January 2009 Archives

No argument for me: Green IT is critical important for Profit, People and Planet..

There're three problems with Cisco's EnergyWise.

Firstly, EnergyWise is a security breach waiting to happen. Do you want your network to be powering down your call server, or contact center or security cameras? I think not.

Secondly, the EnergyWise announcement once again, goes against the principle that apps should run on IP networks not be slave to them. Do a search on 'energy management software' and you'll get 34 million hits. Sounds like EnergyWise is really a lock-in strategy which enterprises would be wise to avoid.

Thirdly, painting Cisco routers and switches with EnergyWise paint doesn't make them any more energy efficient. In fact third party tests prove that Nortel switches consistently have lower energy consumption needs than Cisco's.... by a whopping 40%. The Cisco Energy Tax lives on, month after month after month.

Going to the store in a gas guzzler to buy energy efficient light bulbs doesn't make your car any more energy efficient!

But seriously, I agree with Cisco that the only way to make a Cisco network green is to turn it off; where I disagree is that if you want to be EnergyWise don't turn it back on again!

Be energy wise. Make green IT real, as did Office Max, one of the world's largest office product supply companies, who this week announced a major win for Nortel.

Hyperconnectivity includes all sorts of mobility modes and networking technologies.

I recently heard a BBC interview with Giovanni Pau of UCLA. He was discussing an innovative wireless mesh networking technology that he has deployed in a number of vehicles across the UCLA campus.

What he demonstrated was car-to-car video conferencing system, though perhaps this isn't the best example of how this technology could be used. The protocol that made this all happen across standard WiFi radios was what he called SWARM, a Swarming Protocol for vehicular Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks.

You might be aware that Nortel is partner in the MIT-initiated One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, and in fact was a major contributor in the area of ad hoc wireless mesh networking.

Hyperconnectivity will be enabled by a whole range of technologies, many existing and some yet to be invented.

The Triple Bottom Line (3BL) captures an expanded spectrum of CXO criteria for measuring organizational success: Profit, People and Planet".

This comes from some UN work and is being adopted by governments around the world, perhaps even in your community.

It's both an accounting principle and a general philosophy.

40% reduction in energy consumption with Nortel Ethernet campus and data center solutions is a significant step towards the Triple Bottom Line.

Thirteen people were killed on Aug 1 2007, when an Interstate bridge collapsed in Minneapolis. This was just another wake up call of the aging of the highway infrastructure in US and elsewhere.

But there's a plan.

Many of the 600,000 bridges in the US will be equipped with wireless sensors to monitor loads, stresses, strains and cracks, and changes in chemical and electrical properties related to deterioration (e.g., corrosion and fatigue).

This is just another example of the Hyperconnectivity mega-trend.

Presence is an important feature of unified communications (UC), but is it really enough?

I say no. Presence is only an element of context.

Here's what I consider to be the four key dimensions of contextually enhanced UC:
> Identity/role: Knowledge of the identity and respective roles of individuals in a work flow is essential to any context-aware communications. The preferences, interests and other attitudes of a user may have a great influence on how information supply is to be carried out and what information is to be provided.

> Presence/Reachability: This is information on the state of the user, and includes physical activity and applications being accessed. It also includes the disposition of the user reflecting his or her priorities at a particular time. Reachability denotes the sum of all communication media a person has at his/her disposal and is able to use at a given point in time.

> Location: Location is about where, in which direction and how fast. It also includes information on the surroundings, such as people and objects/devices near an entity.

> Situation/Activity/Event: This includes the business process needs for reduced time to X, various entities in the decision making process, the urgency of the matter at hand, and any relevant real-time and/or historical content, potentially delivered as notifications and alerts. Even external conditions (e.g., traffic or weather) may impact decision-making activities.

Contextually enhanced unified communications has the potential of delivering substantial added values for end users as well as for communications-enabled applications.

What do you think?

It's old news now. Last week, Nortel filed for creditor protection to undertake a business and financial restructuring. This process will put Nortel on sound financial footing once and for all, and represents the fastest and most effective means to do this.

Some people confuse what's going on (seeking creditor protection), with going out of business or liquidation as is happening, for example, with Circuit City.

Brian Riggs of Current Analysis does a good job distinguishing, between US Chapter 11 Bankruptcy (what Nortel is undertaking), and Chapter 7 Bankruptcy (what is happening to Circuit City). He cites the example of Kmart which filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in Jan02, concluded that process in May03 and went on to acquire rival Sears, Roebuck and Co in 2004/05.

For Nortel, it has sufficient liquidity to run its operations and restructure its business while continuing to deliver innovation to customers.

The end point? Nortel plans to emerge more focused, financially sound and competitive.

Hyperconnectivity drives powering needs as everything and everyone gets connected and as server farms expand to meet the demand.

