Personal Hotspots

October 3, 2008 3:36 PM

Hyperconnectivity is upon us, and now here's your WiFi-To-Go, a PDA-sized EVDO router that fits in your pocket.

Cradlepoint Personal Hotspot.jpg

As long as you're in your cell provider's EVDO coverage area, you just power on (via an AC adaptor or maybe a DC plug for your car) and you can connect any WiFi device to the Internet.

Pretty neat idea- this one from Cradlepoint, but a number of other vendors have solutions addressing variations on this theme.

Imagine how popular you would be with your friends if you created your personal hotspot with free access!

Create your own scenario.

Un-unified Communications From Cisco

October 1, 2008 11:14 PM | 1 Comment

Cisco UC box2-small.jpg

....and, given a chance, they'll box you in too!

Nortel Brings IT on

October 1, 2008 7:31 AM

The highlights of any CIO summits and customer advisory councils that I have participated in, has invariably been listening to and learning from CIOs exchanging views on everything from green IT to alignment with business priorities. The truth is that peer CIOs are by far the best source of knowledge and expertise, especially in the area of business transformation.

Now Nortel has taken a significant step to broadly share its real-world IT experience in operating a global enterprise, using Nortel technology and services.

In addition to business cases and implementation guides, the 'Nortel on Nortel' site includes free downloads of software utilities used in-house by Nortel IT to better manage their network.

Continue Reading...

Wireless To Power Hyperconnectivity

September 29, 2008 10:15 AM | 1 Comment

Hyperconnectivity and particularly mobility is largely enabled or encumbered by battery power. Help is at hand from an unlikely source.

Something called Wireless Resonant Energy Link (WREL), a concept championed by MIT.

Intel Corp. recently demonstrated this technology at their Developer Forum.

Continue Reading...

Cisco Webex Disconnect

September 26, 2008 7:57 AM | 2 Comments

This just in from a friend, JohnT, who is a Technical Director at a UK SI.

"Last night I tried to attend the Cisco Collaboration Summit. Just to be clear, this was a Web conference run by one of the world's biggest conferencing vendor using their own in-house Webex conferencing service to announce enhancements to their UC and conference offerings. We had to pre-register so you would think that they could plan for it to go smoothly.

Continue Reading...

UC without effective presence and IM is like telephony without dial-tone.

So here we have Cisco spending your contributions (remember the Cisco Energy Tax) to acquire Jabber to give them IM for their un-unified UC story. Does this result in a 41st server to deliver UC?

UC has to unify both the end user experience AND the underlying infrastructure, and I don't see Jabber moving Cisco towards the latter objective.

The EnergySmart Hospitals Initiative was launched last July and aims to help improve efficiency in existing buildings by 20%! This is a laudable objective, since more than 50% of institutions reported double digit energy cost increases... and lights out operation is not an option.

Part of that saving can be achieved by switching to Nortel healthcare solutions, which use 40% less energy, while delivering 7x the resilience of those from Cisco.

This is a win-win for energy conscious hospitals who also demand clinical-grade networks.

CERN LHC Not Reliant on Core Routers

September 18, 2008 2:26 PM

In a recent blog, John Roese, Nortel CTO, highlighted the IT infrastructure behind CERN's Large Haldron Collider, 'the single largest machine ever built and the biggest scientific experiment ever conducted on the planet'. This 'grid' will distribute, process and analyze some 15 petabytes each year.

What John failed to mention is that the primary network behind CERN is not based on core routers, as is done in the Internet at large and in conventional research and education networks. Networking researchers concluded that core routers just couldn't meet the latency demands for the huge files that needed to be shipped around and for the grid computing applications (i.e.

Continue Reading...

The challenges of Hyperconnectivity are clear: lower personal productivity and unsatisfied employees .... ineffective distributed teams and missed milestones and/or poorer quality of deliverables ..... on-hold business processes, slowed down by not being able to reach decision makers in a timely fashion ..... connectivity mayhem with a plethora of network attached devices ....

