The most recent articles from Computing

Ofcom puts broadband speeds at heart of 2009 plans

Martin Courtney — 2008-12-04T16:21:00.000Z

Martin Courtney, Computing, Thursday 4 December 2008 at 16:21:00

Communications watchdog lays out key priorities for next year

UK ISPs will tomorrow implement a voluntary Code of Practice designed to stop them misleading customers over broadband speeds and improve customer service.

They will act the day after telecoms watchdog Ofcom published still-to-be-defined proposals for enforcing consumer protection policies that punish mis-selling and help customers switch broadband providers.

Ofcom’s draft annual plan for 2009/10 will also examine the mobile broadband market, with a view to deregulating controls in the hope that competition amongst mobile operators will bring per-megabyte prices down further.

More than 40 ISPs including Be, BT, Demon, Pipex, Plusnet, Sky, Tiscali and Virgin Media, have agreed to provide more accurate estimates about achievable data speeds in their promotional material, following widespread complaints about slower-than-advertised bandwidth in the past.

“ISPs were advertising 24Mbit/s and 8Mbit/s maximum speeds when those speeds were not available,” said Scott Morrisson, research vice president at analyst Gartner.

“It was not made clear to customers that there was no uncontended bandwidth back to the internet, even if they could get 8Mbit/s from their house to the exchange,” he said.

Communications Consumer Panel chairman Anna Bradley said the new code addresses the concerns that were raised with Ofcom and the ISPs last year about broadband speeds.

“[There is a] mismatch between the speeds that consumers think they are buying and what they actually get,” she said.

Ovum analyst Matthew Howett said switching has been a big item on Ofcom’s consumer agenda for a long time, and the Code of Practice should be viewed in line with other work for consumer protection.

“Ofcom has mainly focused on mobile mis-selling to date, but it is now shifting to fixed line mis-selling, which is considered to be just as much of a problem,” he said.

BT Retail said the company has today made clarifications to its fair usage policy to make it clearer about what circumstances it employs traffic management and where there are limits on downloads.

“BT is as much a victim of switching problems as anybody else – the number of those has fallen, but there are still some unscrupulous operators who demand that customers pay fees up front before they release the MAC codes needed to switch accounts,” said a BT spokesman.

Ofcom also plans to focus on mobile broadband. The European Commission is already piling considerable pressure onto mobile network operators to reduce prices, which - combined with an expansion in the number of mobile virtual network operators - means the mobile broadband market is closer to reaching the level of competitiveness that Ofcom requires if it is to deregulate.

“If [mobile broadband] price points get to the stage where mobile operators are no longer perceived as an oligopoly acting in a cartel fashion, providers could be allowed to set their own prices more freely and competition would settle the rest in much the same way as it has in the fixed telecom world,” said Morrison.

Ofcom’s 2009 plan will also focus on making sure BT adheres to the open access promises which brought about the establishment of its Openreach division, as well as formulating regulation for next-generation broadband services, making better use of wireless spectrum, and concluding its investigation into the pay-TV market.

Morrisson said the UK still lags behind many other countries in next-generation broadband availability such as 24Mbit/s ADSL2+ and the converged voice, data and video services this supports, which means providers have little option but to compete on price and line speed.

“Fibre to the home and very high-speed DSL (VDSL) is only available on one estate in Ebbsfleet, whereas other European countries have 10-20 per cent of homes already passed by fibre or VDSL solutions,” he said.

BT has made ADSL2+ available to communications providers and BT Retail expects to make ADSL2+ available to as many people as possible in the first half of next year, said BT’s spokesman.

On a quest to build a connected society

Gareth Morgan — 2008-12-04T02:00:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, Computing, Thursday 4 December 2008 at 02:00:00

BT Design’s JP Rangaswami talks to Gareth Morgan about his pivotal role in the telecoms giant’s efforts to deliver universal broadband and his plans to tap into the creativity of the open source community

For the best part of the past decade, JP Rangaswami has been one of the highest profile IT leaders in the UK, first as global chief information officer (CIO) at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DKW), more recently at BT as CIO for its Global Services division.

But following a recent move to the BT Design unit, where he is managing director, Rangaswami says he’s left IT behind even if he is keen to stress he hasn’t abandoned technology, merely broadened his scope. As part of BT’s embrace of convergence, it was necessary to move beyond the traditional approach, where IT and networking were regarded as separate, he says.

“If you start talking about CIOs, it is like you’re making a judgement that IT won. That’s not a message that our network guys want to hear, and it’s not one we want to promote,” he says. “We’re serious about the convergence of IT and networking, and these subtle messages are an important part of reinforcing that.”

