Archive for the ‘Delimiter’ Category
news The nation’s largest telco Telstra has launched 4G LTE Mobile Wi-Fi device, allowing Australians in 4G coverage areas to enjoy high-speed mobile Internet on their Wi-Fi-enabled laptops, tablets and smartphones.
The battery-powered Mobile Wi-Fi 4G (for business customers) and the BigPond Mobile Wi-Fi 4G (for consumer customers) let users share a Telstra 4G LTE network connection with up to five Wi-Fi-enabled gadgets simultaneously. All that is needed is a SIM card.
Telstra claimed customers using the device in 4G coverage areas (capital city CBDs, associated airports and more than 80 regional and metropolitan locations) could access download speeds ranging from 2Mbps to 40Mbps and upload speeds from 1Mbps to 10Mbps. When outside 4G coverage areas, the Mobile Wi-Fi 4G used HSPA+ Dual Channel technology offered customers 3G download speeds ranging from 1.1Mbps to 20Mbps in all capital CBDs and most of the associated metropolitan and regional areas. In areas other than these, the device transitioned to Telstra’s fastest available 3G speeds, with actual speed depending on location, distance from the base station, local terrain, user numbers, hardware and software configuration, and download source/upload destination.
With a spate of mobile devices in the market, Australians were looking to fast mobile broadband connectivity. Anthea Roberts, director, Telstra Mobile in a statement said. “Australians now take a range of Wi-Fi enabled devices with them when they’re outside the home and office,” she said, adding: “It gives them the chance to bring Australia’s fastest mobile internet speed to their existing tablets, laptops, portable games consoles and smartphones.”
With the Telstra Mobile Wi-Fi 4G, real-time applications like video conferencing, internet gaming and cloud-hosted streaming services are likely to work with less buffering and fewer interruptions. Personal users could access high bandwidth content on multiple devices using the BigPond Mobile Wi-Fi 4G, and business customers could use the Telstra mobile Wi-Fi 4G to integrate all areas of their work when on the go.
The compact unit, weighing 100 grams, has a battery life of four hours and provides 100 hours of standby time. It comes equipped with an LED display which shows the Wi-Fi name and password, signal strength, number of devices connected and battery level. It supports Wi-Fi standard N connectivity for advanced Wi-Fi. Other features are an audio alert and a web-based control panel that allows for the adjustment of network security and Wi-Fi range settings from in Internet browser.
According to Telstra, The BigPond Mobile Wi-Fi 4G for consumer customers, to be launched on March 27th, would be available on a range of 24-month plans, including $59.95 per month for 24 months with 8GB of monthly data plus $49 upfront (min cost $1,487.80). For business customers the Telstra Mobile Wi-Fi 4G would be available on plans including $0 upfront on the $49.95 Telstra Mobile Broadband Standard Plan over 24 months (min total cost $1198.80) which included a monthly data pack of 8GB of monthly data. The Mobile Wi-Fi 4G is the second LTE mobile broadband product from Telstra to be developed in collaboration with Sierra Wireless.
Image credit: Telstra
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/VFcQhmI4oCs/
news Vodafone Australia yesterday announced the appointment of Bill Morrow as the company’s new chief executive, succeeding Nigel Dews, the current Vodafone CEO who has been assigned a senior role within Vodafone part-owner Hutchison Whampoa, reporting to group managing director, Canning Fok.
Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) is a joint venture between the Vodafone Group and Hutchison Whampoa, providing mobile services to over 7.0 million customers in Australia. Dews has been the CEO of VHA for three years since the merger in 2009, after leading Vodafone’s stand-alone business in Australia before it merged with Hutchison. His tenure witnessed large scale customer exits last year due to intermittent network issues and outages, forcing the telco to embark on an extensive network upgrade and a customer ‘guarantee’ program.
These measures may bring a turnaround this year to the embattled mobile company, but it is unclear yet as to what impact they are having. In fact, the changes in top management at VHA come at a time when reports even suggested that the global Vodafone group was considering offloading the Australian company.
Morrow, the new CEO designate, is a veteran in the global telecommunications industry. He was the Chief Executive of Clearwire and prior to that, was Chief Executive of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Morrow had a stint earlier with the Vodafone Group as Europe Chief Executive, overseeing the Group’s businesses in Japan and the UK.
On his new appointment, Morrow said: “Vodafone Hutchison Australia is a business with a great future. I am excited by the prospect of joining a strong team. I’m also committed to meeting, and listening to our customers to understand their needs, now and over the years ahead.” Dews said that he was privileged to lead Vodafone Hutchison Australia. He felt it was time for a change after nine years in the telecom business, five of them as Chief Executive of Vodafone in Austraila. He was confident that as he took on his new role, he had left behind an excellent team that would flourish under Morrow’s leadership.
