business value & ICT - Telecommunications - Green IT - Orange Business Live blog

The first part of 2008 underlined the importance of sustainable development. The price of oil sky-rocketed to $140 per barrel and the cost of primary materials such as steel, aluminum, copper, silver, gold rose, along with basic foodstuffs like wheat, milk and rice. Pollution was in the headlines in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics and by the end of the summer the Artic Sea was open to navigation, with permanent ice at the North Pole expected to vanish by around 2025.

There was a growing consciousness of the challenges caused by climate change and pollution of the planet. Consumers began to change their habits, governments started to be serious about sustainable development, and corporations moved the Corporate Social Responsibility department head to the Executive Committee level. We saw virtuous industrial companies selling carbon credits worth hundreds millions dollars on the carbon trading stock exchange. We all had the feeling that something was changing.

But then the gathering storm of the financial crisis exploded, pulling down with it leading financial institutions, such as Lehman Brothers, AIG, Dexia and Fortis. Stock markets dropped by a third and credit completely dried up. The worldwide focus moved away from climate change and sustainable development towards the growing uncertainties in the financial world and fears of a long global recession.

With the credit engine of the global economy about to collapse, governments worldwide started to work together at a pace that was totally unknown in the corridors of all diplomacies. In just a few days, the 27 states of Europe agreed to raise funds to avoid any bank bankruptcy and to restore the flow of credits between banks. Similarly in the US, Democrats and Republicans supported the Paulson Plan and approved it in both chambers of Capitol Hill. At Camp David last week, European Union President Nicolas Sarkozy, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and US President George W. Bush agreed to organize a G20 meeting in the US in November to refound the global financial system – a sort of second 'Bretton Woods'.

And now, what's next? On one hand, it has taken decades to make our political or economic leaders and the man in the street, conscious of the danger that we are facing regarding the future of our planet, and the beginning of some signals that we are tackling the problem. On the other, it took no more than one month to create some kind of 'Government of the Earth' to fix the financial crisis.

Let's speak to the optimist in each of us: 2008 might be the turning point for the sustainable development crusade, with it becoming a worldwide project in 2009. We are already seeing car manufacturers striving to launch electric cars, billionaires investing in wind farms for ROI reasons, and prominent Asian countries reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. We know natural resources are scarce and therefore outrageously expensive, so we need to be savvy about using them and avoiding waste or spoilage. We also know that the economy is fragile and that financial flows need to be managed with ethics and responsibility.

Governments have shown us that they are able to forget their differences and agree on measures that will save the financial world. Surely they can use this new skill to meet again and decide the best way to engage in sustainable development. Sustainable development has entered the public consciousness and political and economic leaders realize that they have to find a solution together. The Chinese ideogram for crisis is the combination of risk and opportunity - let's vote for opportunity.

And what about information communications technology (ICT) in this discussion? A recent report from The Climate Group says that ICT represents 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions and that it could save up to five times its greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 thanks to its effect on motors, logistics, buildings and grids. Let's just do it!

If it moves, ask what it’s doing. If it doesn’t, ask why it isn’t moving. Is talking to objects a sign of madness or prospect of things to come?

Among the Web’s intelligentsia there has been great anticipation of the Internet of Things. The chatter is reaching a crescendo now, and reality appears to be within touching distance.

The Internet of Things is what happens when you push the Web’s physical boundaries further out, beyond the data centres and laptops to encompass all manner of devices: a parcel, a tree, an elevator, a web cam, a humidity sensor in a wall of a building. But the Internet of Things concept is more than sensors and communications – it’s the ability to broker the information on the public Internet, leveraging the Metcalf network effect. A good introduction is from former Wired editor Kevin Kelly. Check out his talk on the Next 5000 Days of the Web.

So a quick tour of what’s a happening to make the Internet of Things so “now”:

• Big guns Cisco, Sun and SAP believe in smart objects and that they should talk in the new linga franca – IP. They have formed the IPSO Alliance and their goal is to make sure there is a common interface and protocol stack for all objects irrespective of industry they serve. They proudly proclaim that this is the beginning of the Internet of Things.

• The EU has launched a public consultation on the Internet of Things.

• The European Commission is really on the case now with IPv6. Brussels is determined that the telecom industry adopts it willingly or could threaten to mandate. The six billion potential addresses within the IPv4 would rapidly run out if every household appliance was connected to the internet. IPv6 offers the potential for 3.4×10³⁸ objects to be connected if only we could find that many objects in the world.

