Year: 2011

What does 4G mobility mean for me and my corporate fleet?

Posted on by Greg Spencer

With all three major carriers talking about their launch of 4G mobility, many business leaders are asking what impact this next generation of wireless technology will have on their business, while others are questioning the ability of the carriers to deliver on the promise of the technology.

Will the promised speed of 4G mobility (LTE) be delivered by the carriers?

There are three main issues effecting 4G rollout in Australia – politics, technology and logistics. Politics gets involved due to both the question of available spectrum. The trial LTE device that I have been using for the last few weeks operates of legacy 2G spectrum at 1900Mhz, unfortunately this has two technology problems – firstly it is a higher frequency compared to the 700Mhz spectrum proposed for the eventual 4G rollout and it suffers from similar in-building signal coverage limitations as 2100Mhz used in some 3G networks. Secondly the use of 1900Mhz spectrum limits the availability of handsets and other devices. Unfortunately neither of these issues is likely to go away in the short term.

Firstly the government is unlikely to fast-track the digital dividend auctions of 700Mhz spectrum which firstly requires the successful migration of thousands of pensioners (and other voters) onto digital television set-top boxes; secondly, unlike other spectrum ranges, the 700MHz spectrum is not consistently defined internationally which will make sourcing a wide range of compatible devices a challenge for the carriers. The carrier’s great hope for worldwide interoperability is way up at 2600Mhz and will suffer the same in-building coverage problems as 1900Mhz. The actual speed of LTE is affected by a number of issues; the most important of these initially is backhaul capacity.

If you’re simply adding a different radio interface to your existing oversubscribed base station, the user experienced download speed will not improve. The three mobile carriers in Australia have between 7400 and 3600 base stations each. You can image the logistics of simply adding the new radio hardware and tuning the coverage patters for that many sites, when you add the requirement for a significant upgrade to the backhaul network capacity you can imagine that it will take a fair amount of Capex, planning and time. Adding the logistics of performing this upgrade while not causing downtime to the existing networks means that it will be some time before 97% of the population will get to enjoy the full benefit of the technology.

Will 4G mobility finally kill the telco’s voice minute revenue base?

How quickly the carriers transition away from their current voice tariffing will be governed by commercial pressure, much of which will be played out in the consumer market. Businesses do not need to wait however as the 4G technology provides an enterprise grade mechanism to move away from per minute mobile voice charges. 4G has been designed as a cellular mobile data network based on packet switched technology so 4G voice services will be effectively based on IPtel. The improved latency, bandwidth and class of service (COS) capability of LTE offers significant improvements on 3G and provide a platform for reliable voice over IP on mobile data services. Businesses can immediately take advantage of this by leveraging the existing mobile device clients available on common devices with their PABX infrastructure. Consumers will continue to jump onboard technologies like Skype (Microsoft) and Facetime (Apple) to make both voice and video calls to anyone. The carriers will be left providing data only plans with the customer deciding on what applications use it.

An interesting development is Telstra’s announcement to wholesale its 3G network as it prepares to shift its retail focus to 4G in 2012. It remains to be seen how many service providers take up this new wholesale offer and it can be expected that there will be a new round of competition in the 3G market that may be beneficial for tactical deployments or short term contract extensions.

In my recent travels with a trial LTE device I have been keenly testing achievable throughput speeds and network latency. The carrier that provided my trial device has added the additional radio interface directly into their existing 3G network using a common backhaul capacity. This means that although the radio side of the connection is only lightly used by the selected few who have trial devices, the backhaul network is heavily used. I have used the device in 3 states so far and the results have been mixed, yet quite exciting. The average round-trip delay to a local server ranged between 25 and 35msec, and I often achieved download speeds (as measured by speedtest.net) of around 50Mbit/sec and upload speeds of 15-20Mbit/sec. Interestingly enough when tests were undertaken around peak usage times it was the download speed that was degraded due to backhaul network congestion, often resulting in faster upload than download results.

