July 2008 Archives

London put sustainability at the heart of its bid for the 2012 Games, framed by the concept of 'Towards a One Planet Olympics'.

earth_satellite.jpg

This was derived from the World Wildlife Federation BioRegional concept of 'One Planet LivingĀ®' , which is based on the fact that globally mankind are consuming resources at a faster
rate than the planet can replenish them. If everyone lived as most Europeans do, we would
need three planets; if as most North Americans do, then five!

In announcing Nortel as its Official Network Infrastructure Partner for the 2012 Games, the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games also declared Nortel as its Official Sustainability Partner.

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Banking on the Olympics

July 30, 2008 7:43 AM

Paul Deighton used to be European Chief Operating Officer for Goldman Sachs. So he's well aware of the challenges of running a big business.

Now he's taken on a big job as the CEO of the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), responsible to deliver all operational plans for the 2012 Games.

Andy Platten also used to work in IT for a very large bank.

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Hyperconnectivity A Sport?

July 28, 2008 4:30 PM | 1 Comment

The first "speedcabling" competition recently took place in Los Angeles. This new geek game is based on unraveling the rat's nest of wires found beneath most computer desks, as people connect an assortment of storage, scanner, printer, camera etc to their PCs.

But this may be a short-lived "sport" as Wireless USB, complemented by WiFi and Bluetooth, emerges as a solution to everyone's below-the-desk Hyperconnectivity challenges.

Briefly Wireless USB (technically USB3.0) is a hub and spoke technology, creating a cluster of up to 127 devices. To achieve up to 480Mbps (equivalent to USB 2.0) at distances up to 3 meters, Wireless USB uses low power ultra-wideband (UWB) transmission over an extremely wide spectrum (technically from 3.1 to 10.5 GHz), and will coexist peacefully with other wireless technologies such as WiFi and Bluetooth.

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For data centers, virtualization of network services over an IP fabric, simplifies data center design and management of networks to lower operational expenses, while also capping the cost of expanding available services and dramatically reducing energy consumption. In addition, optical SANs between data centers provide a very high level of disaster recovery and business continuity.

Although Fibre Channel (FC) is predominant in the data center today, the trend towards compute virtualization and 10GigE servers will drive the move to Ethernet as the preferred interconnect for storage. In fact, "2008 and 2009 will be the peak years for FC switch sales thanks to server virtualization and blade servers," according to Richard Villars, vice president, Storage Systems, at IDC.

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If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. "Hyperconnectivity is a megatrend whereby everything and everyone that can benefit from being connected will be connected."

The other side of the Hyperconnectivity coin, and to great degree a key enabler, is the megatrend that everything (not yet everyone!) that can benefit from being digitized will be digitized.

I see three reasons why these are two sides to the Hyperconnectivity coin.
1) Once content (music, books, photos/painting, medical records, movies) are digitized, add some headers to this digitized content and you have packetized data ready to go.
2) Once content such as audio and video are streamed over the network, then it is trivial to store them for later retrieval, analysis and replay.

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IBM's Websphere is 10 years old.

Back in 1998, there were 25 developers. Today, there are 6000 across IBM and another 10,000 developer partners (including Nortel), serving some 100,000 WebSphere customers.

The initial focus was on rapid development of web apps supporting HTTP, Servlet and Java environments.

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Never Too Old To Be Hyperconnected

July 17, 2008 9:04 AM

Olive Riley, an 108 year old with 70 entries on her blog, died recently in Australia. Olive, who started blogging just last year, has seen a century of technology development go by. Just imagine Olive's technology world when she was 15 (in the photo).

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When I tried to get on her blog, I got a screen stating 'due to overwhelming demand this page is currently not available". Not that surprising, as her blog was ranked 7000th earlier this year, out of 80 million blogs (or 'blobs' as she called them) worldwide.

Thanks Olive for reminding us all that you're never too old to get hyperconnected.

A recent Goldman Sachs survey of IT executives found that "17% expect to support iPhone 3G in the next year".

How should we interpret this result?

It says that iPhone will join RIM and Windows Mobile for the hearts and wallets of enterprise users. If the latest iPhone meets IT security and management requirements, it surely will.

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Service Agility Demands Openness

July 15, 2008 7:37 AM

The focus of this blog is hyperconnectivity and the enterprise, and that has to include your customers.

Matt Clark, a Principal with Deloitte Financial Advisory Services, had an interesting perspective. What he observes is that consumer experiences with mobile apps "will only increase consumers' expectations to be in control of the decision-making when it comes to the services they want." (Sorry the URL has gone.)

Nothing can be closer to the truth! And the expectations will extend to whatever service delivery channel the consumer prefers: in person, over the phone, through a mobile device or from his/her PC.

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Even Memory Gets Hyperconnected

July 14, 2008 8:19 AM

Well I have talked about Hyperconnectivity and the fact that everything will get connected, but I hadn't thought of memory cards. Here's a memory card with integrated WiFi for transferring your favorite photos.

Eye-Fi -home.jpg

Just in from the field: "I had a customer call yesterday and said they wanted to take a closer look at Nortel because they're getting crushed on Cisco maintenance fees for voice. They have about 3,000 IP phones and are paying $400K per year in software maintenance ALONE. They're up to 22 servers supporting 3,000 phones, messaging, and a contact center application."

Looks like the Cisco strategy is to lowball on the hardware (both from a capacity and price perspective) and then hit the customer hard on the back end with more servers, more software maintenance fees and of course the Cisco Energy Tax.

I'm telling customers they need to look at a 5 year TCO with product, maintenance and energy to show the entire picture.

Then there are no surprises and you can apply the savings to business enhancing investments.

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Deloitte has chosen Nortel as a global managed services provider for telepresence, video conferencing and associated multimedia services, across 130 sites globally. It's a big deal.

The business value of these capabilities includes lower travel cost, increased productivity and reduced carbon footprint. This value comes as much from the technology as it does from the service dimension.

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I have spoken extensively about the Cisco Energy Tax. It's all part of our commitment to give you the facts on what your Cisco network is really costing you (up to 64% more according to a new Tolly Group report) and how Nortel can lower your recurring monthly energy bill substantially.

Now the Nortel Energy Efficiency Calculator has gone public. You can calculate your savings for yourself, based on your specific environment. Just click here and start calculating.

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78% of Nortel Users: UC by 2010

July 2, 2008 8:35 AM

This was one result of an independent survey of 800 Nortel customers.

Another interesting point is that 93% wanted Unified Communications (UC) to be closely integrated (not just bolted on) with their desktop environments, meaning predominantly Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes.

This confirms our strategy of creating a unique Innovative Communications Alliance with Microsoft (almost 2 years ago and with over a million seat licenses), and integrating the Nortel Agile Communications Environment (ACE), our framework for Communications Enabled Applications, with Sametime and Lotus Notes under the Nortel-IBM alliance.

Another data point was the fact that 38% of respondents considered 'proven interoperability with existing IT investments' as one of their top three challenges.

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