Wired Workplace - Providing Business Broadband, VoIP, Hosting & IT Support Services

Email Archiving

2008-06-02T12:00:00.000+01:00

Despite all the attention given to disaster recovery and backup, it has escaped most people’s attention that failing to backup and archive email is often as big a problem as all the other forms of electronic data they worry about put together. Worse still many users simply don’t realise that their email is NOT backed up because much backup software CANNOT backup email. They think they are covered and they simply are not.

Email has become the default method for distributing most documents, despite the fact that it’s probably the least efficient way of transferring files: it wins out because it’s easy. This means that for many documents that we receive the only copy is kept in email folders creating huge capacity problems. Even if we archive received mail, many organisations don’t archive sent mail creating a huge potential liability through the commitments made, or inferred, on email. Increasingly email is accepted as documentary evidence of a commitment, of which no record is kept.

Most customers don’t realise they have an obligation to maintain an archive of their emails under the Data Protection Act. Anyone can request a copy of any documentation under a Subject Access Request and the company has 40 days to find it and produce it or face a fine. The most common requests are from disgruntled ex-employees. Failing to find the appropriate document could therefore give rise to two separate fines, one under Data Protection and one through grievance procedures for which no defence is available. In fact the cost of failing to retrieve email doesn’t stop there as research has revealed that the cost of searching for these documents can exceed £30,000.

For many users with hosted email the process can be even easier with a copy kept centrally automatically and only downloaded when required. With email storage running to multiples gigabytes per user per annum it makes sense to plan archiving it for all users in an organisation rather than relying on individual users running their own routines. Power email users can send an AVERAGE of 100 emails a day!

Once archived a document should be capable of being retrieved via search, individually or en bloc. Beware, searching outside of destination, subject, sender and date is very difficult and potentially very expensive. Of course, backup and archiving applied to all documents is a central element of any disaster recovery strategy and the ability to recover documents quickly and cheaply can go a long way to resolving problems when they occur, or avoiding them in the first place.

For more information, visit the data security pages on the Wired Workplace site, where you can download the rest of this whitepaper, and get more information about the email archiving system on offer!

Voice Over Wireless

2008-05-30T16:00:00.001+01:00

What is Wireless for?

As the technology that delivers data networking has stabilised around a well understood architecture (including Ethernet and TCP/IP) and the technologies themselves have developed to the point where they provide all of the capability that most people need, new developments have focused on the application of data communications in a mobile/wireless context. The evolution of wireless LAN (or WiFi) technology has had two principle drivers:

A need to address the requirements for networking where physical cabling is not practical or not desirable, especially where the number of connections is relatively small.
A need to provide mobile or nomadic access for people working outside of the traditional office environment. This was itself driven by a growing dissatisfaction with the high costs and poor performance of data communications over 2G mobile phones.

The former application has become the method of choice for networking in the home, especially in a broadband context. Where the DSL or Cable line comes into the building israrely optimal for PC usage, and so domestic users have deployed Wireless LANs to get Broadband to the best place in the home, especially where a significant amount of homeworking is important to their overall uptake of Broadband. The explosion of Broadband has driven people into retail stores looking for an easy to install technology which is available off the shelf at a cost that is manageable for small numbers of nodes, and WiFi fit the bill.

Similar requirements have driven WiFi in business use. Some homes and offices are not really suitable for re-cabling – the cost and disruption of retro-fitting LAN cabling make it impractical. There is also the case that some landlords will not allow tenants to drill holes in walls or do the other work necessary to deploy LAN cabling. Unless the user is happy to have cables trailing across floors, WiFi is the perfect solution. It is also true that many businesses have a changing population of users and again WiFi’s ability to flex across a dynamic population of users makes it ideal for this application.

This latter attribute, the ability to accommodate a shifting population of users, has driven the WiFi “Hotspot” market, in response to the requirement in the second point above. Airports, business centres and hotels are natural applications for this and speculative business plans have seen hotspots installed in coffee shops and pubs. From a technology perspective the primary driver for WiFi usage has been simple availability. Most new laptops (which are taking an increasing share of the PC market) and many PDAs have WiFi capability built in, either at the chip level (Intel’s Centrino product) or on the mother board. This drives the perception that WiFi is “free” and drives up its utility.

As WiFi and Broadband become pervasive users are looking for new ways to harness this newfound communications power and their attention rapidly transfers to voice traffic, which still accounts for the majority of most peoples spending on communications. In the early stages of VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) deployment at the user level it was mostly invisible to the user and was driven by a strategic choice in larger companies. Latterly VoIP has become reliable and easy enough to use at the user level and the migration of this use from fixed broadband to wireless is inevitable. Where a specific choice is being made it is often driven by an awareness of the high cost of mobile calls.