A to-be-published Nemertes survey report finds that 23% of US CIO have a green program. One element is of course improving energy efficiency of the underlying IT infrastructure.

One societal goal is to reduce energy demands, as we have done in our Ethernet switches (would you believe 40% less energy consumed compared to Cisco?).

Another societal goal is to expand the use of clean renewal energy sources.

Ocean waves are a major opportunity. I can personally attest to the power of waves of the mega variety (would you believe 20 meters or 60 feet high). I experienced just such waves when my cruise ship went through a category 3 hurricane off the coast of Argentina (the first hurricane to be ever observed by satellite in the southern Atlantic). They kept coming and coming- clean, renewable and powerful (even breaking the window in one cabin!)

A major milestone has been reached with the first commercial wave energy generator being commissioned off the coast of Portugal. (Pelamis Wave Power). Within a year, it will be generating 22.5MW of clean renewable power.

Imagine putting a self-winding watch in a bottle in the middle of the ocean. It will run indefinitely.

Like many, you probably have a more powerful PC at home than at work. The Games computers your kids are using have much more wallop than your PC, certainly for multimedia. Podcasting, Wikis and iPhones, introduced for consumers, are finding their way into enterprises.

Meanwhile, as a business/IT person, you're faced with the economic realities of the day including: meeting budget challenges; retaining existing customers and acquiring new ones; keeping your remote staff skill sets up to the task; and providing more effective collaboration tools to your distributed knowledge and information workers.

So you may ask yourself: how can an enterprise leverage consumer-driven technologies to solve business problems in today's tough environment?

Nortel is one of the first to do just this- leveraging gaming technology for business.

We just announced a tight partnership with Epic Games. Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is the current holder and three-time consecutive winner of Game Developer magazine's Best Engine Front Line Award. Epic's breakthrough game, "Gears of War," sold 5 million copies and won over 30 Game of the Year awards. The Unreal gaming engine provides an array of core technologies, content creation tools, and support infrastructure essential to Nortel's web.alive application.

I highly recommend you listen to Nortel's Arn Hyndman and Epic's Mark Rein discuss this industry-setting partnership.

We are thinking outside of the box by creating revolutionary communications experiences to improve the way businesses interact with their employees, partners, and customers.

The Lenovo "eLounge" virtual store is being showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week at the Venetian Hotel's AquaKnox.

But most of us business folks don't get to go to CES, so check out Lenovo's eLounge virtual store yourself.

As Ajit Sivadasan, VP Global eCommerce, Lenovo, one of the largest PC manufacturers and a ecommerce pioneer says: "Nortel's web.alive technology could help provide a potential next step in improving the online shopping experience for Lenovo's customers by allowing them to take a virtual tour of our online store, including browsing through Lenovo products, talk with our staff, look at video clips and meet other shoppers in an immersive 3D environment."

Imagine buying your next PC on-line and inviting your techie friends (wherever they are) to the eLounge virtual store to help you get the machine that best fits your needs and budget.

I've talked about web.alive before. It is a collaborative, browser-based virtual world application for enterprise use that provides an immersive, interactive and web integrated world with 3D voice and graphics. Web.alive facilitates customer interactions over the web in real time.

It won't stop there, we are also engaging customer in using web.alive to bring new dimensions to business collaboration and virtual training.

Innovation lives at Nortel, revolutionizing the communications experience not only for your customers, but also for your business at large.

This was one of the questions raised late last year in an interview I did with Greg Galitzine.

My response:
A suite of software applications will deliver unified communications, which I view as "Communications integrated to optimize business processes". UC not only unifies the user experience by integrating all forms of communications with desktop applications (dominated by MSFT and IBM), but also unifies the IT infrastructure through software. UC multi-vendor environments will be brought together through communications integration software and embedded into workflows for:
• revenue growth and more engaging customer service
• enhanced user communications and business effectiveness
• richer collaboration and enhanced group effectiveness
• better asset utilization and accelerated business processes.

In two words: Open UC.

Sam Palmisano, IBM Chairman and CEO. recently spoke on the reality of global integration. While he didn't explicitly mention Hyperconnectivity, he did say that "we are all now connected--economically, technically and socially."

Hyperconnectivity not only brings together people, but also the physical and digital worlds. This transformation can help us manage assets better, whether these assets are energy, or fresh water, or a supply chain or the delivery of healthcare. It can also help work smarter together, avoiding travel and associated environmental impacts.

But things don't change just because the technology exists.

The good news, according to Palmisano, is that citizens, governments, small business and large enterprises alike are all starting to see the need to make it happen.

On commenting on the speech, Frank Dzubeck raised the question: will technology drive global recovery?

I sure hope so and with that positive thought I wish you all the best for 2009.