In summary, organisations must be considering the impacts of 4G mobility in both their telecommunications planning and IT strategic roadmaps now. Although very few organisations will be considering the imminent deployment of 4G to support significant changes to business process, or be seeking to undertake organisation wide device upgrades, tactical deployments (such as being used to provide a backup network paths) and proof of concepts trials will common in 2012. Certainly any telecommunications strategy or architecture decision and/or procurement activity should being considering that 4G will have significant impacts in the near term. Beyond Technology Consultants are helping numerous organisations through the planning cycle for this today and can provide you the insights to ensure your success.

Top 10 for 2012 and BEYOND

Posted on by Greg Spencer

I would like to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas on behalf of the entire Beyond Technology team. Beyond Technology has had its best ever year. This year has brought an increased velocity of technology and business change. I thank you for your continued support and hope that 2012 is looking bright and productive. In thinking of the year ahead, I thought that I would share with you what the BTC Team has identified as the key trends and challenges that we feel our clients will be facing next year. As independent IT management consultants, we not only see a variety of different industries suffering the same issues, but it’s our job to help you identify and form the solutions. Please feel free to contact me at any time to discuss how Beyond Technology can help your organisation.

  1. More Independent Review – We have noticed a marked increase in board involvement in technology and this is continuing to drive independent reviews. What has been long seen as standard practice across other business disciplines is increasing being used to drive ongoing improvements. We have seen this focus initially on the review/audit of 3rd party IT service providers and move steadily towards the review of internal service delivery and strategy.
  2. Ongoing Operational Cost Pressures – Unfortunately IT directors and CIO’s will still be expected to do more with less. Cost reduction opportunity assessments and cost/service level audits will continue to be a growing part of Beyond Technology’s business offering. However we are also seeing a trend towards cautious targeted technology investments while maintaining pressure on ongoing technology cost base.
  3. Higher levels of DR Governance – With a series of significant DR events over the last 18 months starting with the Virgin Blue melt down, and then early this year the impacts of the Brisbane floods and the Christchurch earthquakes, boards across Australia have started asking direct questions on DR preparedness. The experiences of these events have started to be shared among the business community and many technology managers are being left carrying the can for years of neglect and non-investment.
  4. 4G Mobile is a reality – Many of us this year have been impressed with the initial results experienced with LTE devices.  Telstra have launched a geographically constrained service but have active plans to rapidly expand this footprint;  Optus are a bit further behind and will follow a similar phase rollout through 2012; Vodafone still struggle to iron the kinks out of their 3G network.  It is time now to rethink your mobile strategy: how will you leverage 4G technology for point solutions in 2012? When is the right time to ramp down 3G fleets and switch to 4G?  How you generate competitive pressure across a hybrid fleet in an increasingly two horse vendor market?  Are there opportunistic gains to be made through short-term contracts during the market confusion?
  5. BYO Device Strategies – BYO device strategies (Smartphone, Tablet and Notebook) are increasingly become common place across enterprise IT. To HR this represents a chance to engage better with the Gen Y workforce, to Finance this is an opportunity  to move costs, to IT this can simple represent a security and management nightmare. Getting in front of the need and proactively developing a management strategy to leverage the advantages without being caught without a plan is key. We expect that the majority of enterprises will have a strategy to deal with BYO devices before the end of 2012.
  6. Mobile Device Management– Organisations have long since stopped accepting being tied to the desk, the continued reduction of mobile telecommunications costs, the increase in the capability of mobile hardware and improvement in mobility applications will continue to drive the increased adoption of mobile technologies. Organisations need to have a mobile device management strategy or platform in place to manage this ongoing adoption in a safe and reliable manner. Where best effort support was once  the norm, the business’s increasing reliance on these devices has driven the requirements for agreed service level targets and effective security management.
  7. Still More Cloud – Appropriate use of cloud in your technology strategy can be an excellent option to focus on your teams key strengths in service delivery and improve IT’s relationship with the business. An independent consultant like Beyond Technology can provide you with appropriate benchmark information that quickly identifies the cloud opportunities that are appropriate for your organisation now and into the future.
  8. Technology based business productivity improvement opportunity to support growth – The Australian economy has recently been dependent on China for its economic growth which has led to our famous two speed economy. We are seeing boards focusing on understanding how they can deliver organisational capacity for more sustainable growth through productivity improvements.  Mobility, collaboration, CRM and business intelligence capabilities will be an ongoing technology focus to deliver these improvements.
  9. Application Strategy Roadmap–  Updating application strategy roadmaps to take into account recent changes in mobility and collaboration technologies should be undertaken with a broad view of the organsiations productivity improvement opportunity.  Whether the impetus is  business process change, or the promised insights of “Big Data”, 2012 is  expected to be a year where many organisation refresh their application strategy roadmap.