Rangaswami is clearly also passionate about the company’s NHS work (see below) it fits with his motivations for joining BT in the first place. After a decade of working at a large bank, he wanted a move into an area that would continually excite, challenge and inspire him.

He saw the concept of universal access to affordable connectivity as the most exciting challenge in technology capable of improving the lives of everyone, as this connectivity could underpin radical improvements in healthcare provision and welfare. BT’s plans to build its 21st Century Network (21CN) seemed to embody that quest for affordable connectivity, he says.

When he joined BT in 2006, no other global telecoms firm could match its vision for delivering a converged network, says Rangaswami hardly surprising given the corrosive impact of the dot-com bust on the sector and the huge capital outlay required to build a completely converged network. And he is in no doubt that building 21CN and delivering valuable services on the back of it remains a huge project for BT.

Rangaswami sees BT Design playing a critical role in making 21CN a success. The unit enforces two key measurements of project success that drive improvement across the telecoms giant. One is the extent to which it can deliver what the customer wants first time; the other is the degree to which it can reduce the cycle time for delivering innovation.

Underpinning these are a series of principles governing expected margins, and cost reduction through the use of offshore development as well as having to comply with regulator Ofcom’s ruling on prices for various services.

Rangaswami is adamant that sticking to these principles will ensure BT is moving in the right direction. And to improve BT’s ability to deliver value for its customers, Rangaswami is keen to embrace lessons from the open source community.

Understanding the dynamic of how communities prioritise their efforts and how consensus is achieved in often febrile atmospheres is playing a central part in BT’s efforts to spur innovation. And the only true way to understand that process is to participate in those communities, says Rangaswami.

Through its July acquisition of web telephony company Ribbit, BT has gained a foothold in a vibrant open source community, which it hopes will be a hotbed for new products and services in the telephony market. “You never hear of an open source project that has failed,” says Rangaswami.

BT confident relations with NHS will improve over time

The most obvious pain point for BT Global Services is its contracts with the NHS, which form part of the £12bn National Programme for IT.

BT’s involvement has been under the spotlight following problems at one of the main trial sites in London for the vital care records application. And last week, Computing revealed that the NHS had already rebuffed one bid from BT to add the troubled Southern region to its portfolio of deals after the original co ntractor, Fujitsu, had its contract terminated.

But Rangaswami is adamant that the situation will turn round soon.

With any major contract there is some “heavy lifting” that needs to be done at the outset, he says. The profits come from migrating to a standardised software setup, cleaning that up and normalising operations, and that takes time. Rangaswami is confident that both parties will soon see benefits from the deal.

“If you look at all the firms that have been involved in the programme, we’re still in there, we’ve stood to be counted, and I’m very proud of that,” he says.

NYnet brings benefits of high fibre diet to the EU

Dave Bailey — 2008-12-03T13:11:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Wednesday 3 December 2008 at 13:11:00

Broadband initiative to highlight how optical fibre deployment boosts rural businesses and the public sector

The North Yorkshire-based NYnet public-private sector partnership has been chosen as consultants to a major new European Commission initiative known as the B3 Regions: Regions for Better Broadband Connection (PDF).

Designed to improve network connectivity to the internet and other IT systems throughout the European Union, the initiative launches today in York, and will run for 26 months sharing best practice from eight other EU-based partner organisations. It will be funded to the tune of €3.5m.

NYnet said that the initiative seeks to "redress the imbalance and combat the documented social and economic disadvantages of poor internet access by transferring existing good practices, as demonstrated by NYnet, throughout the EU member states".

NYnet was chosen after its implementation of an optical fibre network which allowed service providers to supply broadband to about 330,000 residential customers, and 50,000 small to medium sized firms and small office/home office locations, in the region, covering Craven, Hambleton, Harrogate, Richmondshire, Ryedale, Scarborough, Selby and York.

"We have a ring of 12 core points of presence [POPs] located in North Yorkshire's main market towns, connected by optical fibre with a total bandwidth capacity of 32Gbit/s," said Andy Lister, marketing director at NYnet.

"If we exceed that, I know that Cisco has electronics that can up that to 320Gbit/s on the fibre we have by just swapping out the end electronics devices. "

Lister added that NYnet's 12 POPs are connected to another 28 smaller POPs which could supply bandwidth from 100Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s to public sector sites and business parks, which would then pass on bandwidth between 2Mbit/s and 100Mbit/s to end users.

NYnet would provide better value for public sector services than is currently obtainable, and farm out excess capacity to the private sector, according to the organisation.

