July 2010 Archives

I thought there was little that could top Comstor's attempt at movie-making history (and bear in mind I've seen Inception), but my attention was drawn today to infrastructure integrator 2e2, which has just released its first contribution to the oeuvre of channel celluloid.

In contrast to Comstor's high-octane thrill ride, 2e2 has gone for more of an Alan Bennett 'Talking Heads' style monologue from CEO Terry Burt, but with overtones of a well-crafted psychological thriller.

I have to say I think 2e2 might have edged this one, from the low-fi camera quality to the vase of flowers (surely meaningful in some way, perhaps signifying Morse), and that strange and illegible word printed on the backdrop kept me guessing right to the end, in fact, I think the director's decision to leave the mystery unresolved is a true masterstroke.

The plan is actually to drive 2e2 customers to the launch of the firm's One Contact go-to-market proposition through social media channels such as YouTube. The proposition is designed to deliver more services, such as IP telephony, virtualisation and the like, at lower-cost into the £21bn UK contact centre industry. Further details can be found at 2e2's website.

It occurs to me that there is clearly a wealth of untapped cinematic talent in the channel, so I invite your own submissions. I think we could have a new genre on our hands. Maybe we could even give out an award at the 2011 ACEs.

An interesting point, and a wry smile, has been raised over the purchase of mobile security solutions developer SMobile by Juniper Networks yesterday over at Network World's Cisco Subnet blog.

SMobile provides OS security for mobile systems including Apple iOS, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and of course Android  ... which just happens to be the foundation of Cisco's new business tablet, the Cius.

It just goes to show that in an interlocked, networked industry like our own you can so easily find youself competing against your enemies on one front, while aiding them on another.

The interpersonal relationships alone could keep an Eastenders scriptwriter in plots for years. And I think that's great; it's fun to tease vendors, as any reseller knows.

Of course, I hope - no, I'm sure Juniper's engineers will be able to resist the temptation to render the Cius so full of holes you could strain the greens with it.

And I wonder what OS will run on the anticipated Avaya tablet that I'm not meant to talk about? 

Here at MicroScope we pride ourselves on being utterly uncorruptible and, er, it looks like that longstanding tradition is set to continue.

The arrival of a phenomenally sweet pizza - or is it actually a giant cookie - at Channel Towers on Tuesday afternoon was greeted with initial enthusiasm by the team.

But thanks to the PRs at Spreckley - ever with an eye for a good publicity stunt - and their clients Barracuda Networks, we embarked on an epoch-defining sugar rush and work was pretty much done for the day.

The hook? I seem to remember there was one, is the release of a new Barracuda security report that highlights the growing threat to corporate networks of malware-ridden search engine results.

Barracuda analysed data from Bing, Google, Twitter and Yahoo!, covering 25,000 trending topics and 5.5 million search results, and found that Google churned out the most malware-compromised links, delivering more than twice the amount of Bing, Twitter and Yahoo! combined.

Naturally Internet users generally have themselves to blame for falling victim to a dodgy search engine result, with cyber-crooks exploiting both popular topics of online chatter and old, frequently pornographic stalwarts.

Tuesday, the study suggests, is the most dangerous day of the week to carry out an online search, so you're safe(r) for a few more days..

Things, and in particular this pizza, ain't always what they seem, says Barracuda.

So, school's out for summer and judging by some of the comments on my Twitter stream this morning, broadband speeds have dropped like a stone across the country.

I was interested to read Ofcom's latest research into UK broadband speed this morning, which actually suggests that even though the little darlings are currently monopolising the family computer for Club Penguin, Habbo and NeoPets, speeds are actually on the up.

But there is still a vast discrepancy between the speeds we see advertised on TV and the reality, with Virgin Media really the only provider to come close to offering its advertised speeds.

In recent years, previously unknown Far Eastern PC vendors, such as Acer and Lenovo, have carved out a prominent niche in the western hardware market, and are now beginning to challenge leaders such as Hewlett-Packard for regional market dominance.

It now looks like Asian smartphone device makers could be on the verge of repeating that success, according to figures from Juniper Research.