The media release issued by the telco reiterated Vodafone Group and Hutchison Whampoa’s long-term commitment to VHA as the business sees positive developments in the light of increased investment in network improvement and new customer service initiatives.
Commenting on the changes in top leadership, Vodafone Group Chief Executive for Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific, Nick Read, said: “We are strongly committed to Australia. We’ll continue to back our business here as it makes the significant investments needed to build the network of the future. Bill is an outstanding industry leader and is well-placed to drive growth.” Read also thanked Dews for his energy and commitment in leading the complex task of executing the merger of businesses under the Vodafone brand and wished him well for the future. The media release also announced that Fok is tipped to take over as VHA Chairman on a rotational basis.
opinion/analysis
Firstly, it should be clear to observers that although Vodafone has carefully worded it’s media release on Dews’ exit, the executive has not stepped down simply to spend more time with his family or seek a lifestyle or career change. The executive’s departure comes at a strategic time, and no doubt it has been carefully negotiated with Vodafone Australia’s various stakeholders — including the Hutchison Whampoa group and the global Vodafone group.
Dews presided over one of the biggest disasters in the history of Australia’s mobile sector — a disaster which continues to plague Vodafone Australia, and one which may yet see the future of the company uncertain, if it does not pull out of its current slump somehow. It would have been a bad move for Dews to have been replaced before this point, as Vodafone needed both a steady pair of hands to guide it forward through its network and brand rebuild, as well as a ‘fall guy’ to take responsibility for the issues. Dews has aptly served both these purposes as caretaker for Vodafone Australia over the past year or so.
However, now that much of its network rebuild is complete and Vodafone is attempting to woo customers back onto its network and turn its troubles around, the company clearly needs a new pair of hands to take it forward. This will serve the purpose of distancing the company from its previous issues and giving the impression that it’s back on the path forward. Morrow is that man. I don’t know a great deal about the executive, so it will be interesting to see how he positions himself in Australia over the next few months. Will he be a rambunctious foreigner like Sol Trujillo, or display more quietly spoken strength like Paul O’Sullivan or David Thodey? It remains to be seen, although at the moment I would probably lean towards the former.
As for Dews, I don’t think we should damn the executive too highly for the issues which have plagued Vodafone over the past while. The executive has clearly done as much as he could — and most of the right things — to steer the company through its crisis and put it back on the right path. Of course, as he led Vodafone Australia even before the merger, many of those problems can be laid at Dews’ feet to start with. But of course, some responsibility must also rest with his superiors — no doubt there was a reticence to invest in the business at that point.
Interesting times for Vodafone indeed.
Image credit: YourTechLife screenshot of Vodafone video. Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/xXCVrKaZ_Fw/
in brief National broadband provider TPG is reportedly considering launching a National Broadband Network pricing plan offering unlimited download quota, similar to its popular existing ADSL2+ unlimited plans. iTNews reports (click here for the full article):
“TPG general manager of marketing and sales Craig Levy … said the company was “looking at all our options” for NBN pricing, including an unlimited quota plan, and was planning to compete heavily on the network.”
Along with Dodo and Vodafone, TPG is one of the few major Australian broadband providers not to have released any pricing details for National Broadband Network plans. In fact, it is unclear to what extent the company has actually engaged with NBN Co’s ‘on-boarding’ process, whereby ISPs work out how their systems will interconnect with the National Broadband Network.
In addition, it is unclear whether the ISP could maintain similar pricing levels on an NBN unlimited plan to its existing ADSL2+ unlimited plans, which typically cost around $70. The maximum a user could theoretically download over a month through an unlimited ADSL2+ plan is around 6.3TB. However, with the dramatically faster speeds available under the NBN — up to 100Mbps, as opposed to up to 24Mbps under ADSL2+, that total monthly download limit could be quadrupled. That extra quota cost could potentially drive up monthly plan costs on unlimited plans. The maximum quota other ISPs are currently offering on their NBN plans is between one terabyte and two terabytes.
In a presentation to investors this week, TPG also listed a number of advantages it has over other ISPs in an NBN environment — ranging from the fact that its PIPE Networks subsidiary already has fibre to 2/3 of the available NBN interconnect points, its international fibre links and its existing levels of familiarity with fibre broadband services. In Australia’s retail ISP environment, TPG is considered second only to Telstra and Optus when it comes the scale of its fibre infrastructure, due primarily to its PIPE Networks acquisition in 2009 — although Primus also has substantial fibre infrastructure (but a vastly reduced retail customer base compared with TPG).