Lister explained that one of the problems for rural areas is that businesses pay more for network access than in urban areas. "A business in, say, Scarborough, which is no backwater, could pay between two and eight times more for services than a similar one in Leeds," he said.

Lister added that having good network access benefits the whole community in the long term. "Connecting the rural business parks near our POPs means we can provide connectivity at prices comparable with those in urban areas, which means you can set up a business here in an area which is nice to live in. It also reduces the chances of our graduates leaving North Yorkshire and moving to the south east," he said.

B3 Regions will tackle the difficulties of implementing remote broadband infrastructure, following EU research which found that only 60-70 per cent of remote/rural businesses and households in the EU have broadband, compared with over 90 per cent in urban areas.

"NYnet was chosen because of the extremely innovative way it overcame the infrastructure and access issues related to rural broadband in North Yorkshire, " said B3 Regions head of legal Roberto Moriondo.

"This model could now provide a solution to help resolve the issues of social inclusion in similarly remote areas elsewhere."

NYnet was formed in March 2007 with £4m of start-up cash from the Yorkshire Forward regional development association and £1.1m from the EU.

A backhaul network connecting 12 POPs has been created with tiered service level agreements to providers.

Q&A - ntl:Telewest Business managing director Stephen Beynon

Dave Bailey — 2008-11-28T14:24:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Friday 28 November 2008 at 14:24:00

The cable provider's chief talks about the future of next-generation broadband access in the UK

The debate about how next-generation access (NGA) to broadband is rolled out to residential users has assumed an ever increasing importance. Another Ofcom consultation with industry and users on how the UK should proceed finishes today.

The recent Caio report commissioned by the Treasury and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform concluded that government intervention and subsidies should play no part in NGA delivery.

A key player in the future of broadband Britain is cable provider Ntl:Telewest Business. Stephen Beynon has been managing director of the firm since March 2005, and Computing asked him how he thinks the UK will proceed.

How and who do you think will be bankrolling next-generation access given the current economic climate in the UK?

Stephen Beynon : It will be the private sector, I don't think with the commitments this government currently has, that it can finance a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) commitment. The problem is that you can't just roll out a little bit of fibre – you have to do full deployments.

We've had success with 40Gbit/s across our core network - in fact at we have a growing business supplying backhaul capacity, but the core is not a problem – it's all about access and everybody has this problem. What to do about the last two-and-a-half kilometres?

What we're seeing at the moment is a big unbundling effort by ISPs. Everybody has got their equipment into 1,000 to 1,200 exchanges – but everybody has gone into the same exchanges. So residential customers are being upgraded from, say, 2Mbit/s if you're lucky, to relatively higher network speeds, and this is causing demand to explode in copper networks, which in turn puts pressure on others to upgrade their core networks.

Has a similar problem this affected ntl:Telewest?

Our peak usage has increased 700 per cent with the actual peak being eight o'clock at night. Even at three to four o'clock in the morning it's not the case that there's zero network traffic flowing at all – there's a lot of peer-to-peer traffic at that time.

The DSL operators will have similar times of peak usage and all this is on the existing copper infrastructure. The big question is what happens next. BT provided its answer when it announced a £1.5bn investment, which will be mainly fibre to the kerb and providing 50Mbit/s using VDSL in 2012.

We're launching a 50Mbit/s service this year over co-axial cable from our 38,000 street cabinets, and you have to remember that our business data networks are deployed on the same infrastructure as our consumers.

What are ntl:Telewest's experiences of the trend towards more flexible working in the UK?

I think flexible working - as in home working - is beginning to take off, and we're deploying SSL virtual private networks (VPNs) for firms to help these workers connect to their corporate sites and also have on net voice calls. We have a deployment with Haringey council, who are really pushing this, and it's resulting in better attendance and also lower sick leave for staff.

The recent announcement from Openreach about wholesale price reductions for key access and backhaul packages will ripple through the system, dropping Ethernet business prices, and leading to rapidly rising demand. We currently have double digit quarterly compound growth in existing demand for Ethernet from our own customer base, and it's flexible working that's driving this demand.

There's also another form of flexible working that's driving Ethernet demand, and that's flexibility in the office. A good example is the Heart of Hounslow health centre, which is going to be a flagship polyclinic. This health centre has had a multimillion-pound investment to make sure it is fully utilised – so one day part of the clinic is set up as a child health surgery and the next day the same space will be used to address a different area of healthcare. You can't do that without being able to re-configure the communications network quickly.

Another point about flexible working is that people's increasing use of home technology is leading to a situation that people say: "Why isn't it like that at work." People connecting over video links and using more social networking applications could overstress the current bandwidth with the result that the service available through the local loop network infrastructure might not be up to scratch.