Market dynamics

This new market is attracting sufficient attention to get on the radar of the analyst and market watching firms, who are starting to measure shipment and deployment volumes at the handset level. Although much VoIP usage is driven by “soft client” usage, this is difficult to measure. Handset shipments are a good proxy for the overall growth in the Voice over Wireless market, even if they account for only a portion of that market. Infonetics estimate that 113,000 units shipped worldwide in 2004 producing revenues of $45m with more than 8,000 handsets supporting both Voice over Wireless and cellular. Although this latter market is clearly in an even earlier stage, it looks likely that Voice over Wireless will create a further dynamic in the convergent telecoms market. Early shipments have featured take up in healthcare and logistics where fixed line phones have real limitations. In the US IDC estimate that the residential market for VoIP will grow from 3 million subscribers in 2005 to 27 million in 2009. Apart from the value of this market on its own, these sorts of volumes flush additional development investment into the technology and service provider markets. In Western Europe IDC estimate that overall IP telephony shipments grew 13% to $77m just in the fourth quarter of 2004. Their prediction for 2005 is that the market will grow 53% overall and revenues will reach $350m. Ovum estimate the VoIP market will reach $1.4bn in 2008.

Outstanding issues

There are still issues that need to be addressed and managed. The ones that have gained most attention so far have been quality of service, the ability to roam between different wireless platforms (or even between different access points on the same network), the relatively short range of unlicensed spectrum systems and their ability to support relatively low densities of users. As most users leave access points on their default settings, security is also a consideration.

Another issue at play is the shift in revenues between fixed and mobile telephony. In most markets there are multiple mobile operators, even where there is limited competition for the incumbent national carrier in fixed telephone services. This shift has challenged the business models of even the most monopolistic fixed line operators, who are seeing traffic levels falling rapidly in the one area of their business where most of the revenues and margins sit. Despite attempts to counter this with pricing action they have universally found the mobile proposition difficult to counter, to the point where, in some countries, the number of mobile handsets exceeds the adult population and where many people choose to not have a fixed telephone line at all.

Voice over wireless is seen by many operators as a partial answer to this challenge and as a way of defending their revenues against cannibalisation by mobile traffic. The VoIP “free on net” calls model can appear to makes their situation worse and yet many operators realise that they have to find a way of addressing these challenges. Embracing VoIP seems a bitter pill to swallow but the ability to challenge mobile erosion with Voice over Wireless makes this more palatable.

For more information about Voice Over Wireless, visit the Wired Workplace customer zone and download the whitepaper in full.

Beyond Broadband

2008-05-30T13:00:00.000+01:00

The Broadband market has taken off faster than even the most optimistic market guru might have been predicted. At a time when the IT and Communications industries have been imploding due to a collapse of confidence and new investment, Broadband is showing growing like no other sector. Yet the first signs of the end of the boom are already in sight; Germany is the first market in Europe to be showing signs of saturation an Korea and Taiwan grew by just 9.3% and 6% respectively in the first half of 2003 (Point Topic, 2003). So where do we go from here? Most observers agree that the days if the fast Internet proposition are numbered and that the rest of the population, whether business or consumer, needs something more compelling that fast downloads and email.

The central hypothesis is that, in order for the Broadband market to keep developing, and for those in it to make money, there is a requirement not only for a review of the services offered over Broadband, but moreover, a fundamental shift in user behaviour. Although widely misused throughout the nineties, the phrase "paradigm shift" is appropriate. When explosive growth is matched with significant change in behaviour, we see the sort of discontinuity, mor market dislocation, where the rules get re-written.

To continue reading this document, visit the Wired Workplace customer zone, where you will be able to download the whitepaper in full.

Presence & Collaboration in IP Communications

2008-05-30T10:00:00.001+01:00

Presence

Presence is not merely a technical capability – it actually changes the way things are done. Understanding the impact of changes in behaviour explains why some of these technological developments take time to mature. It’s not the technology that is difficult; it’s the cultural and behavioural change they require or enable that takes time.

In a presence-enabled context communication (whether it is voice or data-centric) is only initiated when the various parties are available. This represents a fundamental change in the way calls are made and is similar to how Instant Messaging (IM) applications are used. Voice systems have traditionally shown the current call state of an extension on the system. What was not provided was information about whether the person was actually at their desk even when the phone was idle. IM applications provide presence information based on keyboard strokes or mouse movement. This information can be linked to the user’s calendar and geographic location to deliver more meaningful information: “In a meeting”, or “Don’t call he’s in Japan where it is currently 3am”. Combining this functionality with the telephone is a natural next step and the SIMPLE protocol (see later section and glossary for more detail) is currently being worked through the IETF to support both instant messaging and presence. This in turn changes the model for how telephony services are charged. The prevailing model is likely to involve personal subscriptions (i.e. a per user charge) rather than a line or extension charge, plus a call charge for calls that go off net. This is similar to how mobile phones are charged which in turn reinforces a “personal handset” model where the users most commonly used numbers are stored as part of the subscription or on the handset itself. With Voice over Wireless handsets the form factor and styling is likely to echo mobile and users will carry them around the office or when they go out and about. Dual function phones with both Voice over Wireless and true 2G/3G capability will be available in identical form factors and styling options to the pure mobile handsets they replace.

