Civica teams with BT for Edinburgh contract

.: Acorn Networks :. Software and services VAR Civica has landed a share of a £10m deal for the technology transformation programme of The City of Edinburgh Council.
Civica is working in affiliation with telco giant BT on the two-year technology transformation scheme called Service Redesign.
The programme forms part of The City of Edinburgh Council’s new agenda, which is putting new IT technologies at the heart of local services.
Service Redesign comprises a centralised service infrastructure based on Microsoft Active Directory and Short Message Service (SMS) with a managed desktop environment for 6,000 departmental users across all the council’s sites.
Steve Reynolds, managing director of Civica Services, said: “Civica has the proven track record and expertise to support infrastructure programmes of this type. We will be helping BT Global Services and The City of Edinburgh Council to simplify software management and compliance and help to drive costs out of the overall IT budget.”
Hayden Edwards, Service Redesign project manager at BT, said: “Civica is helping to bring about reduced software support costs on a large scale project. Too often, organisations neglect software licensing when they could actively manage it.”
Councillor Donald Wilson for The City of Edinburgh Council, said: “I am extremely pleased with the Service Redesign programme. It has given the council an opportunity to take a massive step forward in modernising the services we deliver.
“It will allow us to work more efficiently across different parts of our organisation. It means that our IT partner provides us with a faster and more responsive IT support service that is crucial in today’s fast-moving environment where delivering customer services means systems must keep running around the clock.”

Microsoft Vista Already Ratcheting Up IT Support Costs at Tech Companies

.: Acorn Networks :. Most technology companies have started preparations for supporting Vista, the new operating system by Microsoft, according to a market study by the Service Excellence Research Group. ServiceXRG surveyed more than 80 tech hardware, software and services companies on their Vista support plans. Most expect Vista preparations to cost an equivalent of 20.6 hours per IT support individual, with more than 70 percent of this time allocated to training. The analysts said the release of a major new operating system by Microsoft inevitably raises crucial support questions. Will the OS work well with existing systems and applications? How much time and effort are needed for support engineers to learn the features, functions and limitations of a complex new system. What impact with this have on support demand?
"The majority -- 60.2 percent -- of companies surveyed indicate that they have begun some formal preparations to support Vista," said Ladd Bodem, principal and co-founder, ServiceXRG.
Additional highlights from the report include:
Respondents currently preparing for Vista indicate that, on average, 66.5% of all the support cases they handle involve a product that runs on or with a Windows operating environment.The majority (63.2%) of respondents expect that the release of Vista will result in an increase in their overall support demand by an average of 13.7%.on average, the tech companies surveyed expect to devote 175 person hours updating knowledge bases with information relevant to Vista.

CDC Software Adds IT Support Company To Portfolio

.: Acorn Networks :. CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation (CHINA), has announced the acquisition of Vis.align, a leading provider of IT support and managed services, for an undisclosed sum.
CDC Software says this expands its services portfolio, generates cross-selling opportunities, and offers customers additional end-to-end enterprise solutions and services. The Vis.align acquisition provides CDC Software customers with a comprehensive services offering including infrastructure and application optimization, application development and outsourced managed services.
"This acquisition positions us as an industry leader in offering a hybrid mix of solutions and services with a deep understanding of our customers' industry-specific requirements," said Bill Geist, senior vice president, Technical Services, of CDC Software. "The synergy of this acquisition is compelling since Vis.align has impressive expertise in our target industries, their services complement our Ross Enterprise and Pivotal CRM product lines, and the depth and breadth of our global operations will significantly expand the footprint of Vis.align's managed services business worldwide. Since managed services now appeal to companies of all sizes we expect to expand sales opportunities and improve revenue visibility as customers see the bottom-line value of this service.
With over US$20 million in sales during 2005, Vis.align is anticipated to be earnings accretive to CDC Corporation in 2007. The transaction was structured to include a two-year earn-out running through to December 31, 2008 based on Vis.align achieving certain revenue milestones. The earn-out, if achieved, is to be paid in a combination of cash and shares in CDC Corporation.
"Vis.align 's extensive vertical market expertise, especially in manufacturing and consumer packaged goods, complements the strengths of CDC Software," said Jennifer Horrocks, CEO and founder of Vis.align. "This is a winning combination that will enable our businesses to cross-sell solutions and services worldwide with the focus on improving business performance and profitability allowing customers to work with one vendor to address their total enterprise solutions and services needs.