Virgin Media recently launched a mobile broadband service, teaming up with T-Mobile, while BT also launched such a service, piggybacking on Vodafone's network. Why do you think that happened?

A lot of mobile broadband dongles being shipped are for use indoors, rather than business use, and I think 3G is a clear threat to DSL-based fixed-line services. If you have the right coverage, then the challenge is to make sure that your backhaul capabilities are good. Remember a mobile operator has about 13,000 cell sites for UK coverage. Upgrading backhaul connectivity for these sites is a £50m a year problem – putting fibre down is a £1.5bn a year problem. The mobile operators are all engaged in deploying backhaul capacity which will give better mobile broadband speeds, and this will make life tough for the DSL operators.

IT minister calls for Europe to dig for victory in broadband

Dave Bailey — 2008-11-27T12:40:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Thursday 27 November 2008 at 12:40:00

Stephen Carter urges countries to "open up the trenches" in quest for universal access to broadband

The UK's minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, Stephen Carter, has called for a Europe-wide initiative to give citizens universal access to broadband.

Carter has urged Europe to "metaphorically, and also perhaps literally, consider digging or at least opening up the trenches for universal access for broadband".

Speaking ahead of tomorrow's European Council meeting in Brussels on the Electronic Communications & Networks Framework, Carter said that "whether by wire, satellite or any other means, broadband is the crucial underpinning for a competitive global Europe".

While UK communications regulator Ofcom and the government agree that there should be no "two-speed" infrastructure in the UK - such as fibre for densely populated metropolitan areas and "make-do-and-mend" for rural areas - how that is to be achieved is still being discussed. Ofcom's latest consultation exercise concludes on 2 December.

The Caio Review, commissioned in September by the Treasury and the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, concluded that next-generation access involving large optical fibre deployments should be delivered without government subsidies or intervention.

Ofcom leans towards the main push towards next-generation access being provided by the private sector, with larger carriers investing in fibre, led by the incentive of substantial non-interference with such rollouts.

Nortel Networks sheds 1,300 staff

Angelica Mari — 2008-11-11T16:43:00.000Z

Angelica Mari, Computing, Tuesday 11 November 2008 at 16:43:00

Rising tide of red ink prompts further job cuts at manufacturer

Nortel Networks is under further pressure to scale back on spending as it announced a cull of 1,300 staff worldwide less than two months after unveiling its restructuring plans.

Drastic measures to save cash at the telecoms equipment maker include a salary freeze, a "consolidation" of management positions and the suspension of dividends on two classes of preferred shares.

"This is a critical time for Nortel," said chief executive Mike Zafirovski. "These aggressive, necessary and swift actions are focused on allowing Nortel to manage through this tough environment, while at the same time position ourselves to move forward."

Sales at the group plunged 14 per cent to $2.32bn (£1.5bn) in the period ending in September, and $3.41bn (£2.2bn) was lost on accounting charges and poor results due to the downturn.

Back in 2000, Nortel had around 100,000 employees and was briefly the leading global supplier to the telecommunications industry.

After spending levels in the sector started to decline a couple of years later, the company had to terminate operations across a number of product lines, and shed around 60,000 jobs as a result. The company's headcount now stands at approximately 30,000 globally.

Nortel is still willing to sell its Ethernet networks division to raise more capital, and it is understood that the company is in talks with a pool of potential buyers.

Broadcasting calls the shots

David Neal — 2008-11-11T12:21:00.000Z

David Neal, Computing, Tuesday 11 November 2008 at 12:21:00

The growing importance of rich media content in business communications means advances in broadcasting technology have an increasing bearing on enterprise IT, writes David Neal

For years, financial services companies have been regarded as enterprise computing’s chief innovators they had deeper pockets and more clout than anyone else. But even before the current economic turmoil, there were signs of a change on the horizon. Today, thanks to the all-encompassing embrace of IP-based technology, the broadcast industry has become IT’s greatest trailblazer, introducing groundbreaking technologies that are seeping into the mainstream.

The broadcast industry has found itself at the centre of a technology whirlwind that has seen data transmission and storage grow to a hitherto unimaginable scale. And as all manner of organisations are unexpectedly finding themselves cast in the role of broadcaster, business leaders are starting to ponder the lessons they might learn from the sector.

At the eye of this storm is digital video. Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, told delegates at last month’s MIPCOM media industry conference in Cannes that the impact of video on business will only get bigger. “People want solutions for searching, discovering, watching, and interacting with video,” he said. “The proliferation of content will continue exponentially. And as methods for uploading, aggregating, personalising and distributing digital content develop, content owners will find new business opportunities.”