Until comparatively recently it was the Europeans who dominated the handset market, but since 2005 North American manufacturers, such as RIM and Apple, have come to dominate.

But now it looks as if the market is shifting again, as names such as HTC, LG and ZTE boost their product portfolios and chase western markets in a big way, says Juniper's latest study, which predicts they could go from 11% market share now to 18% in 2015.

Analysts also forecast that challengers from the consumer electronics market will also begin to appear on the scene.

Said Juniper senior analyst Anthony Cox: "The availability of Android and the commoditised nature of several elements of the handset supply chain are behind both of these developments."

"Any manufacturer with consumer electronics expertise can add mobility to their devices by incorporating an Android OS into a smartphone."

Cox believes that tight margins in the PC sector are driving this trend, and with many IT companies - Cisco and HP to name but a few - releasing smartphone and tablet devices this year, the competition will get fiercer and fiercer.

In the long-run, this will be a good thing for consumers, as prices come down and vendors are forced to differentiate by continually enhancing device functionality. So let the good times roll!

Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Gus Van Sant, Spike Lee. It's only a matter of time before we can add Clive Hailstone, sales director at Cisco distie Comstor, to the list of illustrious movie directors.

In case you haven't worked out from the first paragraph where I'm going here, it seems the chaps over at Comstor have been trying their hand at a spot of film-making on their new YouTube channel.

Their latest masterpiece chronicles the hectic final days leading out to the Cisco year-end as the distributor ups its stock levels, cancels holiday and hits the phones to push every Cisco promotion going.

Star performer Hailstone himself turns in a performance reminiscent of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now.

Viewer, you're in for a thrilling ride and Clive, the Oscar is in the post!

Acquisitive Lancashire-based comms firm Daisy has made another addition to its growing portfolio in the form of a 59-year old Routemaster London bus.

The classic Routemaster bus formerly belonged to Prodigy frontman Liam Howlett, and was bought for him as a birthday present by his wife, singer Natalie Appleton.

Since being sold by TfL when the Routemaster fleet was replaced with the Ken Livingstone's ill-fated bendy-buses, the venerable London icon has spent the past five years being used as a hang-out for the band and lived in Liam's back garden.

Daisy CEO Matthew Riley had challenged his PR team to get their mitts on a life-sized London souvenir; an act of immense charity to give them a break from writing press releases about acquisitions.

Daisy PR executive Fiona Ritchie bought the bus unseen over the phone, saying "we had no idea what she would look like when she arrived at our Nelson headquarters."

Happily for Ritchie the bus was in good nick, and had been well kept in its original state (could it be that the writer of Firestarter is in fact a bus spotter?)

"It took the driver eight hours to get her here, travelling at a maximum speed of 40mph, and while a bit bruised and battered she was in a really good condition for her 59 years," said Ritchie.

Daisy plans to use the bus for promotional and recruitment activity, and it will be turning up at events and exhibitions on the firm's behalf.

Reluctance among British businesses to follow the lead of the US is leading companies to miss out on social media-enabled interaction with customers and employees, according to a comparative global study on Web 2.0 media carried out by Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEC).

The enterprise comms specialist conducted two surveys of 1,500 consumers and 1,000 office workers, and found that 60% of consumers were active on some kind of social media website and 30% wanted to interact with businesses through that medium.

Meanwhile, British office workers proved to be considerably less engaged, with 30% either not using social media in the workplace, or unaware of their firm's participation in such activity - if any, for 60% of companies had no social networking policy in place, clearly also a security risk.

This contrasts with the findings of - wait for it - a third survey for SEC, carried out in America by analysts from the Yankee Group, which found clear majorities of both employees and consumers wanted to use social networking for business communications.

In the US, SEC found high levels of customer satisfaction with business interactions via social media, although even here one third of fims either had no social networking policy, were not aware of their participation in social networking, or had banned it outright.

Zeus Kerravala, senior veep of enterprise research at Yankee Group, said that the changes in interaction wrought by the social media environment was creating "significant opportunities" for enterprises to use such tools within their business proceeses.