Identity

As organisational boundaries change, become transparent or disappear, the ability to assess whether another party is someone one wishes to initiate or even permit communication with becomes even more important. There will always be organisations and individuals who want to restrict their visibility and these tools will enable this as much as they will improve visibility. It is key that the individual has control over these parameters for these tools to become accepted. With identity comes security to protect organisations and individuals from illicit or damaging behaviour.

Although this may seem to reduce the opportunities for making new contacts, and clearly has a benefit in screening nuisance calls, it does also allow the opportunity for people to broadcast when they are open to contact. As these applications get more sophisticated and the networking interface improves people will put more effort into developing their online identity and further improving communication.

To continue reading, download the whitepaper in full here

The Broadband Imperative

2008-05-27T13:00:00.000+01:00

Broadband is one of the most exciting markets imaginable. Service and content providers can touch people's lives in new ways, bringing new forms of entertainment to the consumer and enabling huge new opportunities for small and medium sized businesses who have yet to fully exploit Broadband technologies. Most importantly it can also offer market players a highly profitable business opportunity.

Statistics show that, globally, over 25 million Broadband connections exist, so this is clearly an opportunity worth tracking. Yet because of the recent downturn in the world economy, and the stigma attached to enterprises involving the Internet or Internet technologies, raising capital to exploit some of these opportunities has been tough. Even established companies have found it difficult, if not impossible, to raise money for new ventures.

However, Broadband's greatest advantage is that it enables many of the promises that the Internet appeared to deliver but singularly failed to do. It does so simply by making that technology work at acceptable speeds. And speed is critical. Internet addicts and early adopters have already got Broadband where they can, and are complaining loudly where they cannot - i's a clear indication of demand when people set up consumer web sites and pressure groups.

However, although speed is important it is simply the beginning of the story, the starting point. The rest of the market needs more stimulation than fast, always-on Internet access to convert them into customers, and they are not getting that from the current providers. Without content for consumers, or services and applications for businesses Broadband is just as fast, always-on connection to the Internet and, for most users, that is not enough.

The growth in Broadband markets will be driven not by downloaders of MP3 files and the 'adult' market, but by real Internet based applications and by content. When those offerings become compelling, so will the Broadband proposition. If the telecommunications and IT industries do not exploit Broadband's ability to transform the way we use communications and deliver new compelling applications and services at revolutionary prices to previously poorly served markets, it will be seen as another technology which failed to deliver.

For more information, visit wiredworkplace.net/broadband where you can find more information about the Broadband services currently offered, and how they can benefit you!

"Work is what you do, not where you do it"

2008-05-23T16:00:00.000+01:00

Business communications need to change to match the changing requirements of business which has been dubbed “The Virtual Enterprise”.

The core of this vision is that businesses need communications capabilities that reflect their increasing operational flexibility. Put simply, the traditional office-centric view of how businesses work, and how communications services are delivered, no longer fits the increasing drive towards mobility and the need to drive down fixed costs.

This is especially true in the context of globalisation. Improved communications increase visibility of alternatives and this creates both a threat and an opportunity. The opportunity is easier access to new markets but the threat is of access to an organisations own home markets by new competitors with lower cost bases. Speed to market becomes a key metric and new methods of delivering results quicker come to the fore. In this high speed, flexible way of working fixed organisation structures are not always an advantage and organisations start to look at new ways of constructing their value chains to both take advantage of new opportunities and defend against new threats.

These forces are what drive the move towards increased use of contractors and sub contractors who can deliver a specific skill set “just in time” but also drive the sorts of strategic (and tactical) partnerships that were unthinkable only 20 years ago. A transition has occurred where these partnerships are now seen as a sign of strength where previously they were a sign of weakness. Good examples can be found in the most traditional of industries such as the automotive industry where competitors share common components on a large scale. These common platforms (and this includes engines and chassis) significantly reduce development cost and time to market, resulting in differentiation in the end product in terms of packaging and cosmetics rather than through creating a complete new car.

Another concrete example in this trend is outsourcing, where companies seek to define their core competencies and seek out others whose core competencies are to deliver the rest. The original driver for this was cost saving but many companies are now enjoying the benefits of a slimmer management infrastructure which enables faster communication and decision making. In extreme cases this means that the organisation seeks to do only one thing and “virtualises” the rest.

Traditional models for how offices worked changed for ever when the “job for life” contract was broken in the 80’s and 90’s. The speed of change in business put a premium on knowledge and the growth of IT as a means to reduce cost became embedded in the standard business operating system. More recently the traditional “command and control” method of management has been increasingly eschewed in favour of structures and mechanisms that put the emphasis on control by output rather than control by input. In other words, it’s what you produce (rather than what you do) that matters. This in turn favours knowledge management and supports personal empowerment.

To continue reading about the virtual enterprise, visit the Wired Workplace customer zone to download the whitepaper in full.