That has profound implications for those involved in enterprise IT. The consequences of widespread use of video is apparent at the BBC. Today, it manages millions of hours of digital material that it needs to be able to store, search and retrieve. Its Digital Media Initiative (DMI) will see the broadcaster move to delivering content on demand, through whatever means the consumer chooses, whether that is via a television, the internet, or even over a mobile phone. It is one of the biggest technology programmes ever initiated at the organisation, says BBC chief information officer Keith Little.

While DMI may be in a league of its own in terms of scale, the challenges it has thrown up are likely to be familiar to an increasing number of enterprise IT leaders, Little says, especially in the areas of storage and data management.

“Media asset management storage is something that I am increasingly asked about by lots of corporations that find themselves having to deal with lots of rich media content,” says Little. “They ask us how they can deal with it, how we manage it, and what vendors they should go for.”

Little says he has been contacted by businesses of all sizes that are building up stocks of rich media content, and looking for ways to manage it intelligently. “There are many different types of firms asking us how they get their audio/video content to audiences, and that has increased over the past few years. Corporates are also having lots of conversations about how they should communicate internally,” he says.

For many organisations, their first experience of broadcasting is through the adoption of videoconferencing. And with vendors such as HP and Cisco offering high-end solutions that use life-size broadcasts, a multitude of high-definition video cameras and CD-quality audio, the network overhead is significant.

Alongside the use of high-end videoconferencing, enterprises are increasingly comfortable with creating their own video content for promotional purposes. Traditional video-editing tools, once solely the preserve of broadcasters, are now routinely in use in other firms.

“In the past, broadcast technology was typically bespoke,” says Little. “Now we have technology solutions and kit to do things that replace those bespoke production techniques and facilities. Look at Apple’s Final Cut you can make an entire programme with that. Ten years ago that was absolutely unheard of. It is about how you get that multimedia content out to the audience.”

At Welsh-language broadcaster S4C, the impact of digital video has been profound, says Arshad Rasul, director of broadcast and distribution. “What the IT industry considers as ultimate performance will often barely do in broadcasting,” he says. “More than 15 years ago we were moving digital video around transmission areas at 270Mbit/s. Now that 100Mbit/s is normal in IT and Gigabit Ethernet is being adopted in newer installations, broadcasting has been driven to move ahead again and is having to handle 1.5Gbit/s or 3Gbit/s for high-definition video. Such high data rates lead ultimately to exceptionally large file sizes and very large storage requirements.”

Like Little, Rasul has seen increasing use of off-the-shelf systems. “Broadcasters have traditionally had to develop many of their own hardware and software applications because of the specialist requirements in their field. More recently over the past five to 10 years this has changed dramatically,” he says.

“We are now more likely to use standard IT products wherever possible as it is more cost effective. Standard IT technology has developed to the point where it can now often meet many of our needs, and the pace of change means proprietary technology can quickly become obsolete.”

However, there are still areas where broadcasters are forced to innovate. “One of the areas that we as broadcasters are working on is improving ways of delivering video to and from locations. This often involves video compression and deploying high-speed circuits,” says Rasul.

S4C is rolling out a new network that uses compression to make the task of sourcing material from production companies easier.

The pace of technological developments in the industry is likely to increase, says Rasul. “It is a very exciting time. We are still in the early stages of the digital switchover from terrestrial analogue TV. This is a massive undertaking,” he says.

Furthermore, broadcasters are increasing the volume of high-definition programming they commission and transmit. “The other big change is the move to tapeless workflows and transmission. This is where the programmes are handled, stored and played out from servers and not tape machines. This poses all sorts of new challenges,” Rasul says.

But unlike its counterparts in the financial services industry, where any small advance was jealously guarded, Rasul believes broadcasting’s breakthroughs will be quickly shared. “Because of the specialist nature of broadcast, there is a lot of sharing of knowledge and experience. We find that this is invaluable in avoiding pitfalls that may have been experienced by others, and in avoiding re-inventing a wheel that is already working well somewhere else,” he says.

Case study: HSBC

Martin Courtney — 2008-11-11T12:01:00.000Z

Martin Courtney, Computing, Tuesday 11 November 2008 at 12:01:00

HSBC is banking on unified communications to remove its interoperability issues

HSBC is in the first phase of rolling out unified communications (UC) across its entire global business – a project that will eventually encompass 360,000 desktop and laptop PCs, more than 250,000 telephone extensions and 9,500 offices in 85 countries.

The initial stage will see Nortel’s ACE UC platform deployed to about 1,000 staff at the bank’s Canary Wharf site, says HSBC group head of telecommunications, Tim Cureton.