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/wOxpsOqr-20/
news A number of Australian ISPs, including Internode, Primus, Engin and ClubTelco, have set shaping speeds on their National Broadband Network fibre plans slower than the shaping speeds on their existing ADSL broadband services, despite the fact that the NBN’s fibre infrastructure offers base speeds substantially higher than the copper-based ADSL network.
‘Shaping’ refers to an approach commonly taken by Australian ISPs to rate limit their users’ broadband connection speed drastically when the customer runs out of monthly download quota. The system, used by virtually every ISP in Australia, aims to ensure customers are incentivised to upgrade their broadband plan quota, while not disconnecting them from the Internet entirely when they exceed their limits.
Over the past several weeks, two new ISPs have launched new NBN plans in competition with existing providers such as iiNet, Internode, Telstra, Optus and Primus.
The first ISP, ClubTelco, has launched a range of packages starting at $35 per month, which gets you just 10GB of data at speeds of 12Mbps. The ISP is also offering 50GB, 100GB, 600GB and 1TB packages ranging from $50 to $95 per month in cost, at the same speed. And it also offers 25Mbps, 50Mbps and 100Mbps speeds at those same quota levels, with costs ranging from $55 per month to $140 per month.
The company’s prices appear to be significantly more expensive than its current ADSL pricing. The company has positioned its current ADSL offerings at the extreme bottom of the market, with its website boasting that it offers “Australia’s cheapest unlimited broadband ADSL2+” — from just $25 per month. That cost becomes substantially more — $40 or $60 a month — if you are outside certain geographical “zones” which the ISP has limited customers to.
However, one of the other significant differences between the company’s existing ADSL broadband packages and its new NBN plans is what happens when customers run out of quota on their plans.
Under ClubTelco’s Unlimited ADSL plans, customers have unlimited data quota, so their connections are never shaped. Under its 10GB quota plans, customers are shaped to 1Mbps download speeds. However, when ClubTelco’s new NBN customers use up their quota, they will be shaped to a quarter of that speed — 256kbps. “The shaped speed for all ClubTelco NBN Broadband plans [is] 256Kbps,” the company’s website states.
The second new ISP which has released NBN plans over the past week is Engin, which is primarily an Internet telephony player. However, the company has diversified into broadband services over the past few years.
Engin will offer its customers three NBN plans — at $49.95, $79.95 and $99.95 monthly price points, with speeds of 12Mbps, 50Mbps and 100Mbps respectively, and with 25GB, 125GB and 400GB of quota respectively. However, as with ClubTelco, its NBN shaping speeds (128kbps) are slower than the shaping speeds on its normal broadband plans (256kbps).
Of those ISPs which have already launched NBN broadband plans, most are offering the same shaping speeds under the NBN that they do on their ADSL services. Typically, with Telstra, iiNet and Optus, this is 256kbps (although on some Telstra non-NBN plans the shaping speeds are even lower — 64kbps). However, two major ISPs — Internode and Primus — offer shaping speeds under the NBN which are slower than those available on their existing ADSL broadband plans.
On its Easy Broadband, Easy Bundle and Easy Naked plans, Internode shapes customers’ speeds to 256kbps when they have exhausted their quota, although on its Easy Reach plans (using Telstra infrastructure), that speed drops to 128kbps. However, all of Internode’s NBN plans are limited to 128Kbps when customers exhaust their monthly quota.
It’s a similar situation at Primus. The ISP shapes customers on most of its plans to 256kbps, although those on its Big Kahuna 700GB plan are shaped to 1Mbps. Some of Primus’ NBN plans — notably, its bundles — are also shaped to 256kbps. However, the 1Mbps shaping speeds are not on offer at all to NBN customers, and NBN customers who sign up for stand-alone plans will be shaped to lesser speeds — 128kbps.
Asked about the issue this afternoon, Internode managing director Simon Hackett issued the following statement: “Internode expects to review our shaping speeds on our NBN plans as a part of our regular reviews of our NBN plans in general, and we expect to be consistent with industry practice as it evolves over time. It’s not a source of stress for us – or for our customers, who are not in general identifying our over-paid-quota shaping speeds as a source of angst or concern when using or selecting their services from Internode.”
“It is very early days for the NBN, and I don’t think any NBN providers plans will be the same as they are today, even a year from now. The market is only barely entering the commercial era, and everyone concerned is feeling their way in this new realm – while remaining somewhat constrained by the Telstra-Wholesale style underlying economic access model of the NBN.”
opinion/analysis
Hackett’s right — this is not a major issue for customers. It’s quite easy to upgrade your broadband plan if you run into your limit — and with many ISPs, all it takes is a few minutes configuring your customer control panel.
