Why rent if you can buy? This common piece of real estate wisdom can also apply to fibre-optic networks. Economics is economics: making the upfront investment to own your pipes is becoming a potent option for many organizations.
Enterprises Struggle for IT Strategies: Telus
Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are more likely than large companies to think strategically about IT projects, according to a Telus online tool designed to measure such things. But while the results suggest SMBs are ahead of the game, small companies are less likely to see substantial business value from IT projects.
IP Early Adopters: What They Learned
The first IP-PBX products started appearing in the mid-1990s, and hype around the technology grew quickly. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, pioneering telecom managers were beginning to implement IP telephony solutions, lured by promises of cost savings and amazing new applications. For organizations wrestling today with whether and when to migrate to IP, it may be instructive to know how those early adopters fared.
Editorial: An Old Order Eye on IT
Regulation & Policy: Stand and Fight
Battle of the Video Conferencing Titans
When Cisco Systems Inc. unveiled its TelePresence system last year, the firm as much as informed the telecom industry that the video conferencing sub-sector would never be the same. Here was as big a name in enterprise networking as you could get, horning in on Tandberg, Polycom Inc. and others providing video communications technologies and trying to win a piece of an elusive pie.
Mobile VPNs: Enabling On-the-Go Workforces
After years of anticipation and a boost from high-speed wireless broadband, the business use of mobile handheld devices is finally taking off. Gartner Inc. predicts that two out of three workers will be using mobile enterprise applications by the end of the year. However, delivering secure remote access to mobile workforces is not easy.
On the Line: The Dysfunctional Call Centre
January 25 was Robbie Burns Day, honouring Scotland’s national poet and favourite son. He once wrote, "O wad some power the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us!" Which means, "O would some power give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us." That applies in spades to call centres. Many organizations just can’t get a fix on how the call centre appears to their customers. Executives rely too much on metrics or vague satisfaction surveys; the managers feel paralyzed by lack of funding; and the agents just try and cope.
Fed Up with Cable and DSL
Cable and DSL penetration in Canada seems to be reaching the saturation point, according to Maravedis. The Montreal research firm said late last year that 2006 and 2007 would mark the access technologies’ peak growth, as fast forms of wireless make their way into the market. Wi-Fi and other un-tethered conduits will eat away at the cable and DSL subscriber base, said Maravedis senior analyst Julien Regoli. But as broadband changes from wireline to wireless, it will continue to grow: by 2010, 95% of Canadian households with Internet access will connect via a high-speed service. Maravedis also figures the end of dial-up service is nigh as the old-fashioned technology struggles to keep pace with the Web’s evermore rich content, and as high-speed service drops in cost.
Mr. Dunn, I Presume?
Former Nortel Networks CEO Frank Dunn has surfaced as a board member at QCL Growth Partners Inc., according to the Ottawa Business Journal. QCL is a business consulting firm in Ottawa. Dunn left Nortel under a cloud of controversy – during his tenure (2001 to 2004) the company chopped thousands of jobs and weathered financial investigations.