I look forward to working with you in the new year and hope that you get to enjoy some time off before then.

Regards,

Greg Spencer BE(Hons) MBA
Principal Consulting Partner
Beyond Technology Consulting
Mobile: 0448 866 801
Office: 1300  469 909

2011 Floods and IT Disaster Recovery Planning

Posted on by Greg Spencer

Beyond Technology Consulting has already made a substantial donation to the victims of the disastrous Queensland floods, however the concern about the lessons learnt from the disaster remain. We are already hearing about Queensland business’s facing ruin, not due to the direct loss, but due to their inability to recovery core systems in a timely manner. Many organisations are only finding out now that their backup system has been ineffective, their recovery process is reliant on a staff member that can’t get to work or their 3rd party service provider has proactively entered receivership.

The time to consider your disaster recovery capabilities is not just after you have suffered a business ending catastrophe, but at a point when you can muster the required broad executive attention and when rational business focused decisions can be made about your organisations risk appetite. Organisations like Beyond Technology Consulting can quickly and efficently consider your existing capabilities, understand your business requirements and make recommendations about risk mitigation strategies that you should consider.

I am pleased to report that many of our Queensland clients remain unaffected (IT wise) by recent events, and those that have been inundated have used their pragmatic recovery plans based on our advice to recover IT services within the service levels negotiated with the business. The combination of remote VPN access, Cloud services, Virtualised recovery servers and over-the-network  backup services have proved their value and utility. Unfortunately many large organisations that have relied on the traditional central five nines datacentre approach to disaster avoidance have been less lucky. We have heard of at least two major datacentres that either had their basement diesel generators turned off due to electrical safety concerns, or had them “go dark” due to logistical issues caused by the longevity of access restrictions.

While the politicians focus on the loss of life caused by the flooding, those responsible for the governance of IT systems and departments should focus on the potential loss of livelihoods. A decision to not mitigate a business ending event risk can be a viable business decision, the failure of a business due to the absence of a decision is an avoidable tragedy. Make 2011 the year that Australian business took charge of its responsibility to its staff, shareholders, customers and suppliers and ask the question, “What is the hidden risk in our IT infrastructure?”

Can the Virgin Blues happen to you?

Posted on by Greg Spencer

Executives across the country could feel the hair on the back of their necks stand on end over the weekend on hearing the complete financial, PR, operational and reputational disaster that besieged Virgin Blue after a catastrophic IT failure. While the press was interviewing distraught travellers across the country that were asking “Why didn’t they have a backup”, the dirty secret across many Australian organisations is that their IT recovery plans are either inadequate, or reliant on 3rdparty providers whom they do not have the skills to audit.

Executives and IT managers claiming “But we had a plan”, or “I was assured that we were OK” does not make the systems work. The simple facts are that customers don’t care who your relied on and if they fail you. Your reputation and that of your organisation is at the most risk if the executive has not ensured an independent review of your recovery capabilities. With the pressure of increasing “business as usual” activity and ever increasing demands on IT departments it has become common for IT managers to request an independent assessment of their activity and that of their providers. It is considered appropriate industry practice to undertake an independent audit of 3rdparty providers service and recovery capabilities both on a regular basis during their contract, and also prior to contract renewal.

If you would like to talk to one of our consultants to discuss how we can assist your IT department with an independent audit please contact us now.  Alternatively read more about our Audit offerings, or download our brochure on IT service provider Audits.