“It is about fitting them out to be better able to lead their groups and interact with their regions by taking all communications – voice, videoconferencing, IM, SMS and mobile telephony – and unifying them and the way that users control them,” he says.

For HSBC though, UC also means taking all its extensive and varied underlying communications architecture across its global network, regardless of manufacturer, and making sure that employees can use it to effectively communicate without being plagued by interoperability issues.

“In addition to Nortel, we have telephony systems from Cisco, Siemens and Avaya, as well as little pockets of Fujitsu, NEC and Ericsson, and even some Alcatel Lucent knocking about somewhere,” says Cureton. “We also use Tandberg for video, and BT for trading platforms and switches, and there is a large contact centre system serving 44,000 agents.”

HSBC started to evaluate various UC solutions back in 2006. But only two products could provide the sort of integrated voice and video over both IP and TDM equipment it required, as well as compatibility with Lotus Sametime and the ability to embed UC and computer telephony integration (CTI) functions into other applications.

“We wanted to control functions at the desktop through Active Directory (AD), but also to comms-enable in-house applications such as Siebel, ERM, PeopleSoft and HR systems. Nortel’s ACE is the only software suite that enables us to do that,” says Cureton.

HSBC has not disclosed how much it will spend on deploying Nortel ACE, but Cureton is confident that return on investment will come from allying UC to the bank’s ongoing uniformity, integration and standardisation programme.

“UC is a difficult business case – people can talk about saving 30 minutes of time per day per employee and put a value on that, but that is not really the point,” he says.

“The reason we are interested is to join up the company to enable it to behave as a single organisation by having the ability to dial by name, click to conference, buddy lists, some presence awareness and hotdesking for executives. The only way to justify our stock price premium is to act as though we are all in one room, far more so than if we were a domestic bank.”

Stay connected through converged comms

Martin Courtney — 2008-11-11T11:50:00.000Z

Martin Courtney, Computing, Tuesday 11 November 2008 at 11:50:00

A growing number of firms are driving up productivity and creating new business opportunities by using IP-based technologies to break down communication barriers, writes Martin Courtney

The initial promise of converged communications was that it would bring down operating costs dramatically. The saving on phone calls alone was seen in some quarters as justification enough to embark on a convergence programme. But one additional benefit, which may have previously been overlooked, is today proving to be the more compelling driver – a converged IP-based network turns out to be the bedrock for new innovative and effective methods of keeping colleagues in touch.

Unified communications (UC) combines multiple forms of IP-based communication under a single interface, potentially yielding significant productivity gains, as colleagues are able to choose to interact through the method of communication from voice and instant messaging to videoconferencing that suits them best, at any given time. This ability to define a preferred contact method is commonly described as “presence”.

But to enter this brave new world of corporate communication is a huge undertaking. The mechanics of simply getting an IP network to support voice calls reliably can challenge even the most adept IT leader.

Today, there is a wide range of UC-related technology available to buyers, though relatively few organisations have yet taken advantage of all the options it offers. Global giants such as Shell and HSBC are among those at the vanguard of UC deployment. Both are engaged in a staged rollout of comprehensive UC features that will take years to complete.

But others are taking a more cautious approach, perhaps starting with a basic voice over IP (VoIP) rollout, and examining their options from there, says Joshua Holbrook, director of enterprise research at analyst Yankee Group.

Much of that caution is understandable, he says. Given that UC is a term that encompasses so many different technologies, IT leaders have wildly different perceptions of what is involved.

“There is no uniform definition for UC because it is an amalgam of different technology. Ask 10 people to define what comprises UC and you will get 10 different answers. However, the most common UC bundles include functions such as unified messaging, instant messaging (IM) and webconferencing,” says Holbrook.

While many IT chiefs see unified communications as a simple marriage of voice, data and video, they often overlook the existence and potential of innovative IP applications based on Web 2.0 that can make a difference to their business, says Tony Collett, director at independent communications consultancy Azzurri Communications.

“It is worth remembering that Generation Y, who have grown up knowing only Web 2.0, email, SMS, wireless access everywhere and anywhere, will be expecting these applications in the workplace to work in the most efficient manner,” says Collett.

The arrival of Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) product in 2007 was perhaps the tipping point for unified communication. Established vendors such as Nortel, Cisco, Avaya, Siemens, Ericsson and Alcatel Lucent, long used to selling telephony solutions based around private branch exchanges (PBXs), network switches and IP phones, were suddenly confronted with a software-only solution able to run on standard servers and link into whatever PBX an organisation was already running.

“Microsoft does view the world differently than traditional telephony vendors it sees the convergence of all collaboration happening on the desktop, and that informs how workers will interface with their products,” says Holbrook.

