There still seems little chance that the UK will see 4G wireless services launched anytime soon, but anyone planning to travel down under for the Ashes will get the chance to see live HSPA+ – courtesy of Telstra.

The Australian Telco (and former national PTO) switched on the world’s first commercially available High Speed Packet Access + services on Monday, and claimed that early users could expect to enjoy wireless downloads at speeds of “upto 20 Mbps.” Continue Reading

Corporate IT spending may still be lagging the levels of two years ago, says a new Computer Economics study, but recovering is coming lead by strong demand for Microsoft Windows 7, and growing interest in desktop virtualisation and unified communications.

According to Computer Economics’ latest Technology Trends 2010/ 2011 study whilst only 3% of IT organizations have so far migrated to Windows 7, 31% said they had ear marked funds for migrating to the new desktop operating system in their latest IT budgets. Continue Reading

The next 12 months are going to be a critical time for the future of mobile business application delivery. With wireless operators preparing to launch faster broadband services and an ever-growing range of advanced new devices ready to take advantage of them, the already large body of business users accustomed to always-on access to tools like email will soon be expecting the same kind of access to applications such as ERP and CRM.

Almost everyone seems to agree that we are on the threshold of the biggest advance in end-user IT service delivery since the arrival of the PC. This time though the PC is not destined to be the star of the show and that, as some corporate IT developers are already discovering, is going to cause some problems. Continue Reading

O2 has signaled its intent to cash in on its market leading position in mobile data services market, and withdrawn unlimited data bundling from its service portfolio. The move is a shock for the 3% of O2 customers whose unlimited data access became a premium service on July 12^th, and its impact is likely to be monitored closely but the company’s competitors who are also keen the raise the profitability of their costly wireless data infrastructure.

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As we all know, the trend towards mobile communications among workers, students, and guests has pressed for the rapid migration from Wi-Fi hot spots for a handful of casual users to Wi-Fi networks for high performance users.  When selecting the Wi-Fi solution for your organization, you need to make certain the architecture is powerful and intelligent enough to not only cover large areas, but also provide the needed user density and bandwidth for mobile computing voice, video, and data – an architecture that can replace wired Ethernet to the desktop.

Several years ago, Xirrus’ founder and CEO Dirk Gates foresaw the proliferation in exciting new Wi-Fi devices and applications, but noted that no one was planning for the success of the Wi-Fi revolution.  Several companies like Airespace and Aruba were building architectures based on thin access points wired to a closet controllers — though these architectures provided better central network management, they failed to provide  the bandwidth and user density needed to replace wired networking to the desktop.

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Matt Perry, technical director at Aerohive reckons that wireless network controllers were not put in place for management reasons: “In any enterprise wireless network of any reasonable size, there will be multiple controllers – another layer of complexity: Access Points (APs), controllers and a separate management system. We see it as inevitable that controllers are not the correct route for wi-fi networks.” Continue Reading

With a host of technologies out there for the provision of mobile communications, which route should an enterprise take? In the current climate, organisations are seeking at best to grow and at worst stabilise their revenues. They are seeking to reduce latencies in their processes and speed up the time to market of their products and services.

At the same time there is constant pressure to reduce overheads just as communications costs are rising. More employees are using mobile communications, the cost of mobile devices is high and the time spent using them is increasing. This needs to be controlled and where possible reduced. Continue Reading

The innovation in Mobile Applications has made significant leaps since I first started working on seminars and content in this space about 4 years ago.  At that time a great ‘mobile’ application was the ability to VPN back into the office!  How things have changed…….

What is more impressive is the speed of deployment of many of the mobile applications I have spoken to our presenters about. Considering the apparent complexity it is an endorsement of the cloud computing model as many solutions are simply ‘glued’ together using web services. Which will be music to the ears of Opera software as well as Salesforce.com both presenting their visions at this years event. Continue Reading

A look at the wireless technologies available now and coming soon..

Already many enterprises make use of at least five wireless networking technologies. Consider the average mobile worker equipped with a cellular phone, this alone probably utilizes three wireless technologies, GSM, GPRS and Bluetooth. Their laptop most likely has built in wireless LAN access over WiFi and if they work away from any office infrastructure they may even be provided with a 3G data card. If they use a car as part of their work the chances are this will contain a Navigation system based on the GPS standard.  So, that is already six wireless technologies and that does not include others which might be in use within the organization such as RFID tags, DECT portable phones, or many of the new wireless services which are coming to the market.

Market indicators are that the success of WiFi will soon be overshadowed, literally, by the arrival of WiMax in many metropolitan areas. Alongside this, cellular services are already being enhanced to increase the speed of data transfers; GPRS is being enhanced with EDGE and 3G with high-speed download and upload capabilities called HSDPA and HSUPA. At the individual level Personal Area Networking (PAN) capabilities are soon to see significant improvements from the introduction of Ultra Wideband (UWB) products. Continue Reading

Mobile ubiquity – where everything and everyone can and more importantly should be connected is currently transforming how many industries, including Healthcare, conduct business. While the “always on” possibility poses organisations many challenges, it also presents many exciting opportunities.  As healthcare organisations and providers become increasingly digital in both their business processes and day to day medical recording, the move has opened the door for unprecedented improvements around efficient communication. Continue Reading