Disabled charity overhauls IT support

.: Acorn Networks :. Disabled care charity Leonard Cheshire has started using a help desk system to improve IT advice for frontline carers.
The organisation, which provides an array of support to disabled people including care homes, supported living and day services, needed the system to track IT incidents more effectively.
The helpdesk function was comparatively informal, using a shared mailbox for logging support requests, says Carole Thornton, Leonard Cheshire systems analyst.
'We had some processes for dealing with the issues as they came in, but it was incredibly difficult to track the history of an incident or prioritise jobs effectively,' she said.
'Not only did this put the IT department under considerable pressure, it also made it impossible to set deliverable expectations and communicate them effectively to the rest of the organisation.'
The system, known as Oxygen, is playing a vital role in the IT department's support of other computer-based initiatives the charity is working on, says Thornton.
'For example, our systems are used to coordinate the schedules of visiting support workers, so it’s vital to ensure that any period of time that the systems are not running effectively for these workers is kept to an absolute minimum,' she said.
'We can now prioritise, escalate and track calls to the service desk far more effectively than with our previous approach.'

Helpdesk managers downbeat on Vista

.: Acorn Networks :. Just a week after the launch of Microsoft Vista to businesses, the new operating system continues to attract mixed messages on its adoption.
On Thursday, the helpdesk and support software company Axios Systems published the results of a survey that suggests only 5 percent of IT managers are aiming to deploy Vista during 2007.
The survey — of 240 IT directors and helpdesk managers of large UK and international organisations — showed that while Vista has become a major focus for some companies, others are happy to play wait and see.
Tasos Symeonides, chief executive of Axios, said the survey showed that while some companies may be attracted by the new features in Vista, they are realistic about its impact on their organisation. "The hype around Microsoft Windows Vista does not appear to have turned it into a priority for many IT directors/CIOs and helpdesk managers," he said.
There are other major issues facing IT directors and helpdesk managers in the deployment of Vista, according to Axios. One is simply a lack of suitable infrastructure for supporting the OS, which 22 percent cite as a bar to upgrading sooner. Another is the time required to train users on the new operating system, which 20 percent of users think will take too much time.
The figures contrast with data collected by ZDNet UK. According to our online survey of 1,305 IT professionals, conducted last week, 46 percent of respondents have plans to upgrade their desktop operating systems and the vast majority of those, or 41 percent of all respondents, plan to upgrade to Microsoft Vista. Fifty-one percent of those who plan to upgrade to Vista said they would begin the process in the next six months, rising to 70 percent in the next 12 months.
Companies have other pressing issues to contend with apart from Vista, according to the Axios survey. Around 31 percent of companies said IT service management would be a big focus for them in 2007, while 35 percent said they were concentrating on knowledge-management projects. Implementing VoIP was a priority for 18 percent of companies, while around 13 percent were concentrating on security software and 12 percent on business-intelligence software.

Lex IT Team Revs up Helpdesk Support with Hornbill's Supportworks

.: Acorn Networks :. Leading UK contract hire, purchase and fleet leasing company invests in IT solution to support staff and users of its IT systems across its nationwide offices, garages and dealerships
Hornbill Systems, a leading provider of IT support and service management solutions, has supplied its Supportworks service management system to Lex. Over 55 staff in the IT helpdesk team at Lex use Supportworks to log, track and monitor calls from over 1000 internal employees and 300 external system users across its nationwide offices and suppliers. Lex selected Hornbill’s solution for its ‘out of the box’ functionality, ease of use and intuitive look and feel. Since implementing the solution, the IT team at Lex uses Supportworks to monitor SLAs and has improved its customer service.
The IT team provides a central point of contact for all IT support calls on the network infrastructure and applications across the Lex business. This includes all employees and staff across garages and dealerships for car contract hire and purchase and UK Fleet Lease Management.
The IT team selected Supportworks to replace its existing helpdesk system, following extensive research of market offerings. The web self-service feature is a key feature for Lex, in order that helpdesk customers can log calls on the web and track progress for themselves. They are also able to add comments or request updates, which are the sent as alerts to the helpdesk analyst that has been allocated the call.
Using the built-in workflow processes in Supportworks has enabled the IT team to streamline and formalise some of its routines and improve its service. Since implementing Supportworks the IT team has been able to monitor adherence to Service Level Agreements, which they were previously unable to do. Using information gathered from Supportworks, the IT team plans to further refine its SLAs.
Following the successful adoption of Supportworks by the IT team, the facilities team is also using the call logging and tracking features for requests for equipment and services.
According to Phil Speake, Technical Support Manager: “Hornbill’s solution had the look and feel and functionality that we wanted – it offers 95% of the functionality that we need out of the box. Everything was there without requiring a lot of redevelopment.”
“Since using Supportworks, automating our processes has really saved us time and reduced mistakes,” said Speake. “Not only are we working more efficiently, it has improved our ability to service end users. The success of the system is that it has given us the ability to grow and take more calls with the same number of people. We can do more, better.”
Gerry Sweeney, Managing Director at Hornbill Systems commented, “The helpdesk environment is reactive and fast moving by its very nature. It is important that any tools employed should be intuitive, easy to use and automate as many processes as possible. We have designed Supportworks to meet these goals – as an application its aim should be to facilitate and improve the working processes in the helpdesk environment. Not only do end users benefit from improved service delivery, the helpdesk analysts can utilise the tool to monitor performance and adopt a more proactive approach.”