Routes To market For Voice Over Wireless

2008-05-23T13:00:00.000+01:00

To discuss how a product comes to market it is necessary to understand how technology markets evolve. This process has become well understood over the past 15 years, based largely on the work of Geoffrey A. Moore, especially “Crossing the Chasm” published in 1991. In it he posits that technology markets follow an adoption “bell curve” with the critical phase being where levels of take up “cross the chasm” from early adopters to the mainstream. VoIP and Wireless technology are each in the “crossing the chasm” stage and VoW is still much earlier in the cycle. It can be argued as to where each element sits but the model has as much importance from an illustrative perspective as it does from a precision one. The important questions are whether these technologies can and will cross the chasm.

A critical piece of understanding in developing strategies for these technologies is of the routes to market: how the products get distributed, marketed, bought and sold. The first important realisation is that these routes and channels can (and probably will) change through the product life cycle.

At the earliest stages when the technology is unproven and possibly non-standard the users identify themselves and are happy having a direct relationship with the developer or vendor. In the middle life of a product it is likely that they will reach market through a channel that either adds value to or can provide expertise around the product. In its mature stages the product is bought rather than sold and vendors maintain an arms length relationships with their customers, communicating via marketing communications and customer services. Products become treated as commodities and are bought in volume, often with price as the key decision making factor.

For more information about voice over wireless, download the whitepaper in full from www.wiredworkplace.net/customer-zone.php

Security For VoIP & Voice Over Wireless

2008-05-23T10:00:00.000+01:00

The rapid growth in popularity of VoIP, and the emerging nature of Voice over Wireless, has meant that attention has been turned to security. Some of this attention has been caused by concerns fanned by the security software industry itself and some is justified, particularly in the light of the imperfect history of security in the Wireless LAN market.

Security is security is security

At one level the criticisms levelled at VoIP and wireless technologies are nothing new. There is an argument that the problem is not that these technologies are inherently insecure (or at least any more insecure than other IP networks) but that they have been poorly implemented. Like many other technologies early in their cycle they have often been set up as trials and as such have not come under the realm of normal, operational deployment. For wireless in particular, the technology has been so easy to install that many users have been installing networks in direct contravention of corporate policies designed to protect corporate network assets. As a result they have created a back door to main systems and increased their vulnerability to attack. Adding voice to a wireless network does not automatically make it insecure, it is the network itself and how it is implemented that defines the overall security envelope.

In the home and small business sector the problem has been compounded because many users without a network specialist to call on are incapable of configuring advanced levels of security functionality. They often have weak password implementations and leave the equipment with its “out of the box” naming conventions. Many Linksys wireless hubs can be found with the name still set to “linksys” or Cisco set to “tsunami”. When combined with a password that complies with merely the minimum required to get the thing working, and access set to open it is not surprising that many of these networks are so easy to get on to.

To continue reading about how to secure voice over wireless, visit the Wired Workplace customer zone to download the white paper.

Do small to medium sized enterprises really have the necessary knowledge and skills to exploit the power of technology?

2008-05-20T16:00:00.000+01:00

The world around us is changing and the way we do business continues to evolve. Connectivity has altered the landscape we operate in and smaller businesses can now compete with their larger counterparts on a level playing field, reaching new customers and markets through increasingly critical IT systems (IT).

Empowering Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME’s) with the access to the skills that are essential for them to adapt and thrive is key to the success of the UK economy. For those that develop and knowledge and understanding of the real strategic potential and value of IT investment and skills in delivering business objectives, staying competitive and driving growth, this will inevitably lead to positive action in how they think and plan for this element of their business.

E-business, online trading, the power of broadband, convergence and flexible working are just some if the dynamic possibilities in business communications today, highlighting our movement towards a connected economy, where technology and communications are key to business success.

Staff Announcement

2008-03-28T09:16:00.004Z

We are sad to announce, that after many years of hard work and dedication, Paul and Gary, two of the original members of the Wired Workplace team have moved onto pastures new.

Wired Workplace would like to thank Paul and Gary for all of their hard work over the years, and wish them all the best in their new jobs.

At the same time, we would like to welcome a new member of staff; Nigel Bradley, who will be working with the support team.

If you would like to join the Wired Workplace team, visit www.wiredworkplace.net/about-us/careers.php to find out about the opportunities available!

