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Showing posts with the label Artical

India’s Mobile Market Challenges

Details Published on Tuesday, 30 April 2013 05:42 India’s mobile services market will reach Rs.1.2 trillion in 2013, up 8 percent from 2012 revenue of Rs. 1.1 trillion, according to Gartner. Mobile connections will grow to 770 million in 2013, an 11 percent increase from 712 million connections in 2012. “The mobile market in India will continue to face challenges if average revenue per unit (ARPU) does not grow significantly,” says Shalini Verma, principal research analyst at Gartner. “If the prevailing conditions do not change in the Indian telecom market, India will account for 12 percent worldwide mobile connections, but just 2 percent of worldwide mobile services revenue (in constant USD) in 2013.” Indian telecom operators are faced with two major challenges – growing their profit margin in the face of intense competition and successfully competing with over the top service providers, such as Facebook and WhatsApp. “As mobile voice services continue to get commoditized i

What is HD Voice?

Details Published on Monday, 13 August 2012 06:24 We humans have the ability to hear sounds in the range of 80 Hz to 14 kHz, which is pretty good considering the small size of the ears we were given. However, as we get older this range is reduced especially at the top end of the spectrum. The frequency band of normal human speech is much lower than this. Typically, the frequency for male speech ranges between 85 Hz to 180 Hz and for female it is between 165 Hz to 255 Hz. When we speak to someone on the phone the frequency reserved for the telephone call is in the range of 300 Hz to 3 kHz. This is just enough dynamic frequency to ensure the speech doesn't sound like it is coming from the moon or through an underwater pipe. Background and Codecs All digital speech uses the concept of a codec. The word “codec” is an abbreviation combination of coder and decoder. This process describes the algorithm, which digitally encodes and compresses speech samples, so they can be tra

Tech-Savvy CEOs

Details Published on Friday, 24 May 2013 16:00 A large number of Asia Pacific CEOs see their organisations as ‘pioneers’ or ‘fast followers’ in adopting business- and IT-led innovation, says Gartner. The desire and intent to leverage technology better is tempered by some headwinds, as CEOs acknowledge they have IT departments that are still struggling with getting the basics right. CEO “It is interesting that the Asia Pacific region, long seen anecdotally as more conservative in leveraging technology and driving innovation, has overtaken the global average of CEOs (26 percent) who describe their company cultures as being pioneering in the adoption of innovation,” says Gartner vice president Partha Iyengar. “This means a larger number of CEOs than we would anecdotally expect are willing to take risks in the adoption of technology to get first-mover advantage. Half of them are focusing on creating a ‘digital strategy’ for their enterprises.”

Securing Utilities Infrastructure

Details Published on Thursday, 21 February 2013 05:29 Written by Craig Sutherland As a highly critical sector, the oil and gas infrastructure should be one of the most secure, both physically and digitally. This is not the case. A multi-billion dollar industry, trading one of the most valuable commodities on the market, is connecting its industrial control systems full of unpatched vulnerabilities to the Internet, where cyber criminals roam in all impunity. These systems are poorly protected against cyber threats – at best, they are secured with IT solutions which are ill-adapted to legacy control systems. “The lack of appropriate security has already allowed a number of destructive cyber-attacks to lay waste to some of the most high-profile companies in the industry,” says senior cyber security analyst Michela Menting. “Oil and gas companies have been the victims of sophisticated cyber threats since 2009. Many of these attacks have caused significant financial damages. Inevi

Proximity-Based Social Change

Details Published on Tuesday, 11 June 2013 11:45 The next revolution of the Internet is upon us, and not only is it continuing to shape the way we do things, it's changing the way our things do things. In 2008, the number of devices connected to the Internet surpassed the number of people on the planet, and just like people these "things" are talking to one another via the Internet and wirelessly now more than ever. Proximity-based social networking applications, which use geo-proximity as the main filter for discovering people and places, are instrumental in this online evolution, as our immediate needs are often dictated or affected by how near or far we are from something. As more technologies enable devices to discover one another over distances through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC (Near Field Communications), businesses and marketers are using social networking, mobility, and gaming to dive into the proximity pool. The emerging proximity-based mobile social