How self-reliance can revolutionise IT

.: Acorn Networks :. The BP initiative that grants staff responsibility for their own IT is just the first step in a new wave of self-reliant schemes.

The strategy of passing a task on to someone else to complete when it proves too difficult is one that makes perfect sense. Obviously, many others do too – it explains the success of consultants, the ongoing growth of the outsourcing industry and reiterates the importance of PAs. But a recent technology pilot by oil behemoth BP surprised even me.
It began when Jim Ginsburgh, vice-president for enterprise architecture at BP, noticed he was getting a better computing experience at home than he was in the office and decided to do something about it.
Assuming that many staff would share his feelings, he introduced a programme where, on receipt of an allowance, staff could buy their own computing equipment. The catch? Those who opted to join the scheme would have to take responsibility for all the support issues it created.
Obviously, for such a scheme to work – and be of benefit to BP rather than create more IT chaos – it has to be extremely closely controlled. For example, users must possess a reasonable level of computer literacy; only staff in suitable job roles are offered the chance to join and security is handled with great care (indeed, employees must adhere to strict levels of best practice, while access to BP’s enterprise network and systems is available only through a secure portal).
But the pilot programme shows some vision and bravery on the part of Ginsburgh and is an excellent example of recognising which aspects of technology the average enterprise can afford to let go of. After all, why would any firm want to be burdened with the support issues of their employees’ desktop machines and PDAs when they seem quite capable of looking after their own equipment at home?
While the immediate benefits of the pilot programme may not be obvious, Ginsburgh could be on to something. Not only does it have the immediate result of removing an IT support overhead from the business, but employees feel empowered for having direct control over their own technology. It should also improve their computing experience, which is directly linked to productivity.
BP is not the only company that has realised that behaving like a nanny state has only negative consequences. In November, more than 80 per cent of short-haul passengers who used Heathrow Terminal 4 took advantage of British Airways’ online, self-service check-in rather than the more traditional purgatory that many of us have to go through while waiting at an average airport check-in line. The airline has also handed its employees more independence by providing tools that allow staff to manage much of their day-to-day administrative tasks remotely over the internet.
In fact, it appears that there is a minor revolution going on in the corporate world, one which is being enabled by technology. Take the retail sector, where the rise of self-service cash tills in supermarkets is another example of how businesses have recognised the value in allowing people to do things for themselves. Although it is difficult to understand why some retailers introduced self-service tills complete with expensive electronic signature pads just before chip and pin came into force.
In a world where we are hardly trusted to tie our own shoelaces without coming up against some kind of safety regulation, it is gratifying to see the world of business and technology handing back some autonomy to staff and customers. After all, a lack of trust is a negative ingredient in any relationship.

India's TCS gets 5-year multi-million-Pound IT support deal from United Biscuits

.: Acorn Networks :. LONDON (AFX) - India's largest IT company, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) had received a five year, multi-million-Pound contract from European biscuit manufacturer United Biscuits (UB) to provide end-to-end IT support services to its manufacturing and supply chain operations.
These will include areas like application support, projects, business analysis services, strategic IT programmes and value added initiatives for UB's UK markets, a TCS press release said.
The company also said with the deal, it has become UB's preferred IT supplier for applications development and IT support in the UK. No other financial details were given.

Telecommunications Services Firm, Signet6, Partners with The Carlton Group to Plan Expansion