However, I also do not believe I am alone in being concerned that shaping speeds are being downgraded under the NBN. If anything, they should be upgraded. If Australia is going to gradually start to consider broadband a universal human right (as I believe we are starting to consider it), then speeds of 1Mbps should be considered an absolute minimum. I personally do not believe it is appropriate to shape a fibre-optic broadband connection down to 128kbps, under any circumstances. With those speeds, you can barely load any modern web page — let alone access a number of basic services. 128kbps speeds are barely above 56k modem levels — and we’re talking about fibre-optic connections here.
Also, this issue is a real one for many customers. When I was a university student in the early years of last decade, I could only afford very basic broadband services to my then residence, and so relied on shaping speeds of 64kbps daily to access services once I had used up my measly (I think it was something like 2GB at that stage) limit. Even at that stage, I knew that I needed broadband to get my university studies done, and I chafed at the bit constantly trying to download educational resources. With all the modern Web 2.0 systems that universities use today, I would anticipate 128kbps would really not be fast enough to get that done.
Image credit: Lars Sundstrom, royalty free
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/vPG3I0Hc-PY/
in brief The Australian Red Cross last upgraded its IT infrastructure ten years ago, it has been reported in the wake of news that the organisation will receive a $10 million grant from Microsoft to modernise its infrastructure. Computerworld quotes the organisation’s director of IT, Warren Don (click here for the full article):
“the organisation’s previous investment in technology had been minimal, with the last rebuild conducted between 1998 and 2002 … previously, users were working on what Don describes as “old mainframe technology” with Citrix terminals around the country and old versions of Microsoft Office”
Microsoft has issued a media release, available online here, with further information about its donation to the Red Cross. Some quotes from the organisation’s chief executive, Robert Tickner:
“Our focus is delivering humanitarian programs, not just in times of disaster, but every day to support those who are most vulnerable. In the past, our investment in technology infrastructure has been set at minimal levels to keep our humanitarian programs running, which means that we have lagged behind the rest of world. This grant will enable us to update our technology platforms significantly, which in its most basic terms will increase our ability to do what we do best and help more people.”
Now, I’ve seen some old IT environments in my time, but … 1998 to 2002? That’s at least a decade, and perhaps 14 years ago. I shudder to think what gremlins are lurking within the Red Cross’ desktop and network infrastructure, let alone in its datacentre. Sounds like a bit of a fixer upper. We wouldn’t be surprised to find that the organisation was still using version 5 of Lotus Notes. After all, that was the latest release until late 2002.
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/AmmObeqPA6o/
news The Australian Greens have filed a motion in the Senate requesting that the Government release documents regarding its closed door meetings on Internet piracy which the Attorney-General’s Department has blocked from being released under Freedom of Information laws.
On 8 February this year, major Australian ISPs sat down with the representatives of the film, television and music industries and the Federal Attorney-General’s Department, with the aim of discussing a potential industry resolution to the issue of online copyright infringement. The meeting was the fourth such meeting to be held, after a series of other meetings were held late last year under similar circumstances.
However, the Attorney-General’s Department has used a series of complex legal arguments to deny the release of documents associated with the meetings under Freedom of Information laws — redacting, for example, an entire 14 pages of notes taken by a departmental staffer at the event and other four pages of notes taken by a senior staffer from Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s department.
The Attorney-General’s Department stated in its response to a FoI request that it “does not hold” a list of the attendees who actually attended the February meeting. Furthermore, the department censored the names of the individuals invited to attend the meeting. It also completely redacted a document consisting of the agenda of the meeting, which had been distributed to those invited to attend. Delimiter is appealing portions of the blocked FoI request.
This morning, Greens Communications Spokesperson Scott Ludlam filed an order in the Senate that the Government disclose details of the most recent meeting. “The Government refuses to reveal almost any information about the attendees, the substance or the outcomes of the meeting,” he said in a separate statement. “A Freedom of Information request from a journalist looks like it’s been met with maximum resistance.”
“Major ISPs and representatives of the film, television and music industries have held a series of meetings with the Attorney-General’s Department to discuss an industry fix to the issue of online copyright infringement. This would be fine if everyone was at the table. But for some reason, former Attorney General McClelland decided to lock out the people that actually matter – the people who produce, and the people who purchase and use, the content.
Previous documents released under FoI laws have shown that the Attorney-General’s Department actively blocked representatives of consumer groups from attending the meetings.
“Even with the best will in the world, simply inviting the intermediaries to come up with something that suits their collective commercial interests is hardly an encouraging recipe for looking after the public interest,” said Ludlam. “I acknowledge that ISPs have done their best to prevent predatory behaviour by rights holders in the past, but there’s no substitute for a diversity of views in a forum such as this.”