Virtual Enterprise Structures

2008-03-07T16:42:00.004Z

Call centres
IP telephony has been gaining ground in Call Centres for some time. The trend towards offshoring, virtual call centres (where calls are routed between multiple locations) and home working has accelerated this trend. Much traffic going offshore is converted to IP to enable more efficient use of international trunk capacity and the ability to integrate telephony into other applications makes it a good fit for this type of usage. Datamonitor believes that IP telephony will become mainstream in the Call Centre market over the next four to five years although much of this growth will come in ”Greenfield” deployments. However, even allowing for legacy upgrades, they predict that IP shipments will reach parity with TDM by 2008. A key development in this deployment is the migration to virtual and smaller call centres, especially where there is a premium on individual service and higher levels of sophistication. This is especially true in the knowledge economy sector which itself accounts for 8.4 m workers or 30% of the total working population. The overall market for call centres is estimated by the DTI to reach 1m agents in the UK by 2007,

The traditional way of delivering call centres is to build a structure dedicated to this function and specifically designed for this type of working (heavy telecoms and IT infrastructure and open “cube” layout floor plans). Staff are recruited on a permanent basis, often from the unskilled unemployed, and trained in house. This makes the model attractive for areas of significant unemployment, especially where traditional industries have failed and where grants are available for new ventures. As workers become bored with the repetitive and stressful nature of the work and acquire enough skills to be attractive to another call centre operator they move jobs creating a significant staff turnover problem. As we reach effective full employment staff become harder and harder to recruit further stressing the model and driving more outsourcing of call centre operations. Quite a high percentage of this work is now outsourced to specialist operators who can use best practice to bring down costs. The problem is that demand is uneven during the working day and due to the permanent employment pattern of many centres resources are under-utilised driving a high implied cost. This in turn causes many operators, both in house and outsourced, to look at sending work overseas to where the employment costs are lower. The problem with this approach is that it addresses only one part of the equation, cost of delivery staff. In fact, facility and technology costs remain much the same and management overheads may actually rise.

The most effective way of trunking telephony traffic out to an offshore call centre is using Voice over IP. With this leg of the IP infrastructure already in place, resistance to Voice over IP at the edge is reduced.

In the US, where the backlash against offshoring is strongest, operators are increasingly looking at Voice over IP as a way of routing traffic intelligently to self-employed homeworkers. There are a number of advantages to this model:

Staff are more highly motivated as they control what and who they work for.
Staff are only paid when they work helping peak hour coverage and preventing expensive low activity periods
No need for expensive specialist buildings
Network based recruitment and management keeps overheads low
Work can be directed into rural areas which is attractive to government
Reduced commuting lowers stress and emission based pollution
Work is available for people who are house bound due to disability, age or caring responsibilities

Whilst training costs can be higher with this model early indications are that it can deliver higher quality than traditional models at a cost equivalent to or lower than offshoring. It also is attractive from a societal and governmental perspective and reduces balance of payment pressure on the economy.

The applications to support the home or remote worker are examined in more detail in the following section and this issue will be revisited in some detail in the paper “Teleworking and Virtual Call Centres”.

Flexible working
As the pace of work increases (and with it stress), employees are asserting their desire for a better work/life balance through improved flexibility. This has a number of manifestations, all of which are simplified or enabled through a combination of VoIP and Wireless technology,

Mobility. Work is becoming less and less office based. The impact of globalisation and reduced timescales drives a greater need for speed of response. This results in an “always on, always available” mindset where there are very few circumstances in which we are not available. Mobile phones have either poorly or expensively addressed the issues of data connectivity. Wireless technology addresses the cost and quality of the data connection and as a result provides an alternative conduit for voice communications.

Home working. As most Western societies reach full employment, many people who would not normally be part of the workforce, for reasons of age, disability, childcare etc. are being lured back into work by the opportunity to work from home. By contrast the “always on, always available” culture drives a need to work from home at evenings and weekends even for the full time employed,

Relationship Capital and Social Networks
Although these topics will be covered in more detail in a later paper it is worth considering them briefly here. If work becomes less office-centric, how certain social benefits that office work delivers are to be replaced needs to be considered.

How people work together in these new flexible structures is dependent in large part upon how well they communicate and collaborate. If some of the face to face communication opportunities that occur casually in the working day are no longer available, thought needs to be given to other ways that these can be delivered. The alternative may be more and more formal meetings and a likely drop in productivity. Formal communications can be managed remotely through email and telephone calls but these do not always deliver the flexibility that the casual encounter provides,

The growth of online social networks to replace these face to face interactions has been one of the most remarkable phenomena of the last few years. Broadband has in part enabled this with people dipping in and out of these networks almost as “breaks” in the working day. Although this has been most marked in the micro and self employed sector these tools are perfectly valid for anyone who works on their own.

visit www.wiredworkplace.net/voip.php for more information

The drivers for changing working practices

2008-03-07T16:41:00.002Z

Quality of life
One of the drivers behind changing working practices is a desire to work to live rather than live to work. Because the guarantees that were implied in people’s relationship with work have been broken they increasingly seek to achieve a better balance between work and life. The pace of change and the speed at which business is conducted have accelerated over the last 20 years to such a degree that people are now routinely experiencing some of the demerits of all this, especially longer working hours, stress and health problems. Many people are now realising they need to exercise some control over the impact work has on their lives and are using flexible working practices to do this.

Commuting and the environment
The relationship between commuting and pollution is clear and government is encouraging the trend to break up accepted working patterns in favour of spreading the traffic load to reduce pollution.

