Free thinking

Want to reduce mobile voice costs? Change the channel

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:14:21 GMT

It has been a while since the EU introduced regulations to address the cost of roaming in Europe - 2007 to be precise. Undoubtedly, this was a welcome piece of legislation for consumers and businesses, with 'Eurotariff' limits being imposed...

Getting up to speed on desktop virtualisation

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:28:00 GMT

Now's not a bad time to be considering this stuff I remember reading an analyst prediction at the end of 2008 that 2009 was the year in which desktop virtualisation was going to go mainstream. I challenged this at the...

Data protection and identity management - are you sure you're safe?

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:31:27 GMT

Data protection is an essential area for businesses, and an increasingly critical one to deal with, as volumes and complexity of data grow, along with the volume and complexity of interactions both within the business and with the outside world....

Does business social networking really need IT?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:03:32 GMT

Are you wrestling with the idea of bringing social networking (choose your own preferred term) into your organisation? Whether a grass roots movement or an edict from the top, at some point it's going to impact your department. A few...

Keep a clear head on environmental issues

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:23:55 GMT

Did you see the Act On CO2 quango's 'bedtime stories' advertisement? It tells children that if the grown-ups would change their ways, they may (note: only 'may') be saved from the devastating effects of climate change. It nails 'ordinary things'...

The Bathtub Curve and other over-simplistic ideas

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:00:49 GMT

Every now and then, a certain model or other seems to have direct relevance to a whole series of challenges. It's funny how it happens - at one stage (for me anyway) it was Eli Goldratt's Critical Chain theories for...

UC - FMC usurper or saviour?

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:00:34 GMT

As enterprises move through their comms journey, should FMC still be on the cards, or has it been beaten to the budget post by other more compelling technologies? Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) - essentially the process of bringing together fixed...

What's enterprise energy use got to do with IT?

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:02:47 GMT

Energy use results in two major consequences: expense and environmental impact. Most organisations care a great deal about the former and somewhat less about the latter. They are highly interested in how to cut their expenditure. Of course, if their...

Vodafone UK ready to walk the walk

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:32:12 GMT

It has been very interesting watching Vodafone go through its journey over the past five or six years. From the delivery of relatively unsophisticated utility type services around telephony and SMS, it's moved into the online media space on the...

Incongruous cloud communication

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:50:03 GMT

I have recently been involved in a number of vendor events in which the keynote focused on the massive change that cloud computing is supposedly bringing to our industry, only to be followed by feedback from customers, embarrassingly sometimes from...

Audience power and the death of deference

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:51:24 GMT

How do you feel if you're addressing a large group of people and some of them are hammering away on laptops and smartphones? Do you use your own kit when you're a conference delegate? If you're peeved at the first...

Scoping UC - all bases covered?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:34:27 GMT

While lots of people think Unified Communications (UC) is a nice idea, they don't necessarily see it as inevitable. The debate around fragmented communications, and moving to a more joined up, coherent way of working will help UC gather pace....

The evolving role of the mobile operator

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:16:38 GMT

Mobile operators have their roots firmly in the utility services space. Indeed, many business customers still think of them largely as providers of voice minutes, perhaps with a little bit of data access or mobile email thrown in as a...

The Future of Mainframes

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:14:03 GMT

Over the course of the last decade there has been considerable discussion about the future development and use of the revered Mainframe platform, usually now to be found under the IBM System z banner. At times much that has been...

Event review: IBM Information on Demand, Berlin

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:23:11 GMT

Organisations are accumulating information rapidly - a lot of information - and as research shows, the majority have challenges managing and exploiting it. It was against this background that I recently attended IBM's 2009 'Information on Demand' event (IOD2009) in...

A realistic exploration of the Desktop Linux opportunity

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:43:41 GMT

How often have you dismissed the views expressed by extremists because what they are saying is so far removed from your own position and perceptions? The problem is that while single issue activists can make a lot of noise, they...