“New Attorney General Roxon has inherited this situation from the former AG, and I call on her to table this material in an act of good faith and open the doors of these meetings so that the public can get a sense of what’s being cooked up.”
Senator Ludlam’s order for the production of documents asks that lists of invitees and attendees, notes and minutes arising from the meeting, any documentation issued to attendees, departmental correspondence regarding the meeting and any documents relating to future meetings be tabled in the Senate, on Thursday 22 March.
The sole organisation to publicly reveal any information about the talks is iiNet, which has attended the talks. Yesterday, the ISP’s regulatory chief Steve Dalby posted comments on Delimiter stating that there was a “massive” gap in the talks between what the ISP and content industries wanted. “Most, if not all of the discussions over the years have been conducted between the rights holders and the ISPs,” he said. “These have been fruitless. The rights holders want all the benefits of remedial action, but want the ISPs to foot the bill. ISPs don’t want to pay to protect the rights of third parties. The gap between the parties is considerable and unlikely to close.”
“Government probably wishes the whole thing would go away, but given that it hasn’t, they have reluctantly joined in the conversation, to see if a commercial solution could be encouraged.”
It’s not the first time Ludlam has criticised the Government over the issue. In late January the Senator said the various parties had been “locked in a room by a former Attorney-General and told to sort something out” — asked to resolve the question of how content creators could make money in a world where file sharing through platforms such as BitTorrent was popular.
“What I find the most offensive about that, is that they locked the people out of the room that actually matter,” Ludlam said at the time. “All of the writers, the creative artists, the performance people, they’re not in there. The rights holders are in there. The end users, the consumers … us, are locked out of the room as well.” Ludlam said it was the “intermediaries” who were discussing the issue under the auspices of the Attorney-General’s Department, who had been told to come up with something that was “not too offensive” for their corporate interests. “They’ve locked out the producers and consumers. The model which will be introduced in Australia, when we get to hear about it, will probably be stuffed and offensive,” he added.
Delimiter is seeking to contact the office of the Attorney-General for a response to Greens’ Senate move.
Image credit: David Howe, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/llJmA5eXljo/
interview Long-serving Oracle Australia managing director Ian White (check out his biography here) is one of the most senior figures in Australia’s technology industry, leading the local operations of a company whose technology has been involved at some level in virtually every major Australian IT Project. In this interview, we asked White a series of questions about the company’s local operations, the industry, and his time with the company.
You’ve been leading Oracle Australia and New Zealand for quite a few years now — six and a half by my count. What do you consider have been the most significant events or trends for Oracle locally in that period?
It will be seven years in June. During my tenure here at Oracle Australia, we have announced and delivered Oracle Fusion Applications, perhaps the most ambitious enterprise applications project ever undertaken.
When I took the helm as regional managing director for ANZ, we had just announced our plans to put the very best features from Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards into the next generation of applications. Oracle Fusion Applications are built using industry standards-based Java middleware, and integrated with business intelligence, not just process automation. It has been a huge engineering project for us that had to be coded from the ground-up, but I’m extremely proud of what we have achieved with Oracle Fusion Applications – they are truly next-generation – the user experience is arguably modern, consistent, and productive, with Web 2.0, social networking, and collaboration built in.
The other significant milestone was the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which marked a move from software to a parallel everywhere architecture where hardware and software are engineered to work together. Our engineered systems are optimised to enable enterprise performance levels that are arguably unmatched in the industry. This strategy is bearing fruit and we announced a number of exciting new appliances at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco in 2011 including Oracle Big Data Appliance, SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance, Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine to name just a few.
What have been the changes in the broader Australian enterprise IT sector that have taken place over that period which you consider the most significant?
The rise of enterprise mobility is empowering organisations to dramatically improve business processes and workforce collaboration. Facilitating remote access to ERP applications is a growing trend and is becoming an immediate priority for organisations. In particular, tablets – such as the iPad – will support enterprises’ mobility initiatives, offering an effective option for field technicians and traveling workers.
At the same time, the volume of data itself has just exploded as unstructured data from social channels, mobile devices and the Internet of Things contribute to the exponential growth of information. IDC estimated the amount of information created and replicated would surpass almost 2 trillion gigabytes in 2011, growing by almost nine times in five years. As a result, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of complexity for IT executives, particularly as they realise that these massive data sets cannot be processed, managed and analysed using traditional systems and methods.
While data management requirements will only increase, organisations will continue to focus on data centre consolidation and building more efficiencies into their data centres, particularly with the introduction of the carbon tax in Australia.
