20 October 2006

bigger than 21CN

It's hard keeping pace with BT these days. This week the company stepped up its managed network deal with Alliance & Leicester to add VoIP in the mix; a nice curtain-raiser to the 21CN switch on next month. BT Media is building a VoD platform for Channel Five's download service -which will keep BT busy in more ways than one.
But the big scoop was signing up a new CIO for BT Global Services - right out of one of the world's biggest banks. There's a strategy here for BT's chiefs of staff in network services and IT to bring their operations into one giant applications workshop for the 21CN ...

13 October 2006

Friday 13th - The Outsourcing

congratulations to Russian IT house Luxoft for carrying off one of last night's NOA awards (NB to NOA please post these!)
why did so many in the audience make backhander gestures when one of the Big 5 went up to collect an award?
what a shame the only thing the after dinner speaker had to say to his audience was "we used to write lots of bad things about you outsourcers, but nowadays we don't. so my conclusion is there's not much to write about; well done"
wasn't he supposed to say something about how outsourcing has been one of the drivers of the western economy helping sustain eight years continuous growth? we would have done, and for half his fee.
but maybe he had a point - the NOA should have known better than to host the awards on the eve of Friday 13th:
OUTSOURCING MARKET FALLS BACK

11 October 2006

Massive

If you are heading for the IDATE forum 14th November - you should be going to Budapest! But if you are already booked for Montpellier (highly recommended), don't forget your joystick.

04 October 2006

Meet the demand

A good contact writes to remind us that Cisco is still struggling to impress the service provider/carrier market (still in the 'Others' category vs Alcatel, Ericsson, Nokia and the Chinese, according to Dresdner Kleinwort)
Cisco's latest marketing ploy is to put the frighteners on that carriers are testing deep packet inspection to see how much Skype or similar traffic is crossing their networks then degrading or blocking traffic types they disapprove of and "ruining service innovation on the Internet."
The flaw in this: Carriers don't want to stop traffic. Not a single one at Carriers World last week wanted to stop traffic (ok they are wholesale carriers, but they are the fastest growing business line in telco group operations). True, they all want to understand how to make more money - but either they get a better price or they partner with content providers etc and share in revenues. They all had the same answers to this question of traffic throttling, which was asked several times...
1. 'MySpace is adding 650k users a day - that's a city. As they move into a subscription model those users will demand QoS and we can charge for it.
2. 'Skype is at forefront of FMC, not Voda. We have to take a stake...
3. ' BitTorrent is an incredibly legitimate technology which will be widely adopted."
4. New apps are using the network. Good. They need more than standardised bandwidth."
These carriers have come to the right conclusion - manage your operating costs, not the traffic. ......
"It's not just about bandwidth it's about security, hosting and things like that."
"The challenge is to get your position. Plus you need to get your costs right."
"MySpace? Get a network able to cope with it. Meet the demand."