“The phone is an afterthought for them whereas Cisco and Avaya still see the phone as a critically important interface for users. Desktop phones offer fat margins for Cisco and Avaya so they have no interest in seeing workers migrate to desktop-centric communication.”

OCS has proved a disruptive technology nevertheless. If it has not quite forced rival telephony suppliers to change their spots completely, it has certainly prompted them to accelerate their adoption of software-based UC products.

A good example comes from oil company Shell, which is rolling out UC across its entire organisation, though it anticipates that a deployment on this scale will take a few years to complete. Shell is using Microsoft’s OCS linked to Active Directory (AD) in conjunction with Nortel IP phones to deliver UC to more than 100,000 users in 130 countries.

“Some people are at different stages than others some have voice and audio/video/webconferencing already, while others have just IM and presence,” says Shell Group IT architect Johan Krebbers. “The benefit is that people have a single user interface to show presence, so that if they decide to contact others within the company by IM, voice or videoconferencing, they do not have to worry about looking for the phone number, they can just go by name and decide which form of communication they want to use.”

But not all IT leaders find the arguments for using a software-based approach to UC so straightforward. The West Midlands Fire Service is still weighing up its options.

It recently migrated to a Session Initiation Protocol- (SIP-) compliant Siemens HiPath telephony system that delivers IP telephony to about 1,800 operational and 600 support staff at 40 fire stations, two headquarters and a couple of administration sites across the West Midlands region.

For the moment, the implementation supports fixed and mobile VoIP between desktop and mobile phones, but Sean Kelly, West Midlands Fire Service ICT manager, says he is looking to make use of more advanced convergence options in the future.

“We are just about to implement unified messaging and are assessing the options. The primary considerations are Exchange OCS and Siemens HiPath Expression, and we are looking to make a decision within the next few months,” he says.

One of the drivers for the West Midlands Fire Service’s planned introduction of unified messaging is the need to accommodate the growing number of remote and home workers it must support.

The service has about 80 middle managers on the operations side, on duty 24/7, who use business-type dashboard management tools to ensure appropriate staffing and resource levels.

“They all use their mobiles quite a bit and we are beginning to roll out some of the smarter follow-me type services as well,” says Kelly. “As an emergency service, we tend to favour evolution not revolution, and roll out in a low-tech way initially. We try to match individual business requirements, but if somebody only needs IP telephony and intranet access, that is what we deploy.”

Digital entertainment specialist The Licensing Agency (TLA) is also using mobile convergence to serve employees based in different locations, having deployed software-based IP telephony product GoHello to route calls between desktop and mobile phones.

“The most important thing for us is that the system stays up and running and people do not have to spend a lot of time learning the software,” says Erik Haugen, TLA director of international sales.

“We don’t use the Exchange Server integration yet, but we are planning to integrate the system with Salesforce.com, then link in diary information from all our users so they can see who is not available because they are in a meeting and so on.”

One of the factors holding back UC adoption is a lack of a clear business case, says Yankee Group’s Holbrook, especially in the current economic climate where available budget can be hard to find.

“UC is a product that companies find intriguing and growth is strong vendors report annual revenue growth of 30-50 per cent,” he says.

“However, that belies the underlying truth that UC is a tough sell on a standalone basis. UC deployments are typically rolled into already existing netw ork upgrade plans, and it is the network improvements that drive the purchase of UC, not the other way round. Furthermore, in an environment where capital spending is frozen, selling UC will be like trying to sell ice to an Eskimo it ain’t gonna happen.”

Cost savings derived from lower phone bills as staff explore new ways of communicating are often cited as the primary benefit, but these in fact vary widely according to individual circumstance and not guaranteed in every case.

Rather, says Holbrook, the one consistent thread is the productivity enhancements gained from colleagues and business partners being able to reach each other faster and with less effort.

“The primary pull for UC is productivity enhancement. Employees who can access information more quickly can make decisions more quickly, thereby improving organisational efficiency,” he says.

However, those productivity gains could seem small beer when the next generation of UC technologies takes root, suggests Holbrook. “The biggest impact UC can have is through communications-enabled business processes [CEBP] that hold the promise of significant efficiencies,” he says.

CEBP will allow companies to use this new wave of IP-based communications to radically improve their operations, he argues, enabling business leaders to extract every possible drop of value from the communications that course through the corporate network. “CEBP is UC 2.0, whereas we are still living in a 1.0 world. There are some powerful examples of CEBP deployments, but it is far from a mass-market solution,” he says.

