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

Remember the first half of 2008? Most developed countries and many emerging ones were taking action to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, and sky-rocketing oil, coal, iron, aluminum, and copper prices were making everyone conscious of the need to wisely manage and consume natural resources. Climate change was high on the agenda of most governments and CEOs; CO2 credits were traded at the Kyoto Stock Exchange; and plans were being prepared to reduce CO2 emissions in 2020 and 2050. Despite the subprime and natural resource crisis, it appeared that governments, enterprises and individuals could work together to avoid a major global environmental crisis happening in the next decade.

But then, in September came the bankruptcy of Lehmann Brothers followed by an endless flow of bad news that heralded the global recession spreading around the world. Moves to Chapter 11, bankruptcies, budget cuts, decreasing revenues, layoff plans, state deficits, stocks massacre, and profit warnings have been the top headlines since last October and are not going to disappear overnight.

The mobile industry has performed a classic repeat of its eyes-are-bigger-than-its-stomach feat of choosing LTE as one of its hype topics at this year's Mobile World Congress. The buzz in Barcelona is again focused on building bigger, better networks and as the vendors rush headlong down this path, attention to monetising what's already in place is in some respects being pushed to the back burner.

Thankfully, this network fixation has been diluted this year with a dual focus on application stores. Every man and his dog seems to be launching one with Microsoft, Blackberry and Nokia joining Google and Apple along with leftfield vendors like Amdocs and Comverse offering stores as a service to operators. It's interesting but, with the exception of Blackberry, which has devoted most of its stand to its network of business application providers, the apps on offer are mostly fluff. Away from the toys for consumers Blackberry has apps ranging from SAP to highly specific healthcare applications. The uses of such functionality looks very interesting for enterprises, although I expect they will give CIOs management headaches. Word on the street also has it that Blackberry is poised to add WiFi capability to a Storm-like device in the near future. The company itself wouldn't be drawn on the prospects of this but the added connectivity option would fit well with the connectivity requirements of such apps.

"With our existing Microsoft installed base, Office Communications Server was the most economical way to change out about 490 legacy PBXs. Other unified communications options required substantially more infrastructure. Office Communications Server allowed us to leverage our existing Microsoft infrastructure and provide employees with affordable headsets for voice calling."

"Microsoft is solving enterprise communications problems differently. It looks to me like they asked themselves the question: What would be the best way to deliver communications for a "people-ready business" that would reduce costs, improve business outcomes and provide both productivity and control to the users? If the new software also fills in the PBX checklists, that's so much the better."

Use of Twitter, the micro-blogging web-site that allows people to post 140-character updates, has exploded in the UK over the last few months; traffic to the site increased by a staggering 974% over the past year according to Techcrunch UK. The site itself now ranks as the 291^st most visited site in the UK, and was described by the Telegraph as the best known microblogging site:

Twitter is probably the best known of all the "microblogging" sites, and it has been incredibly popular with geeks and the technorati since it launched in 2006. People post messages to the site, either via the web or by text message, and these "tweets" are forwarded on to their network of friends and contacts

Twitter's seminal moment in the UK was on the Jonathan Ross show on the 23rd of January . This show marked the return of Jonathan Ross following an "enforced holiday". Both the presenter and his guest Stephen Fry- a self-confessed geek and blogger- are avid users of Twitter, and on the show they discussed how the site works and how they use it.

Following this programme, numbers of @Stephenfry followers have rocketed. Stephen Fry now has over 160,000 people following him on Twitter, which means that he has overtaken many of the superstars of the tech world such as Kevin Rose (you see those Digg buttons to the right? He's the guy behind them) and is closing in on the number one, Barack Obama.

This prime-time moment brought Twitter to the attention of the general public, and it hasn't looked back since. Interest in @stephenfry reached a new level as a result of the "#frylift incident". Stephen got stuck in a lift  for about an hour and twittered his followers with updates. He even used his iPhone to Twitpic a photo of his predicament (viewed 77,000 times) .

This incident was featured in several  major news papers, including The Guardian blog and even the Daily Mail

So, as Twitter grows massive in the UK and elsewhere, the next question is - will micro-blogging take off within the enterprise? Recent Techcrunch50 winner Yammer provides a micro-blogging platform to enterprises, free of charge and with some level of confidentiality. Yammer is pretty much like Twitter, but is designed for closed groups or companies. Orange has a group on Yammer with a growing number of active users. Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, is quoted as describing Yammer as "The best communication and productivity tool available in the market today." on the front of the Yammer home page.

My own view here is that most people aren't inclined to blog because they find it too difficult. Micro-blogging, on the other hand, is so simple that there's almost no excuse not to. Its adoption by so many time-poor people is, in my opinion, an indication of how easy it is to interact with your customers or your peers.

Twitter is already being used by several big organisations and brands to talk to their users. For example,Scott Monty from Ford and Connor Maples from Orange. Lance Armstrong (not an enterprise but very much a brand - Livestrong) is twittering his training in the run up to his forthcoming Tour de France title challenge, in an attempt to be transparent and interact with his fans.

Twitter is increasingly being accepted as a worthwhile tool which allows you to interact with your community. Does micro-blogging have a place as a collaboration tool specifically within the enterprise, and will this help Yammer follow hot on the heels of Twitter?

Recessions lead to an increase in traditional crime and that's likely to be the case in the virtual world. McAfee has recently reported that it expects hackers to exploit the economic downturn perhaps by hoodwinking the credulous as well as returning to 'old-school parasitic infectors' this time using USB sticks rather than floppies. The security firm also reckons that data theft and breaches from cybercrime may have cost enterprises US$1 trillion in losses and damage repairs last year. Its research among 800 CIOs revealed that the recession is likely to increase attacks and not just from the traditional, external criminal element.

42% of respondents think that displaced workers will present the greatest threat to sensitive information on the network. Those CIOs could have a point if more instances such as last months attack on former employer, mortgage firm Fannie Mae, by computer engineering contractor. The contractor was indicted on computer intrusion charges having been alleged to have changed computer settings without permission from his employer and hidden malware code in a server that was programmed to become active on 31 January. FBI agent Jessica Nye told the court that if this timebomb had gone off it would have reduced, if not shut down, operations at the firm. The contractor had been employed at the firm for three years and were it not for the chance discovery of the timebomb in late October by a Fannie Mae computer engineer five days after the contractor was laid off, the outcome could have been disastrous.

Organizations would be well-advised to look inwards in these trying times.