• And there are extremely positive forecasts for mobile M2M communications and RFiD, the precursors to the Internet of things. Berg Insight reckons there are 14 million wireless M2M modules in use in Europe today, in applications as diverse as smart utility meters and vehicle tracking systems – each one connecting to a sensor or actuator. They are precursors in that they communicated within a closed system. The vision of the Interne of things is that you can connect directly with objects in the real world, mediated by the very public internet.

One of the drawbacks of this latest zeitgeist is the terminology. All manner of wonderful jargon is thrown around: smart objects, motes, mems, smart dust, Web 3.0, ambient intelligence, Zigbee and so on. My favourite was coined by science fiction author Bruce Sterling: spime. His idea is an object that is constantly aware of itself and its surroundings, perpetually spewing out data, published directly to the web. Its moved on since: now we have blogjects and tweetjects. These are objects that blog and twitter. If this is confusing, prepare to scratch your head even more over these Internet of Things definitions.

If you are still struggling to get your head around the idea, let Google’s Vint Cerf explain:
“Many of the things on the Internet, whether mobile or fixed, will know where they are, both geographically and logically…It will be normal for devices, when activated, to discover what other devices are in the neighborhood…If you wish, your mobile will remember where you have been and will keep track of RFID-labeled objects such as your briefcase, car keys and glasses. "Where are my glasses?" you will ask. "You were last within RFID reach of them while in the living room," your mobile or laptop will say.”

Good job the Internet of Things is not for trivial use then.

There are clear indications that the message about unified communications is resonating with enterprises. Two recent studies by market analysts IDC found that enterprises were increasingly expecting their unified communications platforms to integrate with their core business applications. "This year's survey results show that end users have become more sophisticated about their understanding of unified communications, as well as have higher expectations about what solutions providers should be able to provide them," commented Nora Freedman, senior analyst, Enterprise Networks at IDC.

The two IDC surveys were carried out with Infoworld magazine and respondents were drawn from its largely US readership. When asked to define unified communications (UC), four-fifths of respondents chose the following definition: "a desktop or mobile-based solution or platform that combines a common inbox for email/fax/voicemail, advanced IP telephony calling and management, Web/audio/videoconferencing, instant messaging, and presence management, which can be integrated with business-critical applications."

The IDC survey on attitudes to unified communications saw Microsoft take top spot from Cisco as the top strategic vendor in respondents' UC adoption plans, followed by Avaya and IBM. In 2007, the top four were Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft and Nortel. This good result for Microsoft follows hot on the heels of its arrival in the Gartner Corporate Telephony Magic Quadrant, as reported in Live!. Microsoft has also just started beta testing release 2 of its Office Communications Server, which promises much greater voice functionality.

The other IDC survey looked at the telephony buying habits of North American businesses. Although the top five selection criteria are still rooted in telephony (product performance, equipment reliability, total cost of ownership, security features, and technical support), enterprises are looking towards IP telephony for its ability to integrate with existing business applications. In the longer-term, say respondents, the push for IP telephony will come from unified messaging, remote/teleworking solutions and videoconferencing. IDC has also published some new statistics on IP telephony, which shows Cisco maintaining its dominance of the market and that 30.9 million IP telephony lines were shipped in 2007.

It was only a matter of time before China became the world's largest broadband market, and analysts Point Topic have confirmed this milestone in a recent worldwide study. "This is a major milestone for China," says Oliver Johnson, Chief Executive of Point Topic. "Launching people into space is spectacular, but having the biggest broadband market down here on earth means a lot more for building a modern, hi-tech economy."

Market watchers have been predicting for some time that China would become the world's leading broadband nation, as Enterprise Briefing reported in 2006, but in the end it had to wait until 2008. Point Topic said that both China and the US had 78 million broadband lines at the end of August 2008, but that China was growing twice as fast. In fact, the US's broadband growth has been slowing since the end of 2007, with the nation only installing an additional 1.1 million broadband lines in Q2 2008, compared to 3.4 million in the last quarter of 2007. Growth in China on the other hand has been accelerating with new additions rising to 5 million from 3 million in the same period. The Chinese government sees broadband as an essential part of its infrastructure and has been instrumental in driving growth.

Unlike the US, where cable still rules the roost, broadband in China is dominated by xDSL technology, according to Point Topic. China has some 60 million installed xDSL lines, with the remaining broadband lines being largely made up of fibre-to-the-home and its variants (FTTx). DSL is also still the main broadband access technology in the major European markets of Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain, while Japan and Korea are the only other countries with any notable FTTx deployment.