He said: "As integration of social media improves within the contact centre and with unified communications and collaboration, businesses can impvoe customer interactions and positively impact employee productivity and collaboration."

Stephanie Watson, general manager of UK-based comms and network analysis firm MZA, added that the findings had been surprising, warning that "the reluctance of companies to adopt or put effective policies in place is a missed opportunity."

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I've always thought the term mobile worker to be something of a misnomer. Most of them, it seems to me, are actually sitting at a desk in a spare upstairs bedroom, or on a nice day, in the garden.

Even the most dedicated road warriors never really log on from anywhere more exciting than the Costa Coffee at Watford Gap Services.

Step in F5 Networks, which will be demonstrating the more adventurous side of remote working later in the month when a sponsored team of adventure travellers will set off, not to a reseller seminar at the Swindon Holiday Inn, but across central Asia to Mongolia, the land of Ghengis Khan, tweeting and blogging as they go.

During their 10,000 epic road trip, which takes in Europe, Russia and the wild Siberian steppe, Team Bataar Hero (Bataar as in Mongolian capital Ulan Bataar - see what they did there?) will be road-testing some of the latest F5 technology.

Key to the endeavour is the vendor's BIG-IP Edge Client, running Windows 7, which will allow the team to maintain connectivity via whatever type of network - private or public WiFi, Ethernet etc - is available, without having to use multiple devices to stay online.

The client will be backed up and supported by a BIG-IP Edge Gateway remote access solution at F5 HQ in the US.

F5 is planning to hold a series of events to support the team over the coming weeks, raising funds to support the team's chosen charity, Mercy Corps.

"We are excited to use BIG-IP Edge Gateway's capabilities under these unusual conditions," said team member Brian Shrader. "Our team will be taking secure remote access into new territory and we appreciate the opportunity to push the use of this technology forward while keeping the team conencted throughout its journey."

All the best to all of them.

ShoreTel CEO John Combs announced this morning that he is to step down from his role after 6 years in the hotseat.

John joined ShoreTel in 2004, after a long career in networks and communications that began at Ma Bell in the US, and took him variously to Mitel, LA Cellular, Nextel and a succession of wireless start-ups.

I had the chance to interview John for MicroScope in 2008, and he said then that he had initially been sceptical when ShoreTel's head-hunters showed up at his door, but was swayed after having a look at the technology.

"The TDM ship is sinking fast," he told MicroScope. "The folks coming from that business are struggling to keep up.

"Our competitors with roots in TDM are struffling with negative cashflow and cannot afford to invest in IP," he added.

The firm isn't a big one, but it is rapidly emerging as a contender in the IP comms space, and l have always found them to be one of those rare vendors that just gets the way things are going; I hope whoever steps up to run the company keeps that vibe going.

At any rate, we'll take the opportunity now to wish John all the best in whatever he does next.

As the World Cup and its bitter memories begin to fade, a bruised nation starts the healing process, and the opportunities for a swift football-related article diminish, research from Internet experts at Ipswitch has shown just how close Britain's Internet infrastructure came to meltdown during the tournament.

Throughout the past few weeks, Ipswitch has been running a World Cup Network Traffic Calculator, and has collected over 1,200 responses related to normal bandwidth usage and the increases seen during the 30-day spectacular.

Worldwide, Ipswitch said, global bandwidth usage increased by over a third, but in the UK, things got far worse than even the most pessimistic network managers had predicted, with those surveyed citing an increase of 43% to 95% capacity, having originally predicted a 31% increase

Across Europe - particularly in Spain and the Netherlands - usage soared to 76% capacity, and the USA's newfound passion for the beautiful game also had an impact, with bandwidth use rising to 77% during some key matches.

Both service providers and employers witnessed an unprecedented surge during peak hours, particularly during England's group match against Slovenia, and with the 2010 tournament being the first time the World Cup has offered live online streaming of every match, it looks like many defied the warnings to watch games over office equipment.

"Over two million people turned to web-based streaming services from ITV in the UK, taking the corporate network perilously close to falling over," said Ennio Carboni, president of Ipswitch's Network Management Division.