The focus on the cloud has shifted from organisations trying to understand what it is and how it can work for them to deciding which of their workloads can be put into the cloud and what cloud computing model is best for them – private, public or hybrid. Gartner predicts that hybrid – a mix of private and public cloud infrastructures – will become the most popular model. Cloud computing is going to continue to change the way companies do business – whether it’s the provision of services internally to their employees or how they interact and engage with their customers.
What organisations or projects have you most enjoyed working with/on during that period, and why?
All our customers are important to us, but one customer that has the potential to transform many aspects of the average Australian’s daily life is the National Broadband Initiative undertaken by Oracle’s customer, NBN Co. We are proud to make a contribution to the largest infrastructure project in Australian history, which will foster innovation, economic growth and regional leadership. In addition to supporting high speed Internet powered services such as health, e-education, e-business, digital media, e-government, and smart meters, we expect the NBN to further encourage the adoption of cloud computing in general.
The NBN Co deal is also particularly exciting because it’s so rare to work on a greenfields project of that scale and importance, where the entire IT infrastructure, architecture and application portfolio has been designed and built from scratch. Selecting ‘off-the-shelf’ applications with minimum customisations and ‘best of suite’ systems to minimise integration, NBN has been able to quickly deploy a robust IT infrastructure with a focus on the total cost of ownership. This is a prime example of the value and ease of deployment of Oracle’s systems which are engineered to work together.
Which product areas within Oracle’s portfolio is the Australian organisation most focused on right now?
As Big Data and the need to analyse that data is becoming a reality for many data intense organisations, we’re seeing a lot of interest in our Exastack – comprised of Exadata, Exalogic and the latest addition, Exalytics.
In the data centre, advanced grid and virtualisation technologies are taking centre stage, as IT departments pay closer attention to energy efficiencies in carbon conscious economies around the world, and move to a hybrid cloud model. A number of new product releases take advantage of new hardware innovations such as the ground breaking Sun SPARC T4 server, and we’re seeing strong uptake for engineered systems such as Oracle Big Data Appliance, Sun ZFS Storage Appliance and the Oracle Database Appliance, the latter being exclusively marketed through the channel.
We’re also experiencing strong demand for our applications portfolio, with a number of Australian organisations among the early adopters of Oracle Fusion Applications, and our locally hosted CRM On Demand solution is arguably meeting the needs of public sector, financial institutions and other customers who wish to keep data on Australian shores.
With the carbon tax coming into effect later this year, we also anticipate elevated interest in our green house gas accounting software. Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting and Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Environmental Accounting and Reporting, based on the acquired assets of Australian company Ndevr, improve the accuracy of sustainability reports from a 20% error margin to 1-2% and enabled mining and construction project managers to generate energy consumption graphs and reports to help make informed decisions on how to reduce carbon emissions.
What product lines are seeing the most uptake at the moment?
See above
Oracle has recently had some early wins from its CRM on Demand product, which was recently launched through an Australia-hosted product. Given that Oracle has historically preferred an on-premise deployment model, can you go through some of the thinking which led to the CRM on Demand launch in Australia (in partnership with Harbour MSP)?
Oracle’s enterprise applications have been available for more than 12 years as SaaS systems. But while the market has been abuzz with news about the potential of the cloud, it is really more an evolution of sorts for most businesses. Early software-as-a-service (SaaS) systems were designed to service a single function or line of business, with little thought to how they would support an organisation’s broader business objectives. Today, the proprietary legacy architectures, immature integration technologies, and limited system footprints of niche SaaS vendors have generated multiple cloud silos that limit the ability of organisations to fully reap the benefits of cloud computing.
It can be argued that standalone SaaS systems found in the market ironically limit businesses rather than liberate them. They establish data silos, fragment business processes, and create integration complexities that introduce new long-term costs and risks and limit worker productivity. These problems can undermine any efficiencies gained through the cloud’s virtualised and shareable infrastructure.
At Oracle, our cloud strategy has always been to allow businesses to mix and match applications and deployment models based on unique business needs. As Oracle’s cloud systems are based on open standards, not a proprietary language, applications and data can easily move back and forth among public, virtual private and private clouds.
Oracle CRM On Demand has been available for more than nine years, and the decision to host Oracle CRM On Demand in a local data centre stems from the demand we’re seeing from our customers for onshore cloud systems. Local regulations around data sovereignty previously hindered some public and financial sector customers from moving ahead with cloud computing. With Oracle CRM On Demand available through the Oracle Data Centre hosted by Harbour MSP, customers have the ability to meet data sovereignty and regulation requirements which apply to them.
How would you characterise the maturity of the local cloud computing market?
Australia leads other Asian Pacific countries in the adoption of cloud computing. According to a recent report from Frost and Sullivan titled State of Cloud Computing in Australia: 2011, 43% of enterprises are now using cloud computing in some form and 41% of IT decision makers agreed that cloud computing will continue to be a top priority.