The pension gap and downshifting
Many people realise that the pension system is unlikely to provide them with the support and the lifestyle they want and so people are going to carry on working for longer, although increasingly on a flexible basis in terms of time and location. Business systems need to track and reflect this to enable these types of working to be supported. Historically office phone systems, with their static paper-based directories, made this kind of flexibility difficult to achieve. The newer applications positively facilitate this. Correspondingly many people wish to reduce the stress they experience by downshifting their work, often to a more rural and homeworking basis.

Financial drivers
IP telephony and Wireless LANs enable greater flexibility without the fixed costs of traditional wired LANs and PBX’s. People’s relationship with their handsets change and in many cases a PC client is perfectly suited to how they want to work, removing this cost element entirely. With the ability to redirect traffic to wherever someone appears on the network, you no longer need to schedule desks or physical locations. Many large companies such as BT have been able to reduce their investment in property and fixed IT infrastructure by adopting these flexible working practices. There was a time when flexibility was expensive. Now it can bring even lower cost. Over time smaller businesses, who often have a more direct relationship with costs, (especially where they are owner managed) will seek this flexibility and functionality from their telecommunications and IT infrastructure

Cost drivers for the small business
Small businesses are often driven by sensitivity to cost or by a desire to grow their businesses, or some mixture of the two. VoIP is likely to become quickly adopted as it brings services such as international teleconferencing into the reach of the smaller business and goes one more step to breaking down the geographical boundaries that often hold back the smaller business. Globalisation will become an issue not just for larger businesses. The ability to get all (or at least a portion) of “on net” calls free of charge is compelling. It is interesting to note that what “on net” means will also change as operators seek to make their boundaries more visible and thereby encourage their clients to bring more of their regular contacts “inside the rope”. Word of mouth (or Friend of a Friend as it is sometimes called) has always been the most powerful marketing tool. “On net” encourages the customer to bring people onto the network to reduce their own costs and VoIP is a powerful tool in delivering this, especially for the competitive carriers. The higher percentage of regular contacts that are “on net” the smaller the billed cost will be. In fact VoIP changes the overall billing model from “calls and lines” to a combination of personal subscriptions, some free calls and some charged calls. This is a huge change for the telecommunications industry and organisations should expect to see the sort of bundling and packaging that is currently endemic in the mobile industry coming into the “fixed” network as operators seek to press a competitive advantage through price based differentiation. One of the casualties of such a change is customer loyalty with people changing to take advantage of new packages and tariffs.

Competition in the telecoms market
One of the dynamic factors driving the development of the market for VoIP in general is the support of the carriers. For BT, VoIP is both a defence and a “win back” opportunity; they see the need to ensure that their new IP infrastructure (dubbed the 21st Century Network) stretches right to the edge in order to fend off the competition of alternative carriers. With such a high percentage of revenues (and an even higher percentage of profit and cash generation) accounted for by voice traffic, BT cannot afford to stand still. These alternative carriers, in turn, see VoIP as a method for changing the voice business model to the detriment of the incumbents (BT) market share. For them the business is to be won rather than defended and VoIP offers them the opportunity to keep traffic away from the BT network and under their cost control. Cable and Wireless, Kingston and Colt have all launched Voice over IP strategies with C&W refocusing its efforts on the SME marketplace.

Work is what you do, not where you go

2008-02-29T09:20:00.007Z

The trend towards home working is indisputable and technology advances are making mobile working, historically a challenge, even easier than in the past. In fact there are a whole slew of terms which are often used interchangeably that reflect a radical shift in how we approach work:

Hot-desking. The idea that your desk is not your permanent domain and that desks can be shared by people who are not office based, on an as and when basis. Commonly used where home or mobile working is standard to provide facilities when those people who are not office based need office facilities
Home-working. The ability to work from home as opposed to an office most suits those sorts of job that are phone and computer centric. Of course there are all sorts of other home working but our concern here is as an alternative to office based working
Mobile working. The ability to access office type facilities while on the move. Covers the use of laptop computers and mobile phones and other mobile devices.

Using flexible working techniques is often referred to as “virtualising” a business. One of the key drivers in virtualising a business is to reduce the dependence on permanent office space and thereby to reduce fixed overheads. With many businesses needing to flex their workforce up and down with project and contract staff it is becoming difficult to predict the need for office space and manage the cost of buildings.

As a result, businesses need communications capabilities that reflect their increasing need for operational flexibility. Put simply, the traditional office-centric view of how businesses work, and how communications services are delivered, no longer fits the increasing drive towards mobility and the need to drive down fixed costs. There was a time when flexibility was expensive. Now it can bring even lower cost.

Market resistance to overseas call centres is pushing a re-examination of call centre technology with a trend towards considering virtual call centres enabled by cheaper high speed broadband and IP telephony. A virtual call centre relies on home workers to deliver services and use a network centric management model to provide the support and infrastructure. It has all of the additional secondary benefits of other forms of home working

At a personal level managers and employees want increasing flexibility in how they do their work. One of the drivers behind changing working practices is a desire to work to live rather than live to work. Because the guarantees that were implied in people’s relationship with work have been broken they increasingly seek to achieve a better balance between work and life.