.: Acorn Networks :. LITTLE ROCK, Ark.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Roger A. Snyder, President and GM of Signet6 Network Science Inc. announced today that his firm has signed an exclusive agreement with The Carlton Group, a capital advisory firm, headquartered in Little Rock.
Snyder commented: “Working with the Carlton Group, we plan to expand our current technical infrastructure and generally expand our operations to exploit an open window of market opportunity in our rapidly growing and changing industry.”
Signet6 is a telecommunication services company, whose customers include the U.S. military, Fortune 1000 companies, banking and financial institutions, colleges and universities, hospitals and other telecommunication companies throughout the US, Canada, Europe, Caribbean, and Mexico.
Out of the tens of thousands of government contractors, only a select few are authorized to provide services for projects with security clearance requirements. In compliance with the Defense Security Service policy, the company can not advertise the obtainment or authorization of any security clearances. “This information is truly provided on a need to know basis,” said Snyder. The company projects are often related to the engineering, project management and support of telecommunications supporting the US military, and government agencies. Signet6 was awarded the highest status of Gold Level Quality Service Provider for General Dynamics, this year, for voice switch engineering and implementation services. General Dynamics is a 21 billion dollar revenue government defense contractor.
The company, having recently attended meetings with Nortel in Paris, received recognition for the provision of the highest levels of technical support with Nortel’s Europe, Middle East and Africa service teams. “We are very grateful to Nortel for their true teaming effort and as a result our service delivery continues to improve as our partnership grows,” said Snyder.
Signet6 provides telecommunications equipment, systems and supporting technical services to its clients. Presently, the company’s concentration is the support of Avaya and Nortel Network equipment users; together they make up in excess of 40% of the large PBX or enterprise systems market.
“To grow a company you need good people,” said Bill Carlton. “At Carlton-Bates Company I purposely sought out and surrounded myself with talented employees and partners with high standards and levels of expertise. I see that same commitment to excellence in Roger. Signet6 is totally dedicated to providing exceptional customer service, and that’s what really sets them apart in their field.” Mr. Carlton added that The Carlton Group “is excited about the opportunity to partner with Signet6 and to help create the infrastructure and provide guidance and financing.”
Mr. Snyder’s experience as a telecommunications services organization started in September of 1991, with the provision of repair and remanufacturing services to Avaya, Nortel, and Rolm systems users, throughout North America. “Over the years, large national accounts with expensive service agreements experienced shortages of quality technical talent and mismanaged projects,” said Snyder. “That created opportunities for Signet6. Today our services are being utilized by the U.S. Air Force, US Navy, US Army, US Marine Corp, EDS, Nortel France, Computer Sciences Corporation, and General Dynamics. Obviously if you are one of these entities, you can’t settle for second best in terms of technical support.”
Snyder said “because our company consistently delivers outstanding support, the door is wide open for future growth. After ten years of the industry’s talk, fear and attempts at voice over IP, the manufacturers of these VoIP systems are now gaining market share. These networks are more complex and require technical services of a more exact and precise nature than ever before. Demand for the highest quality design, engineering, project management and network support resources will be in greater than the market can presently provide. That will take additional resources and expertise, hence our partnership with Bill Carlton and The Carlton Group.”
Snyder, age 51, is the founder and has been President and GM of Signet6 and its predecessor, Intelex. He has held memberships with the International Engineering Consortium and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Computer Information Systems Advisory group. Previously, Mr. Snyder was a member of the Distributor Advisory Board for Ericsson Business Systems for North America. Mr. Snyder received his Engineering Technology degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 1978 and attended Memphis State University’s Herf College of Engineering.
The Carlton Group was formed this year by William P. Carlton, the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Carlton-Bates Company of Little Rock. Carlton-Bates, a national, industrial distributor of electrical and electronic products, was sold in 2005 to a Fortune 500 company, Wesco International, Inc. for $250 million. “My real passion is entrepreneurship and small business,” commented Carlton. “I believe we have all the disciplines needed to represent and mentor a growing business such as Signet6. I look forward to working closely with Roger and Signet6 in the months and years ahead.”

SERIOUS VOIP BECOMING MORE OF A REALITY FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

