Despite a gaggle of tools such as liking, following, and friending, enterprise social networks still struggle to derive meaning from the ever evolving nature of actual, human associations.
In order to truly capture a user’s social graph, our software must accommodate the more malleable aspects of our human nature, such as bias, contradictions and even multiple personalities.
All movie actors are separated from Kevin Bacon by no more than six films. If you don’t believe me, just try your hand at the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game. However, as staggeringly interesting as this may be, how valuable is such knowledge? Continue reading “Do Social Networks Really Understand Relationships?”→
NFV will dramatically reduce the number of expensive hardware appliances that carriers and large enterprises need to deploy throughout the data centre and network
Instead of so many hardware boxes, networks will be able to deploy cheap-as-dirt high volume server infrastructure with VMs running on top to replace all those functions previously occupied by hardware
SDN promises control of the network fabric with more of this control extending to the enterprise in due course
SDN and NFV are garnering attention in the industry with exciting benefits being promised to consumers of network and IT services. The longer term view of NFV is that VMs running network applications on mass-market low cost server infrastructure will replace expensive dedicated appliances. The implication of this for owners of extensive network and data centre infrastructure is ultimately far lower costs, since adding VMs on servers means procuring cheap-as-mud standard servers as opposed to far more expensive dedicated equipment such as switches, routers, deep packet inspection boxes, firewalls and session border controllers. Moreover the amount of technical and engineering support required to manage significantly virtualized network components such as CDN, carrier grade NAT, and other services, is far less because provisioning and on-going management is automated and managed by customers is supplied using a client facing dashboard. This is a futuristic view, and we anticipate such possibilities from 2014 and beyond. Continue reading “The Impact on Your IT Department of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)”→
Premiums for mobile roaming and 4G will prevent business users from taking full advantage of other paid-for services, such as hosted applications and remote access services.
Business customers should begin to demand voice over WiFi as a standard part of their mobility solutions.
In a recent statement from Neelie Kroes, the vice president for the digital agenda in the European Commission, she spoke of her “dream” to see a “true, integrated single market.” Kroes went on to add that “in such a market, there is no roaming.” The fine details are a long way from being agreed upon, but this statement is a clear indication that the EU intends to go beyond capping mobile roaming fees within the EU and actually prohibit them altogether. The devil is always in the details with such legislation and business customers will undoubtedly hold suspicions that they will end up paying for roaming one way or another. There is no such thing as a free lunch and we all appreciate that MNOs have to make a profit. Vodafone UK, for example, has announced that it is investing GBP 900 million in rolling out 4G and upgrading backhaul and network infrastructure to cope with the rollout. As this is the investment required for only one European country, the task of convincing operators that it is in their interest not to set too high a price for 4G, and similarly roaming, might seem daunting. Continue reading “4G, WiFi and Roaming – Three Things That Should All Be ‘Free’?”→
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