the US according to Wired.com. Backed by bigwigs like Google and General Electric, Current Communications is offering "broadband over power line, or BPL, which lets users access the internet through any regular power outlet” – technology that could find its way to the UK and beyond if it gets off the ground.
Meanwhile, Yahoo! News reports today that “Nethercomm, a San Diego-area start-up, says it has developed technology to send lightning-fast broadband and TV services via wireless signals through the pipes that deliver the fuel used to heat homes and fire up stoves.”
One party may be ending, but there’s always another one starting somewhere...
Posted:
12/09/2006 16:48:58
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Informed opinion
If you’ve got an eye for the entrepreneurial and aren’t afraid of technology, you could do worse than read the recent Guardian interview with Esther Dyson, editor-at-large of CNet. The Next Big Tech Thing? Pattern Recognition – “which helps us understand what's going on and allows us to understand meaning”. And where’s she investing her money? India – “The opportunities are there, but you have to invest in the capability of the management. There's a lot more opportunity, I think, selling productivity-enhancing services or new cell phones to millions of Indians, than trying to persuade a small number of Brits or Americans to upgrade their TV sets or PCs or phones one more time.”
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12/09/2006 15:24:57
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Light at the end of the tunnel
In these days of bad energy news and fears about the long term limits of or finite resources, it’s nice to see that Professor Shuji Nakamura has been awarded Finland’s 2006 Millennium Technology Prize “for his invention of new sources of light” – in the form of light emitting diodes (LEDs). With prize money of €1m this is a hotly contested event each year and Professor Nakamura’s work is a prime example of the level of sophistication to be expected. More than this, it also demonstrates tremendous entrepreneurial foresight, as Professor Nakamura has patented his innovations, which could “halve the amount of electricity consumed” for our lighting needs in the long term. From the Prize website: “According to Professor Nakamura, we have only just begun to explore the vast number of opportunities presented by applications using LEDs and lasers. ‘I hope the award of this prize will help people to understand that this invention makes it possible to improve quality of life for many millions of people. This is not just a source of light that makes enormous energy savings possible, it is also an innovation that can be used in the sterilisation of drinking water and for storing data in much more efficient ways.’”
Posted:
11/09/2006 16:49:41
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Not just a game
Newsweek’s latest article on World of Warcraft – “an online game that accommodates 7 million players around the world” – has the online community buzzing but it’s not surprising, given that “massively multiplayer role playing games” (MMORPGs) can be worth millions these days. What’s perhaps more intriguing is that they are proving hot spots for all sorts of disturbingly real world activity. Case in point, Second Life – “an online world which, as its names implies, allows users to live out another existence” (and according to quite a few, not a game at all). The site has recently asked all users to change their passwords due to a security breach. Of course, Second Life is also set to host a virtual Duran Duran concert, has been the site of an educational island for financial education and was recently the site of a speech given by Mark Warner, former Governor of Virginia and potential presidential candidate as well as a visit by the Virtual Virgin Mary.
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11/09/2006 16:39:10
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Vodafone’s broad approach
BBC News reports that Vodafone is looking to take on the broadband market, in a move that adds another big player into the online/telecoms mix of the UK market. While not necessarily a surprise – pundits have been talking about convergence of companies and offerings for years – it raises the question about the long-term power of the land-line. Does the fact that Vodafone is “developing its own support service in co-operation with BT” mean that there’s even more change on the horizon? Or does this have to do with the recent annnouncement that "BBC One, ITV1 and Channel 4 are to be broadcast to mobile phones as part of a mobile TV service launched by BT"? And what of the fact that “the UK's second-largest telecoms group, Cable & Wireless, to leave the retail broadband market”? Obviously, it’s anyone’s call what might happen next...
Posted:
11/09/2006 16:01:26
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Getting mashed with Google
Think your business is the only one that finds IT management and strategic implementation a challenge? Think again. Even Google’s inner workings are a “mash-up of internally developed software, made-to-order hardware, artificial intelligence, obsession with performance, and an unorthodox approach to people management” according to a report from Information Week. But don’t despair. According to Douglas Merrill, Google’s vice-president of engineering, "Culture drives the way you do things. To the extent, like us, your organisational culture is unusual in important ways, you will have to build different ways of running your traditional systems." In other words: let your business guide your IT, and not necessarily the other way around.
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01/09/2006 11:15:19
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Wired works its wiki
Looks like Wired magazine is jumping on the wiki bandwagon, offering readers the chance to edit one of its stories – which is coincidentally about the "wiki phenomenon". Not sure why they bothered, since the LA Times had already tried to bring the wiki to the people, only to have to shut it down, "because a few readers were flooding the site with inappropriate material". But it makes it clear the wiki isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Do you wiki? Or more spefically, does your business? Could it be the collaborative template for the future...?
Posted:
30/08/2006 17:27:06
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Phone home
Wired magazine is also reporting that Keyspan in the US is launching a new cordless VoIP phone for PC and Mac – and “at $79 the price is about right”. Could this be the start of something big? A lack of reasonably priced, functional and versatile handsets has been something of an obstacle in the adoption of VOIP, and the fact that this one is functional on both Macs and PCs is a big step forward. Plus, according to Keyspan, “you can also take the Keyspan Cordless VoIP Phone on the road, to use in hotels, airports and cafes, as long as you have an Internet connection and are within range of your laptop." Sounds like a good idea – we’ll just have to wait an see if it takes off. If only Tesco doesn’t get there first...
Posted:
30/08/2006 17:03:42
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IBM secure and spaceworthy
It’s being reported that IBM has recently acquired Internet Security Systems (ISS) for $1.3 billion in the US, as part of its efforts to “bolster IBM's ability to deliver security services to corporations” and to offer “a comprehensive product portfolio and deliver a combination of software and consulting services”, according to ZDNet.
Unfortunately, ISS is also the acronym for the International Space Station prompting readers over on Slashdot to suggest it was a canny move to avoid over-regulation and red tape (“the IBM headquarters will not be located in outer space making them immune to earth laws”) or as a solution to HR problems (“people in space work much cheaper than humans, plus they don't have anything but work to spend their spare time on”).
Posted:
25/08/2006 12:38:51
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