At the same time, many businesses realise that their data centres still have dedicated silos, where each application runs on its own middleware, database, servers and storage, and hence are moving from these silos to a grid or virtual environment with shared services, dynamic provisioning and standardised configurations or appliances.
The majority of the companies I talk to are engaged in some form of consolidation, though they may be doing this in only a portion of their data centre. Many organisations will further evolve to a self-service private cloud that offers the same flexibility and incremental cost advantages to end users as public clouds, but with less perceived risk and greater assurances of security and accountability. This idea is gaining increasing acceptance among large organisations.
Virtualisation is a key enabler of cloud computing, but the right management tools are also pivotal. Managing all virtual machines and clusters is quite complex, especially with self-service, multitenancy, metering for billing/chargeback and other requirements of cloud computing. To reap the full benefits of cloud computing, organisations need to choose the right management system.
Security is also critical to ensuring business continuity and managing risks for increased efficiency and strategic growth. In fact, security, privacy and regulatory compliance around the adoption of cloud computing technology is a serious concern among organisations today. It is imperative that enterprises deploy security solutions that help to mitigate threats across databases and applications to eliminate the risk of loss of data and ultimately, financial loss.
Oracle has also had some strong wins in the core banking sector (NAB and Suncorp). What is your impression of the level of investment which the banks and other financial services organisations are putting into technology revamps at the moment, and how strong do you believe that investment will be in the medium term (five years and more)?
The banking finance sector is Australia’s fourth largest industry, and while IT spending might be more subdued in months to come due to the debt crisis in Europe, we still expect the sector to lead in technology investment, especially where it makes a direct impact on the bottom line.
Increased market competition means banks are becoming more customer-centric, to increase customer loyalty and reduce churn. While a better integration of CRM systems with backend data sources is critical to achieving this, technology spend will also further empower frontline channels such as the contact centre and social media. Consumer behaviour has been changing, and these days many Australians prefer to interact with their bank through online and mobile channels. For example, a recent report claimed that St George Bank customers using mobile devices for financial transactions already equal the activity level of 112 physical branches.
Secondly, compliance with new global financial regulation and liquidity requirements will drive investment in real-time analytics and Big Data technologies in the sector. Due to the increased focus on stress testing under Basel III, financial institutions will develop, if they haven’t already done so, a transparent and auditable stress testing process that provides them with the ability to rapidly respond on an on-demand basis to regulatory requirements and market events.
Last but not least, if the Federal Government moves ahead with the introduction of a National Emission Trading Scheme in 2013, as welcomed by the Australian Bankers’ Association, the creation of a carbon market will also be a driver of technology spend.
Oracle’s made some high-profile acquisitions over the past few years (Sun Microsystems, BEA, Hyperion, RightNow). Are you satisfied with how those acquisitions have played out in Australia, in terms of areas such as integrating the product offerings Oracle is taking to the market, the employee bases, customer reaction and so on?
Oracle has a proven track record in integrating acquired entities. Through our acquisition activities, Oracle seeks to strengthen its product offerings, accelerate innovation, meet customer demand more rapidly, and expand partner opportunities. An integral part of Oracle’s mergers and acquisitions philosophy is our consistent commitment to customer service and product support while achieving our financial return objectives and creating value for our shareholders.
What do you see as your priorities over the next calendar year?
We started into the new calendar year from a position of strength, with a truly innovative set of products and systems. I think there are still some misconceptions about Oracle in the market that we’re tackling, such as that we’re an advocate of on-premise applications over cloud computing when in fact we’ve been offering SaaS systems for more than a decade. We have a strong cloud proposition ranging from the infrastructure and platform levels all the way to enterprise and industry applications, which none of our competitors can match in depth and breadth, all based on open standards.
Our partners will continue playing a crucial role in our global and local growth strategy. In Asia Pacific, 80% of our business is driving through and with the channel. With products such as the Oracle Database Appliance we have given our partners a competitive edge in the hotly contested hardware and services market.
Do you have questions which you’d like to see Oracle Australia (or any other vendor) answer? Post them in the comments below and we’ll forward them to the company for a response.
Image credit: Oracle
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/786KsMWb1iE/
news ING DIRECT Australia has deployed Bank in a Box, a private cloud infrastructure, in collaboration with systems integrator Dimension Data and backed by technical expertise from Cisco, NetApp and long-term partner, Microsoft. A case study published by Microsoft this month reveals the background to the technology deployment at ING DIRECT.
