John has 25 years of experience in ICT Industry covering sales, business development and technical support. He is highly motivated, driven and recognized for overachieving revenue growth targets. His experience extends to many international vendors in the Networking industry. His last appointment as a Country Manager for WatchGuard provided the essential entrepreneurial skill to work independently and to be able to cover all aspects of the business. John’s previous roles cover all facets of the organization extending from Customer care call centers to technical support to direct solution selling to all levels. His experience is not only indifferent roles but in AP region with direct workings in the country of Singapore, Korea, Indonesia and Australia.

John worked in various senior management positions for major Networking vendors including; Novell, 3Com, and WatchGuard, as well as running his own SMB in VoIP. During his time at WatchGuard, John, had turned the declining business to growth and stabilization. Most importantly building the foundation for growth.

Simon has over 20 years of experience in the ICT industry. He used to work for several international companies such as Motorola, IBM, and Cisco Systems in the systems engineering and sales/marketing positions. He also worked for a major semiconductor company in Taiwan as the Director of Business Development for many years.

Simon has an adventurous nature and excells at promoting new ideas, concepts and technologies. He was credited for introducing the “country first” IBM ThinkPad, IBM PC Server in the Taiwan market and was responsible for the successful closures of the first Cisco 6509 Catalyst Switch and the first Broadband ADSL service for the Chunghwa Telecom.

Simon was assigned by Cisco Systems in 2001 to develop an SI partner in China for network services and supports. The company has now grown to become the largest SI partner in China with more than 110 CCIEs, – an indispensable business partner for Cisco Systems in both the Enterprise and Service Provider segments.

Michael has 15 years experience developing and implementing customer insight based programs for large corporations in Australia and Canada.
For over 4 years, Michael was the head of customer research for Telstra’s Wholesale Division. In this capacity, Michael developed and implemented a comprehensive Customer Insights and Satisfaction Program which included strategic customer workshops, an operational service tracking program as well as the design and implementation of a customer insights decision support tool. See 2excell.com.
He has written articles on effective customer engagement which have been published in Australia, Canada and the United States.
Michael is very customer focussed. His background in customer research, marketing and strategy enables him to effectively assist organisations to turn insights into measurable actions and outcomes.

Bruce has over 35 years experience in the ICT industry. His first 20 years were spent in the banking industry with Databank Systems where he held positions in the programming, analysis, design and project management of banking computer systems. He then progressed into ICT Security and Audit as Data Security Manager and was co-founder and president of the Wellington Chapter of the EDPAA (now ISACA – Information Systems, Audit and Control Association).

Later Bruce joined Racal-Guardata, the IT security division of Racal Electronics (a UK Company). Responsible for product sales and consulting in NZ he transferred to Sydney Australia in a similar position which expanded to include SE Asia after Racal was purchased by Thales. Bruce became Thales e-Security’s Regional Business Manager for Australasia and SE Asia, where he established of a strong Direct Sales and Channel Sales network supporting a solid sound growing security business in the finance, government and retail sectors throughout the region.

Peter Pain, October, 2011

So much has been written already, by so many, about so little of relevance, of one Steven Paul Jobs.

I am not gifted nor knowledgeable enough to compete with the outpourings.

I personally, quietly, privately, contemplated and celebrated the gift he gave us all of his life.

I appreciated his insights in his 2005 Address to Stanford University when he said “Death is Life’s greatest invention … it clears out the old and makes way for the new”.

Its not whether, its only when. He lived his life always resolved to make every day count.

I am a great admirer of Jobs, the company he built, and the products he led and inspired.

The Jobs of the new Apple post-1996 was not “ruthless”, “arrogant”, or any of the countless negative labels  ascribed to him. He simply knew what he wanted to do and he did it … make devices that delight people and are elegantly easy and satisfying in the process. Let the market decide. And they did!

The Cube was elegant, but a spectacular failure from which he learned much. the iMac was a revolution.

He resisted calls to allow developers API access to create apps in the original iPhone, saying html coded apps would run within the browser. He was wrong, so in iPhone 3G, apps were born, and took iTunes Apps Store ballistic.