.: Acorn Networks :. Many years ago in the very early days of Telephony, I was fortunate to get my hands on a TalkSwitch PC PBX to run my small office. Naturally as a small business owner, I had to watch costs and could only afford a single POTS line to run the company phone system. Mainstream phone systems were well out of my reach. But I still wanted to have a large company appearance and wanted to have various phone extensions for employees, voicemail, unified messaging capabilities and even follow me features. At that time, the TalkSwitch PBX was a godsend for well under $1000 and performed like a champ. While my original unit is no longer in service, I'm quite certain it could still do very well for any small company starting out.
As you can imagine, the OTTAWA, ON based company has not rested on its' laurels and has brought the TalkSwitch up over the years to remain a highly competitive force in the small business marketplace. Last week I was very happy to see a news release from the company announcing the availability of their latest PBX systems that fully integrate VoIP. The 280VS and the 284VS are fully hybrid IP PBXs that accommodate two incoming telephone lines and provide eight local extensions that the user can configure as IP or analog, and ten remote extensions. The 284VS also includes support for four VoIP trunks.
The new systems are ideal for small businesses, smart homes and franchise operations that want a feature-rich telephone system with a large number of extensions, but with minimal investment in incoming telephone lines. They also provide access to IP technology at a great price. And they protect the customer’s investment because they are networkable, meaning the system will grow right along with the business.
The beautiful thing about these units are their simplicity. Small business owners can easily set up and configure the systems, features and functions, and create a unified business image that looks like very large corporations at a fraction of the cost. While I haven't played with one of the new units, if they are anything like my original unit of years ago, I'm sure they are well worth the money spent.
Very small businesses are traditionally underserved by technology vendors and normally you don't think of them adopting cutting edge technologies like IP telephony. However, these businesses are increasingly needing robust communications solutions, as the SMB workforce is increasingly mobile and distributed, said Gary Chen, Yankee Group Analyst in Enterprise Research Small and Medium Enterprise IT Infrastructure and Applications. The challenge in this segment is not to sell them cool technology, but something that is drop dead simple, flexible, very affordable, and that has real business benefits.
Like all TalkSwitch telephone systems, the 280VS and the 284VS are available through authorized TalkSwitch resellers. The 280VS is priced at $1095USD and the 284VS is available for $1395USD.
CommPartners this week also made an announcement that will give small businesses more VoIP options as well. They announced their new CommPartners Connect™ for Linksys® One. The new CommPartners offering provides activation, network services, and automated service delivery for the Linksys hosted communications platform called Linksys® One. Linksys One is an affordable, easy-to-install Internet Protocol (IP)-based services platform that enables the delivery of data, voice and video applications to small businesses.
The combination of Linksys One hardware (Services Router, IP Phones, and Gateway) and CommPartners' network services specifically developed for the small- and medium-sized business customer makes affordable, converged communications a reality. Instead of paying for and managing separate internet access, phone system, and computer networks, small businesses have one converged services infrastructure with Linksys One for everything: phones, fax, data networking, Internet and business applications.
CommPartners Connect for Linksys One line pricing plans include unlimited local and long distance calling in North America for $39.95 per line. Services are sold on a "per line" as opposed to a "per user" basis which is a more economically attractive offering for the SMB market to purchase their IP communications services. CommPartners also offers local telephone numbers, local number portability (LNP), operator and directory assistance, directory listings, and E911.
PBXtra is another system making headway from LA based Fonality. PBXtra, Fonality’s enterprise-class IP-PBX, is based on a modified version of the popular open source Asterisk code base. Fonality has modified Asterisk to add reliability, stability and enterprise-class features. PBXtra is less expensive and easier to deploy than all other major PBX offerings on the market today. The price advantage comes from Fonality’s use of Asterisk-based open source technology to deliver the PBX foundation. The advanced, enterprise-class features and management ease come from Fonality’s innovative PBXtra application with its intuitive, web-based interface designed for the average business owner. In addition, PBXtra’s hybrid model that combines public telephone and VoIP network support, and Fonality’s experienced 24x7 technical support team delivers rock solid reliability to all customers.
Fonality announced this week that PBXtra Users Hit 50 Million Calls, Average 1.5 Million Calls Per Week, a clear indication that SMBs are taking advantage of VoIP and the benefits it can bring to their organizations.
These recent announcements and many others like them, make me happy to be doing what I do. While VoIP is still not mature, it's worlds ahead of where it was 10 years ago when I was dabbling in it. Small businesses need to put aside their fears and frustrations, and seek out some of the players I mentioned. There are also a host of others. A quick Google search on "VoIP Small Business" will lead you in the right direction.
I speak to a lot of SMB owners and execs who tell me all the time that they are totally interested in VoIP solutions for all the right reasons, but they are still hesitant to act for all the wrong reasons. Once again, I go back to my soapbox about education. In such a fast moving, intelligent leading edge industry, there is still a huge disconnect when it comes to educating the potential end user. Small business owners are being inundated with pitches from the big carriers who are telling them that they need services, hardware, and infrastructure from a number of different vendors and providers in order to successfully deploy a VoIP solution. This would scare even larger companies. Immediately as a business owner I would think about who is responsible when my systems doesn't work? Who will support me? Will they all blame each other? Come on already! Give SMBs a break.
I realize more than anyone that at the heart of a VoIP solution are some very complex interconnected parts, like phones, networks, hardware, software, firmware, switches, routers and so on. But guess what? SMBs don't need to know that...they just want somebody to give it all to them in one box. Make it easy. Support it. Maintain it.
And I think that the few companies and products I highlighted at the top of this article have finally done just that. Take all the pieces, hide the complexity, glue it all together so it works, cover up the underlying configurations with wizards and easy GUI interfaces, and just make it work. Pretty much out of the box. That is what will win the SMBs over to VoIP. And let's not forget. Most SMBs are entrepreneurs who are always hungry for technology. They want to embrace it and use it and have the latest and greatest. So let's just give it to them without feeling the need to scare them with the details of how and why it all works.
Tell them the benefits, what it will do for their company and bottom line, how it saves money, increases productivity, and looks and feels cool. Then tell them the price. Done!