Holbrook suggests organisations should integrate UC into existing IT applications and deploy to highly mobile workers that stand to gain the most from UC functionality first.

“Communications-enabled business processes have the potential to eliminate human latency, improve customer service and drive additional revenue. The quickest and easiest way to realise a hard return on investment with UC is to integrate it into the workflow of employees,” he says.

It is also important to create UC bundles that are suited for different employee segments. “Deliver the right suite of UC services to the right employees. A uniform deployment across the entire organisation results in wasted capital because certain features will go unused by certain worker segments,” he says.

Next week: The final part of our guide to converged communications examines the risks associated with deployments.

What is unified communications?

Unified communications (UC) includes many different elements, but emphasises the provision of multiple IP-based communication methods within a single interface. It also relies on presence-based information to provide an indication of whether or not the person being contacted is able to respond.

Another key aspect is the ability to embed IP communications functions into other applications, allowing users to contact people using a single click from within the same interface. Microsoft’s Office Communications Server allows users to access functions from within standard Office applications such as Word or Excel, for example.

The most common elements of UC include VoIP/IP telephony, instant messaging, email, presence, videoconferencing, webconferencing, collaboration and whiteboarding.

Wanted: a viable model for fibre

Dave Bailey — 2008-10-02T06:00:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Thursday 2 October 2008 at 06:00:00

While other European countries are pressing ahead with fibre rollouts, progress in the UK is being held back as the debate over who will foot the bill drags on, writes Dave Bailey

As high-speed broadband access becomes ever-more important to economic wellbeing, the UK is facing a critical decision on how, and who, will roll out a national next-generation network to carry voice and data over optical fibre rather than copper wiring.

The big question is whether a massive government-funded rollout should be pursued to guarantee that this time everybody in the country gets internet access – rather than just those close to a broadband-enabled exchange.

There is no shortage of expertise analysing the problem – the challenge is deciding who will pay.

The body tasked with overseeing a transition to a UK fibre network is nominally the regulator, Ofcom. However, the government also set up the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) in 2001, “to advise on the development and implementation of the UK’s broadband strategy”.

And in February, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform commissioned a report from former Cable & Wireless chief Francesco Caio to review the barriers to investment in next-generation access (NGA), which was published last month.

The Caio report made a series of recommendations, the first being the development of “a framework for delivery of future broadband, setting out how the government would like to see the market or infrastructure develop, to provide all parties with a clear sense of direction”.

But the second recommendation grabbed all the headlines – that the government should not publicly fund a large rollout of optical fibre across the UK, but instead carry out a set of policies that would “stop short of major intervention, but which might lower the cost of deployment for operators and facilitate investments in NGA nationally and locally”.

The Caio review was significant, said BSG chief executive Antony Walker. “It points towards multiple local fibre subnets emerging, like those we’ve seen in Scandanavia and the Netherlands, rather than a single monolithic fibre network,” he said.

But major concerns remain over where the funding for national rollout will come from – a figure estimated by the BSG to be anywhere between £5.1bn and £28.8bn.

Yankee Group senior enterprise analyst Benoit Felten said there are problems with relying on the private sector. “Fibre business models don’t look very sexy – they have limited revenues and high costs,” he said.

Ofcom last week started a consultation on progress towards next-generation broadband, but is treading carefully on the funding issue.

“It’s for the government to decide where public money is spent and we can provide advice on that, but we think it’s up to the private sector to invest where they see fit, at the right time and in the right location. There’s not sufficient evidence to justify widespread national investment,” said a spokeswoman.

But BSG’s Walker said the watchdog’s tone has changed. “Previously, Ofcom was usually focused on principles and conceptual issues, but its latest report concentrates more on practical implementations – it’s a framework for action,” he said.

The urgency of making a decision was highlighted by the UK’s standing in a league table of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) rollouts shown at the FTTH Council Asia Pacific Conference in July.

European nations such as Sweden and Norway registered more than five per cent of their population connected with FTTH. But the report covered only countries whose fibre penetration was above one per cent. The UK was absent from the table entirely.

Bringing fibre to the home

Cable provider Virgin Media announced in May trials of 40Gbit/s network core links, to prepare for upgrades to customer bandwidth.
In July, BT announced plans to invest £1.5bn in fibre connections for new housing developments, which initially means a download speed of 100Mbit/s.
Ofcom has indicated a favourable regulatory framework would be put in place, which would not interfere with BT’s deployment plans, and a share buyback announced in May by BT has been suspended in favour of its next-generation network investment.
BT has also said it will provide these new services on a wholesale basis to ISPs, and a similar commitment from Virgin Media to do the same with its network infrastructure might be required by Ofcom.