He hadn’t misjudged what the market wanted. He misjudged timing of technology availability.  HTML 5.0 then was still immature, and processors not yet fast enough nor batteries big enough, to support Safari as an App environment. But Cocoa with memory sang a sweet apps song … and the rest is history.

In that 2005 Address he said, “looking forward, you can’t connect the dots, you can only do that looking back”, so he never worried about criticism, he focused on what he thought was right. As we look back now, the world acknowledges his brilliance.

And the relevance to Telecoms is … ?

…  IOS … iPhone … iPad … and … ?

IOS derived from Mac OS X which incorporated a development of the OPENStep application environment his team developed at NeXT after banishment from Apple in 1987.  20 years from then to iPhone. IOS enabled the iPhone which begat the iPod Touch and the iPad.

Each was a total rethink of how people would want to use everyday useful devices. Jobs saw the power of useable, elegant mobile computing that integrated our most wanted functions … phone, music, internet, calendar, contacts, email and reading. In iPhone/IOS he melded them together in a seamless elegance that people from 8 to 80 can pick up and easily quickly learn to use. He “democratised” email, photo sharing, information access, and movies with these devices.

They did “kinda” exist before iPhone. Ever tried to make a Symbian phone, like my Ericsson M600 try and do email, browser, contacts & calendar in 2007? It could, but the ergonomics were just too hard. Good concept, built by engineers, but massive market fail.

Jobs didn’t invent these ideas. But he did put them together and make them work elegantly, simply, for everyone. And he backed them with a business model that also turned the mobile carrier world on its head. We forget the power of the carriers then. They dictated handset features, functionality and plans. Now Apple drives market demand for handset features, and its success strongly influences all plans offered by carriers.

The most profound result from Steve Jobs driving iPhone/iPad development has been the effect on mobile carriers bandwidth demands. Prior to iPhone, mobile data was almost an afterthought. GPRS appealed to transaction based systems, but browsing, email etc was dismally small. iPhone changed all that. iPhone inspired Android to compete. Smartphones have driven carriers to realise that exponential bandwidth growth and cost of data on 3G networks would eat them alive. HSDPA and HSUPA arose because of this, and then HSPA+, which all helped to lower cost per bit, but didn’t stem the tide.

Its fair to say that LTE development has been driven by smartphones, and iPhone in particular, even though iPhone 4S is not an LTE phone. (More on that in next article). LTE offers a major reduction in cost per bit, and flattens the cost curve with increasing data throughput. Its urgency has been driven by the exponential growth in demand predominantly from smartphones and iPads.

I cannot say that LTE would not have happened without smartphones and iPhone. I just think it would have happened a whole lot later had Steve Jobs not had the early vision to wrap Internet+Music+Phone together in that original iPhone package released in 2007. By doing so, he has forced nothing short of a data revolution on the mobile carriers.

A revolution which goes on ….

… Google and Microsoft (through its acquisition of Skype), and other non-conventional operators, will increasingly challenge conventional carrier models, first offering fixed line voice and data, but with mobile clearly in their sights. It will be  interesting to watch how the industry is re-invented again, from the outside in … all because Steve Jobs knew what we wanted before we did.

He will continue to have a profound effect on this Telecoms industry through the LTE revolution and beyond.

Thank you Steve

Matthew has over 17 years experience in the ICT industry at senior management level with deep experience servicing public sector including Defence and Health and well as the financial services industry. Matthew has an aptitude to understand the dynamics of client business models and develop win/win outcomes applying business acumen along with a unique background crossing engineering, technology, sales and finance along with an inquisitive nature.

Prior to joining Creator Tech, Matthew held various senior positions at CSC including CFO – Australia, and Vice President Sales and Account Management. Previous roles were at BAE Systems and Bowthorpe PLC.

With the rapid proliferation of smart-phones, falling costs of unlimited capped plans, and our resultant increased daily dependency on them (my colleague calls it her “life support system”), the number one complaint of most mobile customers continues to be …

Network coverage … particularly in-building coverage.