"While social in nature, the World Cup experience highlights the stresses video has on network infrastructure and the tasks facing network administrators today," he added.

At the end of May, the wireless market marked 25 years since the FCC first opened up the radio spectrum to allow unlicensed access for communications, paving the way for wireless technology to become the ubiquitous business and consumer enabler that we know, love, and swear loudly at when something goes wrong.

To mark the occasion, Network Noise and MicroScope have teamed up with wireless experts D-Link to offer a rather special prize, a vintage 1985 Glenmorangie single malt.

Described by London wines and spirits merchant Berry Bros & Rudd as "voluptuous, mouth-watering, full-flavoured, rich and complex," this (increasingly) rare expression deserves to take pride of place in your drinks cabinet.

I am pleased to be able to tell you that the competition was a great success; evidently for better or worse there are some hardened Scotch drinkers in the channel, which is of course exactly how we like it.

So without further ado. 25 runners up will each receive a miniature bottle of The Glenrothes 1985, and they are, in no particular order...

Richard Coward - IML Technology

Peter Rudd - Ilkley Computers Ltd

Nick Mellors - ISPB Ltd

Andrew Slater - Quantix UK Ltd

Dan Howe - Speed Communications

Richard Penney

Peter Baron - Computacenter (UK) Ltd

Peter Holloway - Westcoast

Chris Harrison - Westcoast

Andy Hough

Nick Gushlow - Westcoast

Rebecca Falk - solologic Ltd

Karl Robinson - Stratogen

Roger Spencelayh - Computing Services

Christina Green - open2europe

Graham Bodley - Atos Origin

Kieron Moore - Outsource Solutions (NI) Ltd

Neil Martin - Panda Security

Bob Lewis - Gaia Technologies plc

Steve Swindles

Richard Sheppard

Charlie Swan - SCC

Simon Butterworth - SIBIT Ltd

Sarah Whaley - Prodec Networks Ltd

Graeme Wilson

However, only one lucky reader can win the classic 25-year old Glenmorangie, and our congratulations go to Softcat commercial director David Simpson, whose name was first out of D-Link's rather fetching hat.

I am assured that the bottle has been kept well away from any journalists on deadline, and will shortly be winging its way to Softcat HQ in sunny Marlow.

Thanks again to everyone who took part!

So we're now a scant five years behind the events portrayed in Back to the Future II, and neither the flying car nor the hoverboard are yet ubiquitous technology.

Yet according to research conducted by Cisco, the British public is one step ahead of the boffins, and a little over 30% of us are looking forward to the advent of teleportation technology* in the not-too-distant future.

The recent 'Connected Conversations' survey quizzed 2,000 average Joes and Janes, and found that although Britons are remarkably technology-savvy, their expectations were actually lagging behind reality.

For example, 69% said we will be able to pay for parking meters on our mobiles by 2012, 52% looked forward to HD video consultations with their GPs by 2018, while 51% fancied a network-enabled fridge that orders groceries when you run low, and thought it would be a reality by 2015.

Needless to say, these technologies are all available, and in use, today, so just maybe teleportation isn't as far-fetched as the physicists would have us believe.

Said Cisco's UK and Ireland VP and CEO, Phil Smith: "In the last 25 years, access to the latest technology has moved from being a closed specialism for the knowledgeable few to become an open and collaborative fabric of modern society.

"As such, tech-savvy consumers have wrenched control away from the organisational IT departmenrs and are now shaping the future development of technology in British society."

Smith did not say what a teleportation device would mean for the future of Cisco's TelePresence video-conferencing suites, but I think the ability to step into a booth in the office and step out moments later at Cisco HQ in Bedfont for your quarterly catch-up would be welcome.

Nothing beats a genuine face-to-face meeting, after all, and it also means you don't have to drive to bloody Bedfont.

I can see Cisco taking to this like a duck to water.

It occurs to me that a teleportation device would also be a great way to combat the grey market; Cisco could simply invite a reseller to a teleport conference and then 'accidentally' set the co-ordinates for, say, the Gobi Desert. Problem solved.

* To be a little more realistic, 69% said we would never be able to teleport.