Continue Reading...

The 2008 Paralympics are going strong in Beijing. And you can watch the highlights on the ParalympicsSport TV network on YouTube.

Watching these athletes is inspirational to say the least, but it can be tiring on the body, since your PC may not be where your couch is.

How about this ergonomically designed chair from which to watch wheel chair basketball? You could even shoot some stationary baskets!

paralylmpics.jpg

Good to see the Paralympics is accessible to the Hyperconnected!

Opening Up Secure Network Access

September 10, 2008 10:26 AM | 1 Comment

"Business executives are extremely concerned (and rightly so) that their organization may be the next publicly disclosed data breach story in the Wall Street Journal." That's how I led off a recent article, co-authored with Jon Oltsik of the Enterprise Strategy Group, on network access control (aka secure network access).

Secure network access authenticates users wanting to access the network, performs endpoint health checks, and authorizes network and application access based on role-based policies.

Network access control tied to one vendor's switching platform has been used as part of a lock-in strategy by network vendors. In a hyperconnected world, the last thing you want is a 'closed' access control strategy.

Continue Reading...

UC: You Can Be Booked

September 8, 2008 11:02 AM

If UC is in your future, you may be interested in this book and associated certification program.

It is targeted at IT professionals and decision makers in organizations considering UC deployments. It focuses on how UC deployments must be designed from a business process perspective, rather than as driven from a technology perspective.

The information provided is generic and applies to whatever supplier you have or are considering

You can review the first three chapters on-line, including a Forward by Nora Freedman of IDC.

If you go down the UC certification path, you will tangibly show increased value as an IT professional.

Cisco Energy Tax No Joking Matter

September 4, 2008 2:05 PM | 1 Comment

You may have seen our recent ads on, for example, CNN.

Nicknamed the 'Nortel Piles' and 'Nortel Holes' commercials, these ads talk to the piles of money enterprises are wasting on the Cisco Energy Tax, and on the leakage of IT budget through the holes created by the Cisco Energy Tax.

They are clever and get the message across: You can save 40% on your energy bill by moving from Cisco to Nortel.

The commercials are not just clever marketing, but reflect the facts as verified by the Tolly Group.

Continue Reading...

A recent Wainhouse survey suggests that UC has shifted from being a strategic imperative to becoming a tactical challenge.

Two ways of reading this.

One is that when viewed solely from the perspective of raising personal productivity, then, UC is no more strategic than unified messaging was.

The other is that CXOs have business problems to solve and technology alone is seldom the answer.

Continue Reading...

With its recent acquisition of PostPath, a maker of e-mail and calendaring software, the word on the street is that Cisco is positioning to strike at Microsoft's Exchange crown jewels.

This is not inconsequential for "Microsoft shops' looking for UC solutions.

Cisco has been telling enterprises to buy their UC now, and that interoperability with Exchange/OCS environments will come later.

The relationship between Cisco and Microsoft is already pretty precarious on the UC front with competing UC solutions.

Continue Reading...
Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Next

Recent Comments

  • cliej7865880: "Hello, lets discuss about ecommerce usa.In the U.S, every city, read more
  • Jeff Martin: Does Sipex have billing solution to provide multi-tenet application. TonyRyb: read more
  • debt reduction: hahaha funny pic read more
  • EyePOD: The Current product being marketed under that name, The EyePOD read more
  • Joshua Parker: Would an internal social network for small businesses fit into read more
  • Bo Gowan: Very cool Tony. I just saw a local story last read more
  • mike: Hey, I like your site. I was wondering if Nortel read more
  • Nortel Non-Advocate: Nortel has some good technology - the most detrimental problem read more
  • It Does really matter: Okay, and now Mr. Twain, are you dead yet? read more
  • Marc N: You can check out http://www.usedcisco.org for more used cisco products read more