And where do they have this problem? …  most everywhere!

Particularly in two places – where they live and where they work – home and office. For Gen Y’s, who are aggressively dropping fixed line service for an all-wireless world, and busy business people, this is a distressing inconvenience.

There is a really smart solution to this problem for owners of many smart-phones and for Australian carriers.

First, let’s look at the problem being solved.

2100MHz is the main 3G frequency band used by all three carriers, as it’s a heavy lifter for data carrying capacity, so important to smart-phones and their internet demands. The higher frequency means more subscribers can run more data through a single base station. The inconvenience is the higher frequency attenuates more quickly, meaning less range and has less “reach” for in-building coverage than the lower bands of 850 and 900 MHz, which penetrate far into buildings. Low band users can even get coverage in many elevator cars in motion – something 2100 struggles to do.

Telstra’s strategic decision when building NextG to be an early adopter of 850MHz (same as AT&T) around CBD and metro areas, as well as 2100MHz in urban areas, laid a solid basis for its claim to “works better in more places”. Country areas use lots of 850MHz for range.

Although Optus and VHA have, and continue to each invest hundreds of millions of dollars into improved 3G network infrastructure each year, they are working hard just to keep up with exploding smart-phone and dongle data usage, which continue to stress network coverage and in-building reach.

The reality remains today for many users, particularly where only 2100MHz is available or operator backhaul is an issue, that in-building coverage, particularly at home and office, can vary from ordinary to barely usable.

So, other than starting your own www.YourTelcoFAIL.com.au, what to do? Fortunately, more than one answer is emerging.

Femto-cells, or “personal” base stations, connected to your broadband ISP, are moving slowly toward adoption. While ongoing technical issues continue to be resolved, femtos nevertheless find it hard to deliver much range in-home. Typically just 20 metres range is reported … less if concrete or brick walls intervene. Vodafone NZ has just launched femto offerings, similar to those from Vodafone UK, so femto’s are likely to be in the minds of VHA and Optus locally.

But femtos still cost more than a typical adsl modem router and are yet one more box to install and maintain and find a place for amongst the clutter. Once set up, they typically support up to only 4 handsets at a time at home.

But there is another solution…

… Smart WiFi Offload.

Smart WiFi solves the coverage issue from a different perspective by leveraging complementary installed wifi.

Today more than 50% of the Gen X and Gen Y homes already have wifi broadband. Baby boomers less so, but broad-scale take-up of wifi is wide spread inside and outside the home. Many businesses make wifi available to employees at work. It’s in coffee shops, McDonalds, hotels and airport lounges and other public places.

A package of handset client software, and network gateway equipment, provides network operators with a pragmatic and remarkably simple option called Smart WiFi Offload.

Whenever your enabled smart-phone detects roams to an available pre-selected WiFi network ALL your 3G voice text and data traffic is routed by wifi via the local broadband connection rather than over the operator’s 3G network.

So what are the benefits?

• Faster internet data;
• Greater in-home range … wifi has more power and will typically range throughout a home and into the garden;
• No handset limitations. Support all household members’ phones simultaneously off the same broadband wifi;
• Extendable to visitors if you choose to, (difficult to do with femto, or not possible if the user limit is exceeded);
• Its user-centric, not network-centric, so works wherever the user can connect to wifi (think of it like taking a virtual femto with you wherever you go);
• Voice quality is typically better than 3G and approaches fixed-line quality;
• Some  Smart WiFi Offload solutions can temporarily shut down the 3G radio in some handsets, extending battery charge compared to having both wifi and 3G enabled;
• Because there is no “app”, it being part of the phone’s software, no user training is required. The user sees no difference in placing or receiving a call or sending/receiving text/MMS other than a small indicator that changes from “3G” to the operator’s wifi offload identifier. The same dialer and handset address book is used, and the operator’s network automatically redirects all incoming calls via wifi to the handset. It couldn’t be simpler;
• … and, depending on operator, if international roaming is enabled, roaming charges could be slashed. In fact, Smart WiFi Offload means there really is no need for third party voip apps, or even calling cards, or using a local sim and having to deal with a number change.