Leading wireless module specialist will offer local sales and integration support for Sierra Wireless 3G embedded modules

.: Acorn Networks :. VANCOUVER, and MELBOURNE, Australia, Nov. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sierra Wireless and M2M Connectivity, a specialist wireless module distributor for machine-to-machine (M2M) products and applications, today announced they have signed an agreement for the distribution of Sierra Wireless 3G embedded modules in Australia and New Zealand. Under the terms of the agreement, M2M Connectivity will distribute and offer integration and certification support for the full line of Sierra Wireless embedded modules to OEM customers in the region.
M2M Connectivity supplies wireless modules, modems, and value added services to the wireless developer community in Australia and New Zealand and works across wireless technologies including cellular, short range, and satellite. The addition of Sierra Wireless PCI Express Mini Card modules adds a new form factor for the developer community as well as early access to 3G/HSDPA hardware to develop new M2M applications requiring higher bandwidth.
"M2M Connectivity believes this partnership with Sierra Wireless will further strengthen our position as the leading specialist M2M wireless distributor in the region. The Sierra Wireless PCI Express modules for 3G/HSDPA are world leading and will be a key factor in this market to assist developers building new applications designed to take advantage of 3G/HSDPA," said Darren Moroney, General Manager, M2M Connectivity.
"Sierra Wireless is committed to providing OEM customers with high quality products and the support they need for integration and carrier certification," said Jin Pak, Vice President, Asia Pacific Sales for Sierra Wireless. "Our collaboration with M2M Connectivity enables us to offer customers in Australia and New Zealand the ability to integrate Sierra Wireless 3G connectivity, with strong local support to assist them in getting their products to market quickly."
AirCard Enabled(TM)
Sierra Wireless has over 12 years of experience in delivering industry leading WWAN products. The company produces a full line of PCI Express Mini Card modules for both CDMA and GSM network technology streams, in data-only and voice-enabled variants. OEM customers can rely on Sierra Wireless to deliver a suite of PCI Express Mini Card products along with best-in-class technical and integration support, so end customers experience the same reliable, robust AirCard Enabled(TM) data solution users have come to expect from the AirCard(R) line of PC card products.
Sierra Wireless PCI Express Mini Card modules include a common comprehensive WHQL-certified USB software driver architecture that provides superior power management, a dedicated diagnostic channel and the ability to enable or disable NDIS or DUN support, which provides maximum flexibility to OEM customers when designing their wireless product. To simplify and expedite product development cycles, Sierra Wireless also provides OEM customers with a comprehensive software development kit (SDK) or Sierra Wireless's own Watcher (TM) software for easy connection management.
Each module is PCI Express Mini Card form factor compliant, fully shielded and offers an operating temperature range of -30 to +60 degrees Celsius to suit all applications. Each module measures 51 x 30 x 4.5 mm, weighs in at less than 12 g, and complies with European Union directives on RoHS (Restrictions on Hazardous Substances).

Web Server Capacity: Austin Bank Wants To Lighten its Load

.: Acorn Networks :. A victim of its own success, the community bank's quick growth has forced it to find a solution for overtaxed Web servers. Load balancing has provided the answer.
Austin Bank's Internet operation faces two major challenges: Web site congestion from heavy use, and slow ISP technology across its rural footprint.

The problems are partially due to the East Texas-based community bank's fast growth-its assets jumped to $750 million this year from $500 million in 2005-but they're problems nonetheless.

To mitigate its increasingly crowded servers, the bank has embraced what's called load balancing, or the practice of distributing users across servers based on traffic and demand patterns.

"You want to distribute users that are coming into the Internet by sending them into a server farm," says Kevin Mahon, president of KEMP Technologies, which sold its load balancing software to Austin Bank. "You then distribute them across servers in the best way possible."
Austin Bank's path to load balancing began in 2005 when the institution saw its growth taxing its two online banking servers, which were operating without traffic management, leading to problems with performance and function. And that was before planned additions to Web banking.

"We'd been pushing the Internet for a couple of years," says Jeff Austin II, the bank's vice chairman. "We dropped the fee for online bill payment, and from September to September (2005 to 2006), saw an increase of about 45 percent to 50 percent in online banking."
Like any bank, Austin must improve Internet service while adding complex transaction capabilities to its Website. However, what makes Austin a bit unusual is its footprint, which includes large cities plus a wide swath of rural territory in East Texas, where the bank has 21 locations in nine counties.