Germany is Europe's largest broadband market with 21.8 million installed lines, followed by the UK and France (both 16.7 million). Japan (29.4 million) and South Korea (15.3 million) follow China in Asia and the Pacific. In the Americas Canada (9 million) and Brazil (8.5 million) are second and third after the US. In terms of household penetration, the tiny principality of Monaco leads, with 100%, followed by South Korea (97.2%) and Singapore (89.6 %).

Current Analysis has an interesting take on the present credit crunch and financial markets turmoil – it’s good for the telecoms industry. Analyst Sandra O’Boyle believes that a tightening of capex means that telcos can get back to basics – focus on competition, reducing costs and completing the transformations that have been put off in the constant sprint to keep pace with rivals.

“A greater emphasis on cash flow and a closer inspection of business margins and costs may not be a bad thing, it can even advance restructuring efforts among telcos that under normal circumstances would be difficult to achieve,” argues O’Boyle in a research note on the impact of the credit crunch on telecoms. (You will need a subscription to read the full report.)

She has a point. Much of the investments made to transform core networks and back office systems, at least in the US, Europe and advanced Asian markets, have already been done or at least committed to. This means carriers can now focus on developing and deploying next-generation IP services such as telepresence, data centre virtualization and delivering software as a service (SaaS).

O’Boyle argues:

The financial squeeze will reduce household spending and enterprise investments, forcing carriers to shed cost in order to lower OpEx. Carriers with too-high cost structures will be under financial strain compared to those that have gone through restructuring and have lower cost bases, thus intensifying the ongoing consolidation in the European telecom markets.

The ability to focus tightly on customer needs can provide significant new business for the carriers because growing ‘green’ awareness will significantly increase the appetite for collaboration services and TelePresence video conferencing that can reduce travel costs and increase the efficiency of a distributed workforce. Machine-to-machine services that reduce management and production costs will also become hot properties.

Next generation services will appeal to enterprises who themselves face an uncertain future. O’Boyle reckons that in 2009 enterprises will be looking for utility pricing for services like IP telephony and collaboration. This will give them the flexibility to cope with an unexpected merger or the need to lay of 10% of the workforce. And if the global economic slowdown does create a hiring freeze on enterprise IT departments, this too will be good for telcos as even more companies will look to managed services and outsourcing.

So a silver lining to the stormy clouds?

Not all analysts are convinced that IT will face such a collapse in funding. Both Gartner and Forrester reckon that the financial crisis will impact IT budgets but not catastrophically. Forrester’s Andrew Bartels is reported saying, “This is not a replay of 2001/2002.” Forrester’s predictions for US IT spending in 2009 is bullish – $606 billion next year compared to $572 billion (up 6.1%). One only hopes that these forecasts are not based on people having to borrow to buy, because they might be struggling to find a bank still standing. 

this article is about the positioning of the various types of conferencing services according to their functionality and target populations

I've already had the opportunity to touch on the important subject of the return on investment of Web conferencing in a previous post published in three separate instalments on this very blog. One of the questions that came to my mind following that post is related to the comparison between various conferencing modes. Telepresence may be on top of the media agenda at the moment, but I don't think that this will make the need for different types of conferencing modes any less important. On the contrary, the advent of telepresence is breathing life into this entire industry. This is a typical example of a competitive advantage applied to an industry as a whole, as Michael Porter would have it.

Having established this fact, what is the difference between the various conferencing modes and what makes them complementary rather than mutually exclusive? I have attempted to represent a number conferencing alternatives in the following slideshow in order to highlight how complimentary all these solutions could be.

I'm not certain that my "segmentuition" (or intuitive segmentation) is good. It can certainly be corrected and improved (comments welcome). I may be a bit restrictive on telepresence for instance but there is also a strong limitation which needs to be stressed. All these systems cannot be used at all times and in any place. Some can, some can't. And most of all telepresence requires a dedicated room (a minimum of two in fact) and a thorough online reservation system to be set up. A standard SharePoint space can do the trick actually. Microsoft SharePoint allows for workspaces to be created around a calendar, therefore allowing one to create a repository of documentations, manuals, guidelines and letting users book their rooms. The rapid deployment of telepresence at the moment, will not rule out Web conferencing and audio and even a combination of those.

However incomplete and partial my positioning slideshow may be, I think it can be helpful in getting one's brains around a differentiated and balanced conferencing strategy. This is certainly an important factor in achieving a satisfactory return on investment too.