For a look at how this works, see the video on the home page at http://smart-wi-fi.com/

Philipp Humm, CEO of USA’s T-Mobile, commented on 25 January 2011 in an interview by CNet News: “T-Mobile has been a leader in Wi-Fi for a long time. We launched Wi-Fi enabled handsets more than five years ago that had UMA technology that allowed calls to be handed off from the cellular network to Wi-Fi networks … now I think the time is right for it. We are evolving the service from UMA to a lighter client on handsets, which can be used a lot easier. And we’ve already got this service available on some Android phones. So this is evolving to be something that is seamlessly usable.”

The “lighter client” he refers to is a client by Kineto of Silicon Valley. Their client uses the 3GPP’s Release 6 specifications known as UMA/GAN protocol, which is an industry standard. These modern “lighter” handset clients supports the standard, and are interoperable, proven, and in widespread operation in USA with T-Mobile, in Canada with Rogers, and in Europe with Orange UK, Orange France and Telia Sonera of Denmark.

In a nutshell, Smart WiFi Offload, can offer smart-phone users proven, real and immediate network coverage and potential roaming benefits, and it could be up and running in just months of appropriate decisions.

With the advent of LTE only a few years away the imperative of better solutions for high speed data will only increase. Smart WiFi Offload offers a long-term solution for enhanced in-building and public place network coverage.

… watch this space …

As new technologies come and go, only a few manage to stay and become core industry solutions. Is cloud computing a stayer, what will it take to get it there and who will dominate the market longer term?

The mooted advantages of enterprises moving to the cloud are well documented at a conceptual level, however, are the cloud providers geared up to offer cloud services cost effectively and in the volumes that are being predicted, and is the timing right? Three core elements are needed in order for cloud computing to achieve expectations:

1. Mature technology
2. Service providers and vendors
3. The right business model

The hype surrounding cloud computing is reminiscent of many technologies seen as game changers: the internet is primary amongst these. This brings to mind the various product development cycles, in particular, Gartner’s hype cycle.

Gartner Research’s Hype Cycle diagram

Cloud computing today is situated very much at the Peak of Expectations (some would argue that software-as-a-service has begun its decline), however, expect to see several stages of evolution as the number of players and range of business models expands and then converges, before it arrives at the Slope of Enlightenment.

The hype cycle offers a broad basis for the journey new technologies often take. I’ve added a few of my own:

Phase 1: The Concept
This is the formation of the idea and first stage conceptual testing of its viability. If it’s interesting enough, and there are enough industry players contributing to the emerging space, the concept will gather momentum. For cloud computing, the basic concept of complete outsourcing of IT operations for enterprises has long been a vision. Cloud type services have had several predecessors: hosting, ASPs, grid computing, etc. Advances in IP security and broadband capacity have served as the Technology Triggers to kick-off the momentum.

Phase 2: Join the Bandwagon
Once the idea is seen to have legs, no one will risk being left behind and the concept truly gains momentum. As industry players and consultants see an idea being increasingly discussed, they will invest into the space. The climb to the Peak of Inflated Expectations is a fast and exciting one, with the architecture and design of the commercial service taking shape, often with various business models being launched. Cloud computing has been going through this stage for the past year and a half.

Phase 3: Market Growth & Fragmentation
Approaching the peak in expectation and hype, many new players will emerge to compete in the space. The dominant industry vendors will develop their own services, however, they will be challenged by smaller, innovative and nimbler players. The descent into the Trough of Disillusionment is the difficult and most challenging phase where different business models compete for primacy, channel strategies continue to evolve, and customer experience is tested.

Currently there are many small niche providers cropping up offering their own cloud solutions, alongside major IT companies, system integrators, software vendors and carriers. Tellingly there are many small software vendors that are offering OSS/BSS solutions, namely off-board billing, portal and order management platforms, targeting the cloud providers themselves.