Austin Bank's goal is to build a strong Internet customer service capability, but rural Internet technology lags behind the metropolitan areas. "Being in East Texas, we still have a lot of dial up customers," says Jeff Sowell, the bank's network support manager. "Dial up customers really suffer if they don't get in the Internet."

For those who don't remember dial up Internet service, it involves connecting to the Web via telephone landlines, making it impossible to use the landline at the same time to call to complain about a bad server connection. To fight against such rural cutoffs and other Web glitches, the bank deployed two KEMP LoadMaster 3620s for its Longview, TX operations center. LoadMaster is a server load balancing and Layer 7 content switching appliance with integrated SSL acceleration, which means it can handle one million concurrent sessions. Since the bank has deployed two 3620s, it can seamlessly move users to a "hot standby" in the event that one server crashes.

"People now don't have to travel as far to get to the bank. We want to be able to deliver to less technological areas as we do in larger cities," Jeff Austin II says. "And let's face it. You can now access the Internet on a cell phone, a wireless computer or a dial up. There's a variety of customers who are getting the Internet in a different way, and we can serve them all."
The deployment also means the bank can now expand and add more Web servers without additional certificates. And the bank's customers can access information and do transactions without wait times or server time outs.

Sowell says the improvements have allowed the institution to go forward with Internet-related enhancements to customer service. "We don't want to have just information on our site, for example, but actual pictures of checks to go along with the information," he says. Maintenance of the Web site has become easier, he says. If he can't get on the site at home, he just moves to another server remotely, saving repairs to the damaged server until the following workday. In the old days, the same problem would have required a trip to the office, often in the middle of the night, to get the server up and running.

From a security standpoint the integrated SSL acceleration capability has enabled the bank to offload processor-intensive customer key encryption processing from the Web servers to the load balancers-allowing the online servers the freedom to perform intensive operations. The improved security measures have helped the institution to thwart several attacks on the LoadMaster's virtual IP address.

Sowell says the load balancing software places an additional layer of protection in front of the bank's sensitive customer and corporate information. It might be easy to find the bank on the Web, but penetrating the server is another matter. "You can find Austinbank.com, but finding the server is hard because the LoadMaster hides it well," he says.

Nasstar to buy Network Support for 750,000 stg; raises 500,000 stg via placing

.: Acorn Networks :. LONDON (AFX) - Software services provider Nasstar PLC said it will buy Network Support International Ltd, trading as Virtual Email, for 750,000 stg.
Nasstar also said it plans to raise 500,000 stg through a placing of 1.8 mln shares at 28 pence each to fund part of the acquisition.
Virtual Email is a provider of Hosted Exchange, email software delivered over the Internet and over-the-air (using GPRS) to mobile devices such as BlackBerry or windows mobile phones.