The pace of change and the speed at which business is conducted have accelerated over the last 20 years to such a degree that people are now routinely experiencing longer working hours, stress and health problems. Increasing stress in the workplace is leading to changes in the way people view work. Workers desire more flexibility and control over their work/life balance. People who work from home tend to be much more productive and experience lower levels of stress.

Beyond the organisational and personal benefits there are a number of societal benefits in home working which should not be under estimated.

With 20% of the working population in parts of South Yorkshire on invalidity benefit, home working can deliver a soft return to work and enables carers, women returners to work, retirees and the disabled access to working opportunities. Retirees are likely to find that pension provisions don’t deliver the quality of life they want and so part time home working is an alternative that delivers a good return on their efforts. From an employers perspective all of these groups constitute untapped pools of skilled resources that were historically difficult to unlock and go some way to filling the skills gap.

You don’t have to spend long driving around the main towns in South Yorkshire to figure out that traffic congestion is on the increase. Many people are increasingly seeking home-working and flexible working patterns as a method for improving productivity and quality of life. Time spent commuting is stressful and unproductive and leads to long working days and a reduction in quality of home life.

From an environmental perspective the Government wants to meet environmental targets and has set goals for its own “virtual enterprise” initiatives. Commuting is a soft target in this battle and despite increased focus on public transport, total bus journeys continue on a downward trend in South Yorkshire. The truth is people do not easily give up their cars. There is also an implied exclusion process where non-drivers find it increasingly difficult to reach out of town workplaces and home working can improve all of these areas.

The value of home and remote working is clear. Now, what can technology do to simplify and enable it?

The pervasive availability of cheap broadband is a key enabler. In a compressed geographic area like South Yorkshire virtually all areas have access to broadband and often a choice between cable and DSL delivered formats. This creates a competitive environment and further reduces costs. The Digital Region project seeks, over a number of years, to improve the availability of higher capacity, higher quality broadband over fibre optic cables so performance should continue on an upward trend. This in turn enables new powerful applications that enable improved collaboration, often a criticism of remote working. The ability to work in teams on common data using sophisticated networking tools reduces the isolation sometimes experienced by home and remote workers. Video and voice conferencing enables home workers to set up virtual meeting spaces dynamically and can even create an online chat environment to replace the kitchen conversation.

IP based telephone services enable workers to control multiple devices and locations and route calls to home handsets or mobiles without creating confusion in customers and callers. Outside callers call the same number or extension and the call is routed to suit working patterns. Outbound calls can be sent with a consistent number so that it creates the feeling of always being available in one place.

On the mobile front, the improved range of mobile devices such as the Blackberry further reduce the reliance on traditional office space and improve the responsiveness with smaller businesses benefiting disproportionately. The new ranges of mobile devices are, for the first time, really useable as email, web and phone handsets with decent screens, keyboards, performance and battery life

One issue to bear in mind with all of this flexibility, of course, is the issue of data security. If users create and store information offline from the company’s main server network this can create issues around multiple copies and security. Portable devices are easily lost, damaged or stolen and it’s more important than ever to have a useable backup strategy that ensures that key business information is protected and copied to a safe location. New applications can allow this to happen automatically so that the user’s laptop or other device backs itself up as soon as it goes online, and such services are very affordable.

Home working and mobile working is now a useable reality for all types of businesses. Technology has caught up with people’s desire to have an improved work/life balance. The potential for improving performance, saving money and improving efficiency is clear.

visit us for more information about remote working!

Email archiving

2008-02-27T12:20:00.006Z

Did you know you have a legal obligation to retain emails with commercially sensitive content for 7 years? What do you do at the moment? Would you be interested in a service that automates and simplifies this so that you have secure backed up files in case you need them?

Hosted applications

2008-02-27T12:16:00.009Z

Wired Workplace, through the SYDC, is going to launch a range of subscription based application services targeted at businesses, initially in South Yorkshire. The idea is that using hosting reduces cost of ownership and provides a more secure and efficient environment for applications than doing it yourself. Does this appeal? Which applications? Have you any previous experience of hosted application services or SaaS (software as a service)? Can you rate the following as key factors?

Ease of implementation
Ease of use
Performance
Range of applications
Quality of support
Cost

visit www.wiredworkplace.net/hosting.php for more about the hosting services that we offer!

Green data centres

2008-02-27T12:13:00.006Z

What's the level of interest in green data centres and what do they have to have to be useful? Carbon neutral status or better? Can you improve your carbon footprint by moving servers out of the office into a data centre. What's best practice in eco-efficient data centres?

Data centre progress

2008-02-27T12:11:00.005Z

Having taken possession of the new data centre just over a week ago work progresses apace on fitting out the first floor. Air con is complete, UPS and generator have been delivered and most of the electrical work is near complete. The racks are being delivered today and we should be up and running by the end of the month as targeted.