Taking the Telework Pledge

Details Published on Tuesday, 05 March 2013 13:26 Turn off the alarm and get out of bed, check. Crank up the coffee pot, check. Sit in traffic for an hour on the way to work? Not this week. Thousands of people across the country are giving up the commute, and working from home as part of their pledge to telecommute this week. It’s part of Telework Week 2013, promoted by The Mobile Work Exchange and sponsored by Cisco, which champions the work anywhere, anytime mentality for today’s mobile employee. The week is part of a yearly push to get people to telecommute. And the movement is growing. This year about 110,000 people pledged to work from home. With more highly connected employees, and solutions that allow people to work anywhere, the International Data Corporation projects 37% of the global workforce will be mobile by 2015. An interesting twist to Telework week this year is the timing of a major policy change at Yahoo. CEO Marissa Mayer told her employees they could no lon

Advanced Analytics a Priority

Details Published on Sunday, 26 October 2014 06:05 Advanced analytics is a top business priority, fuelled by the need to make advanced analysis accessible to more users and broaden the insight into the business, according to market analyst Gartner. Advanced analytics is the fastest-growing segment of the business intelligence (BI) and analytics software market and surpassed US $1 billion in 2013. "While advanced analytics have existed for over 20 years, big data has accelerated interest in the market and its position in the business," says Alexander Linden, research director at Gartner. "Rather than being the domain of a few select groups (for example, marketing, risk), many more business functions now have a legitimate interest in this capability to help foster better decision making and improved business outcomes." says Linden. IT and business leaders must expand their efforts to move their organizations from using only traditional BI that addresses descri

EMEA IT Spend Will Grow 1.4%

Details Published on Tuesday, 06 November 2012 15:46 IT spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will reach US $1.154 trillion in 2013, a 1.4 percent increase from 2012 projected spending of $1.138 trillion, according to Gartner. Despite the ongoing economic malaise, the analyst firm sees pockets of growth in IT in Europe, mainly driven by devices and software. Big data will also change the landscape of IT – creating new jobs. “This year is a pessimistic year for IT spending in Europe,” says Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner. “In 2012, we estimate IT spending will decline 3.6 percent in EMEA and 5.9 percent in Western Europe. However, the EMEA region will return to growth in 2013 and continue to grow through 2016 when spending will reach $1.247 trillion.” The mobile device market is currently the bright spot of the IT industry. “We are seeing tablets and smartphones significantly outpace purchases of traditional PCs,” says Sondergaard. The spending o

Exploiting Mobile Workforce

Details Published on Monday, 13 August 2012 06:18 Canadian Rogers Communications and SAP have inked a deal to develop and manage the deployment of newly packaged enterprise mobile applications, which leverage the SAP mobile platform. When complete, the new offering will be offered to customers through a Rogers-branded managed mobility service. mobile workforce The initiative is expected to help simplify the way organizations mobilize their workforce, by helping employees gain real-time access to enterprise mobile applications on tablets and smartphones that traditionally sit on desktop computers. "Canadian organizations are rapidly adopting new wireless solutions to serve a growing mobile workforce and to enable mobile business processes," says Tony Olvet, group vice president of research at IDC Canada. "Approximately 36 percent of Canadian organizations have already mobilized one or more application and 21 percent are pilot testing mobile apps this year. Deploying a

Cabling and Data Explosion

Details Published on Tuesday, 13 November 2012 05:39 The explosion of 'big data' and the seemingly limitless demand for bandwidth are driving trends in today's IT-centric world. The 'faster, better, most cost effective' mentality has led enterprises of all sizes to closely scrutinize their communications networks and networking infrastructure. network-cables The need to deploy high speed network backbones that meet future requirements, while simultaneously reducing costs, present conflicting interests. With the need for higher bandwidth and flexibility for growth, organizations are looking at the network's physical layer and its overall life cycle as a capital investment that is essential to the business. Throw into this conundrum the increasing focus on sustainability and the task of designing a network high-performance, high-efficiency network seems almost insurmountable. Addressing efficiency at a physical infrastructure level has fueled the growing ado