Muni Network Management: Learning from the Enterprise

.: Acorn Networks :. For the past year, it seems that not a week goes by without another city launching or announcing plans to deploy a municipal wireless network. Municipal wireless networks are cropping up in cities both large and small for several reasons, including economic development, better, more efficient communication among government and emergency personnel, and the promise to bridge the digital divide. As these wireless networks have surfaced, so have many hotly debated questions concerning the muni wireless industry.
Will the business model ever work? How much is it going to cost to achieve the desired coverage? Will people actually use it? What sort of ROI can be expected?
Four years ago, enterprises and other large organizations were asking exactly the same questions about indoor Wi-Fi. As more and more of their users starting connecting to the wireless network, enterprise IT staff members quickly learned that there was another, equally important question they should be asking: “How are we going to manage the network we’ve built?”
Gartner reports that wireless network management is the #2 concern regarding the adoption of wireless LANs in the enterprise, behind security, but ahead of cost, interference from other wireless networks, limited bandwidth, interoperability of products, and other issues (according to Gartner – User Survey Report: Wireless LANs, North America and Europe, authored by Rachna Ahlawat, Christian Canales, published on May 26, 2006).
Yet, with all the debate over municipal wireless networks, people rarely stop to ask how these municipal wireless networks will be managed and who will be responsible for supporting the end users.
The challenge of managing a municipal wireless network will be even greater than that of managing a corporate Wi-Fi network. In most corporations, a large percentage of the wireless users are concentrated on a few campuses and large buildings, often with local IT desktop support personnel to diagnose and resolve user problems. In a municipal network, the users are distributed in hundreds or thousands of remote locations without any local support. Even worse, since muni networks will cover a combination of residential and small business locations, many of these users will be networking novices who require a significant amount of technical support.
Who are users going to call for this support? Whoever they are paying for the service. And the more they are paying -- and the more they come to rely on the service -- the more insistent they are going to be in demanding reliability and good customer support.
Without a sophisticated management system that allows the Support Desk to efficiently and remotely diagnose and troubleshoot end-user problems, support costs will swamp the network operator and kill virtually any economic model.
At AirWave Wireless, we learned this the hard way back in 2000, when we operated a for-pay Wi-Fi hotspot business in the San Francisco Bay Area. Without management tools, every time a user called to report a problem, we had to dispatch a technician to the local site — at a cost of several hundred dollars — to determine whether the problem really was a network issue or whether the user had simply mis-configured his laptop or neglected to enable his Wi-Fi radio.
To reduce costs, we needed remote management tools that provided remote, real-time visibility and control. At the time, these tools did not exist, so we started to build them for ourselves – and ultimately changed the entire focus of our company to developing management solutions for wireless network operators.
Based on that experience, here are four key issues that muni wireless operators (and those issuing RFPs for municipal networks) need to address:
Ease of Use. As municipal networks grow, operators will not be able to afford to have highly skilled wireless network engineers answering the phone and responding to emails every time a user has a problem. For Help Desk staff to assume more of the user support load, they need easy-to-use management solutions that enable them to quickly find a user on the network and determine whether the problem appears to be a user issue or a broader network problem that needs to be escalated to an engineer. Complicated management applications designed for network engineers are part of the problem, not the solution.
Visibility across the entire wireless network. Most municipal networks today employ a mesh architecture, using Wi-Fi to deliver connectivity to the end user. If a user reports that the network is “slow,” the Network Operations staff needs to be able to monitor the user’s local link as well as all mesh links to determine where the problem is really occurring. This means the wireless management solution must support traditional Wi-Fi access points and well as mesh devices from a single console.
Centralized Control and Scalability. A growing number of areas across the nation are in the process of blanketing their entire cities with wireless nodes from border-to-border. Even modest-sized municipal wireless networks will have hundreds or thousands of wireless nodes, and large networks will have tens of thousands. In order to survive, network operators need one single console from which to manage the entire network, no matter how large it grows. “Home-grown” management solutions and scripts that may suffice for the first few installations will not work as the size and usage load of the network grow.
Multi-Vendor and Legacy Hardware Support. When a network operator installs wireless hardware on a lamp post or other location, that device typically needs to last for several years in order to recover its investment and achieve profitability. Yet, the mesh industry is still young and product innovation is continuing at a rapid rate – which means that the products and technology that operators are using to extend their networks two years from now will likely be very different than what they use today. It will be critical for operators concerned about maximizing the useful life of their infrastructure to implement management solutions with support for multiple hardware vendors and a history of support for legacy products.
In the enterprise market, many organizations came late to the realization that management would be the key to controlling wireless support costs. The municipal wireless industry will not have the luxury of time to learn this lesson. In the corporate office, a user typically cannot take his business elsewhere and find an alternate provider. In the municipal wireless space, there is more competition from entrenched players. Customer support and reliability will be critical factors in determining which providers users turn to for their connectivity needs. If management is not built into the operator’s business model and operational plan, one of two things will happen: (1) support costs will swamp the operator or (2) users will become dissatisfied with support and seek other alternatives.
The case study model from enterprise deployments is in place. And, already test runs on muni wireless networks have been turned down due to a lack of adoption or increased costs associated with managing the network. In order to avoid future network failures and to ensure the ongoing success of municipalities seeking to provide wireless Internet for not only its government and local business users, but also to help close the digital divide, it is critical to meet that expanded coverage with the ability to support a more diverse range of constituent network support needs.
As enterprise network users have shown us, network operators, especially on the municipal level, must have plans in place to provide adequate and cost-effective service and user support. With the proper network management tools in place, original goals – whether it’s obtaining a return on the investment, creating an eGovernment, or closing the digital divide – will remain within reach.

BNC buys Dallas company

.: Acorn Networks :. Business Network Consulting (BNC) has acquired Version 4, a Dallas-based IT consulting firm, the companies said Thursday. The purchase price wasn't disclosed.
The acquisition is Denver-based BNC's second in two months. BNC bought Colorado-based JSsolutions in late September, the company said.
BNC's headquarters will remain in Denver, while the acquired Texas location and its 13 employees will support new and existing clients in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
Version 4's client list includes Rogers-O'Brien Construction, Staubach Real Estate Services, Lincoln Property Co., Potter Concrete and Gallagher Construction Services.
BNC provides outsourced computer and network support for small-to-midsized businesses in Colorado. It supports more than 650 companies in Colorado and Texas.