Recovering after disaster strikes!

2008-02-22T01:30:00.005Z

When you were doing your business continuity plan did you allow for the toilets backing up and six inches of smelly sludge over everything? Did you figure that even if you were not badly affected you still wouldn’t be allowed back in to the building for up to a week? Did you realise that the basement would be flooded for three weeks and even if you pumped it out it would fill up again?

Just some of the questions you might have asked BEFORE the recent flooding in South Yorkshire. Now it might just be too late.

Steve Wragg, Chair of ICT Yorkshire, reckons 40% of businesses affected by the floods could take a year to recover, and one in five will fail.

IT will not be at the root of all those business failures but in a previous survey the London Chamber concluded that 70% of businesses that had a significant data loss were likely to fail within 18 months.

IT is at the centre of so many businesses nowadays with online trading over the Internet one of the fastest growing sectors. And with increased pressure from regulation to protect your customers’ data, the job of securing and protecting that data is becoming even more critical.

“We knew there was a flood warning, but when the police came round and said that they strongly recommended we evacuate, we knew it was probably time to go. We put everything that was on the floor up on the desks and headed out as fast as we could. As the last person left the office, he saw the River Don burst its banks and the water started pouring across the car park.”

This was the scene at Helen of Troy’s offices on Brightside Lane on the afternoon of June 25th, as recalled by international marketing manager Andrew Deane. The next morning, staff returned to survey the damage.

“Our office is a corner building, so the river had come in at speed and then swirled around. Furniture had been washed up against the doors and we had to push it out the way in order to get in. Inside, we could see that the water had risen over the tops of the desks and everything was covered in two inches of mud and debris.”

Helen of Troy is a global company and a leading manufacturer of personal care and well-being products. Its UK operation was established in Sheffield in 1995 and has expanded to international offices in France, Brazil, Shenzen and Hong Kong. Its product lines include licensed brands such as Vidal Sassoon, Scholl and Toni & Guy. The company now employs 40 people in Sheffield and has a total global turnover of $635 million.

The Sheffield offices act as the heart of the international operation and are also linked to the head office in the United States. The company’s IT and telephone systems are therefore crucial to the running of the business.

“Luckily, all but two of our servers survived the water and our backup tapes were also functional. This meant that we had everything except the previous week’s work. However, what we didn’t have was somewhere for people to work and the ability to connect with the outside world. The Sheffield office is the distribution hub for the international offices so we needed to get our sales order processing systems functioning quickly. Our top priority was to find premises and get an office up and running as fast as possible.”

The company turned to The Quadrant on the Parkway Business Park, which provides managed office space for a variety of businesses. “We had heard that The Quadrant had space so we set up a meeting for first thing in the morning and took first refusal on everything they had available. With prices for office space going up by the minute, we quickly decided that The Quadrant offered the best combination of quality accommodation and good value. And, importantly, they had an IT partner who could move quickly to set up broadband connections for our phones and computers.”

The Quadrant’s communications and IT partner is The Wired Workplace, which provides the centre’s tenants with the choice of a full range of information and communication technology services.

“The Wired Workplace experts were in touch with us within hours and they worked closely with our IT manager to make sure they could meet our specifications. We had a fully functioning IT system within a day and our sales order processing was operational by Thursday evening.”

The staff of Helen of Troy are now settled in The Quadrant, where they will stay until the Brightside Lane offices are refurbished. Meanwhile, managers have had time to reflect on some of the lessons learned from their experience.

Andrew Deane says, “One of the key questions I would ask now is, ‘How much paper do you really need to keep in your business?’. Once water gets to it, the recovery process is expensive and slow. I would say, think before you file it and, if you really need it, reassess again six months down the track. There are plenty of approved electronic document systems available, so store it electronically if you can.

“The other thing I would say is never underestimate your team – it is incredible what people are capable of doing when the situation demands it. An event like this shows the best side of people and you get to see the impact of a group team effort.”

Many people back up their data but have you checked whether you can recover it from the copy?

“In our experience most people never check that their backups work or test their ability to recover their data from those backups. Coupled with a large number keeping the backups on site, your backup is quite likely to be useless. Even if the backup is in a safe its not much use to you if you cant get onsite” said Steve Wragg

While larger businesses and the public sector may have detailed plans, smaller businesses mostly don’t.
When the floods hit Business Link’s offices in both Sheffield and Rotherham one of the key issues was keeping staff informed of progress.

“People need to know whether they should report to another office or work from home. Is there somewhere else where they can get access to basic office facilities? Where can you hold meetings? Can phone calls be re-routed to mobiles? These were all basic queries that needed answering and the information circulated to staff,” said Steve

A disaster like the floods gets plenty of media attention but every day businesses have broken pipes and fires. Equipment fails and people lose things. Laptops and mobile phones get stolen from the back seats and boots of cars.

Have you got an emergency or business continuity plan? Have you ever done a risk assessment? What does your insurance really cover you for?

What have you learnt from other people’s expensive experiences?