Phase 4: Business Model
The critical element this phase brings to a new technology is the emergence of a sustainable business model that is profitable for the vendors, and provides value to customers. Alliances and channel strategies are bedded down for the longer term. The winners emerge during this phase. Cloud computing is on the verge of entering this period, possibly within the next 18 months to two years.

Phase 5: Market Share & Profitability
The dominant players compete aggressively for market share through service quality, differentiated services and pricing. The strategies for vendors’ solutions will become increasingly sophisticated and targeted to their respective market niches. In this phase, many technologies fall by the wayside, while others continue to prosper. For cloud computing, especially in Australia, this phase is likely another two or more years away with a handful of dominant platform and infrastructure cloud providers to dominate the market.

What does this mean for cloud computing today?

Whilst a small number of brave CIOs have embraced the cloud in totality, the majority are taking a wait and see approach. Savvy IT managers will scrutinise the hosting vendor’s environment, operating procedures, security policies and disaster recovery plans before taking the leap.

According to a recent survey by the IT Governance Institute (ITGI), 60% currently use or plan to use cloud computing for non-mission-critical services. A significant number of respondents had concerns about reliability and security, with one third citing significant legacy infrastructure investments that are influencing their cloud computing plans.

The high growth forecasts are tempered by the fact that most enterprises that have moved to, or are investigating the cloud, are looking at two core areas: testing and development, and messaging and collaboration. These areas, however, are considered peripheral or non-critical services. It is much rarer to find the enterprise that has shifted its entire IT environment to the cloud.

Who is in pole position?

The two main names slugging it out are Microsoft and Google. Microsoft has recruited an impressive array of hardware providers such as IBM, Fujitsu, HP and Dell on its Hyper-V Cloud program.

Although each of these vendors has launched their own private cloud solutions, the foremost objective is still to shift ‘boxes’. Cloud computing has simply provided a new model to market. Given the threat that cloud computng brings to these vendors as their traditional client business is consolidated in the cloud, establishing new partnerships is crucial. What these vendors can’t do is match what service providers offer.

Technology – more than ‘just a pipe’, the clear advantage carriers have is their command of networks, both fixed and mobile, particularly from servers to their customers. They can deliver reliability, measurable QoS and performance SLAs, end-to-end access networks – all core components of cloud computing, and all the traditional domain of service providers.

Service providers also have existing business relationships to leverage, along with large scale IT infrastructure for their own internal use, and experience in dedicated IT services for enterprises. Where this expertise and resources can be integrated effectively, service providers can become a one-stop shop for all communications and IT services.

The reality for most telcos is they are stuck with legacy platforms, even post-transformation, and this infrastructure is not fully equipped to manage sophisticated and complex convergent services such as cloud solutions.

Business model – cloud computing remains largely un-tested in the Australian market. Whilst Telstra and Optus have launched cloud services, the second tier carriers are still in the process of developing their cloud computing strategies.

Convincing their customers, especially mid-sized businesses, of the value of their technology, the differentiator of a quality network, and the impact of QoS on the reliability of their connection, will be a fundamental imperative for all carriers.

A primary challenge for service providers is to ensure their OSS/BSS platforms have the sophistication, flexibility and smarts to manage the unique needs of cloud computing customers: fully automated and real-time service provisioning and billing. Until telcos are able to deliver this to customers, the business models will remain constrained to what is available today.

Service providers are in prime position to own cloud computing. They have the best opportunity to exploit their unique position, especially their clout in network management. They can evolve their own internal infrastructure to enable them to offer cloud computing in scale.

It’s theirs to lose.

Toshihisa has over 20 years of experience in Telecom business fields, including positions not only on the Equipment Manufacturer side, and also on the Carrier side.

His deep and varied experience includes Pre-sales Support, Post Sales Support (Service Management), Project Management and Technical Support. Technologies in which he has been closely involved include IP-VPN, VoIP – especially SIP protocol – ISDN/ISUP, SDH/SONET, and DWDM.

Toshihisa also has a very extensive network of human relationships in Japan, particularly throughout Telecom Carriers (NTT, KDDI, Softbank), and Equipment Manufacturers (NEC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Oki).