Bridging the Open Hybrid Gap

Details Published on Friday, 28 June 2013 15:25 Data centers are complex and expensive to run. Upgrading and managing custom infrastructure is hard and costly. The rise of cloud computing is a direct outcome of the desire for organizations to reduce reliance on custom design at every layer and gain the benefits of speed for competitive advantage. Workload portability is an essential ingredient to platform automation. Having an operating system that runs comfortably in the datacenter delivering mission critical workloads as well as scaling to support cloud demands is the foundation. Ensuring the middleware is built on open technology allows for flexibility in application development that is critical in a world of developer choice and polyglot affinity. All the scaffolding requires continuous build, integration, and source code management for the platform to be attractive to developers. Reducing pain in platform configuration and enhancing self-service for developers lowers barriers

ICT Products Boom for 2015

Details Published on Tuesday, 13 January 2015 07:19 Spending on ICT products and services in the Middle East and Africa will cross the $270 billion mark in 2015 and the IT market expected to grow 9% year on year in 2015, according to IDC. This makes MEA the second-fastest growing market with the SaaS segment set to perform particularly strongly, expanding 29% year on year to total. Converged systems will be another key area of growth as more organizations look to leverage the agility, productivity, flexibility, and cost-saving benefits presented by such solutions. "Converged systems will gain prominence in 2015 and serve as the building blocks to software-defined environments across the MEA region in 2016 and beyond," says Megha Kumar, research manager for software at IDC Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. "In the Middle East, demand will be strong from Smart City initiatives and the implementation of large-scale transportation projects, while in Africa the lack of leg

Data Visibility is Key to Security

Details Published on Wednesday, 07 August 2013 06:56 Middle East organizations should devote more time and effort to gathering and using cybercrime intelligence, as it will give a good return on investment and assist in the establishment and review of IT security strategies and the creation of eCrime investigative measures. The most important and obvious question surrounding this point is “how do you get that type of specialized intelligence?” The answer is companies and organisations should ensure they have a 360-degree view of their data, which includes data in motion, static data and volatile data. In order to achieve this, organizations should consider the implementation of a network capture and monitoring capability. This functionality, particularly during a network attack, would provide and identify essential information contained within the network data packets. This can assist the forensic analyst in determining whether the data traffic is routine or alternatively assist

Importance of SLAS

Details Published on Saturday, 01 January 2011 00:00 Written by Craig Sutherland Whether you like it or not, life is a never ending set of SLAs (Service level agreements). The SLA you have in place to collect your kids from school at 3:15pm, the escalation that will occur if you are not waiting outside the school gate at 3:30 pm or perhaps your job which expects you to arrive by 9am. The management of an IT network is no different, except we often forget to put in place SLAs to improve operational efficiency. There are three types of SLAs when managing networks. An operational SLA, an infrastructure SLA and a service SLA. Operational SLAs deal with the execution of service delivery. Infrastructure SLAs deal with the systems in place to manage the device management in a break/fix situation. Finally, the service availability SLAs take care of the applications and services which operate over the infrastructure. In each of these SLAs one or more components are likely to be outsourc

Proof of Concept

Details Published on Thursday, 05 January 2012 16:29 Written by Craig Sutherland At some point you will want to start the process of evaluating NMS suppliers and equipment. The proof of concept (PoC) is an important phase of the NMS evolution process. Sometimes it is difficult to be impartial during this process. Organisations often have a long standing relationship with one of the vendors involved in the PoC process, and they may have intimate knowledge of your network and its challenges. To get the most from a PoC, you need to furnish each perspective vendor with as much information about your network and application as possible. In many cases, you may even find that a vendor withdraws from the evaluation process because its solution does not meet the PoC criteria. The following template can be used to send to perspective equipment vendors before the PoC starts. You will need to adjust the PoC criteria section to suit your own need. However, I have included some relevant sec