ING DIRECT Australia is the country’s fifth-largest mortgage lender with more than 1.5 million customers. The bank needed a cloud-enabled operating solution to reduce its development time-line and accelerate delivery of its new products and services, for a quicker delivery of innovative ideas – in short, for improved IT efficiency.
ING DIRECT’s earlier delivery model had limitations on how many concurrent projects and changes it could manage. The ING DIRECT team’s goal was to work towards providing a copy of the bank to anyone, at any time, for any purpose, at the lowest possible cost. This included the full set of the bank’s applications, services, configurations and 5.5 terabytes of data. Bank in a Box was the solution to achieve this goal – it was a fully integrated solution that would enable rapid provisioning of entire environments, speeding up time to market for new ideas.
Windows Server Hyper-V provided the foundational virtualisation platform that facilitated ING DIRECT’s transition to the cloud. The private cloud solution features datacentre infrastructure built on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), Cisco Nexus switching and NetApp storage with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V virtualisation technology.
The case study (available in Word format here) claims that the solution reduced the time and cost associated with environment provisioning, and that has reduced the testing backlog appreciably. Andrew Henderson, CIO, ING DIRECT Australia stated: “The solution enables us to streamline processes that previously took eight people three months with a very simple self-service model.” Henderson further stated that the staff could now provision copies of the bank faster than before; new ideas could also be tested faster – all this giving ING DIRECT a competitive edge, he claimed.
Ben Issa, Head of IT Strategy, ING DIRECT Australia observed: “Our idea for the solution was unique, uniting technology from across the market to give us the capability to innovate and differentiate faster and better.” Issa added that Windows Server with Hyper-V and System Center (which helped coordinate the provisioning processes) helped ING DIRECT transform the bank’s datacentre environment into an automated, self-service private cloud.
Furthermore, the solution eliminated the need to build physical servers that required testing. Developers found it an efficient solution since Microsoft technologies were integrated into the private cloud.
The case study states that after successful pilot testing, ING DIRECT brought in Dimension Data to deliver the solution. Issa remarks that currently ING DIRECT uses the cloud based solution to meet different needs – from providing customer service representatives access to bank applications for training purposes to giving developers a full version of the bank at induction. Customer related or operational issues are easier to solve and the bank can redirect its skilled people and funds towards innovation.
ING DIRECT credited the close integration and collaborative relationship between Microsoft, Cisco, NetApp and Dimension Data in realizing the final vision of Bank in a Box. ING DIRECT is looking at deploying the solution globally this year in three of the bank’s locations.
opinion/analysis
There are two things which came to mind after reading this case study. The first was that virtualisation technology has truly come of age. To think that a bank could replicate its entire banking platform in a new instance for development purposes is remarkable. It will be fascinating to see what other uses of advanced virtualisation we see over the coming few years, and how the technology itself evolves.
Secondly, as with another major deployment with Coles revealed by Microsoft last week, it is fascinating to see that it is predominantly Microsoft infrastructure platforms being used here — not those from rival suppliers such as VMware. I have no doubt that this kind of rollout could also have been done with VMware — and I’m sure ING DIRECT, like virtually every major organisation in Australia, is also a heavy user of VMware. But it does show the extent to which corporate Australia is starting to use Hyper-V more and more at the moment.
Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/K38yygIIon8/
news Optus has announced the availability of online pre-orders for the HTC One X Android smartphone. Booking started on March 20th for delivery in metropolitan areas on April 2nd, and regional areas on April 4th. Optus subsidiary Virgin Mobile has also announced the imminent arrival of HTC’s flagship model in Australia, posting “check back early April for updates” on its website.
The handset would be available on a range of plans including a $0 upfront option on the $59 Optus Cap Plan for consumers and Business Complete Plan for businesses, at a minimum total cost of $1416 over 24 months. Optus consumer customers on this plan would receive $750 of included value, 2GB mobile data, unlimited standard national SMS, and access to social networking, within Australia. Business customers would receive, additionally, unlimited voicemail access, plus free intra-fleet calls to other Optus services on the same account.
As an added incentive, consumer customers who pre-ordered the HTC One X handset on a 24-month plan would be given two months free access fee, while business customers would receive the three months free access fee. Optus’ plans for the HTC One X are available on its website. Virgin Mobile plans for HTC One X also offered a $0 upfront option on a $59 per month Fair Go plan with $700 credit for calls, text rollover (unused credit rolled over to the next month) and a monthly data plan of 3GB.
HTC One X was Taiwanese gadget giant HTC’s top-end model of the One range which the company had unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month. The handset features a polycarbonate unibody design, was lightweight, and powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 CPU, with a 1.5GHz Super 4-PLUS-1 quad-core processor and an integrated fifth Battery Saver Core. The HTC One X runs the new Ice Cream Sandwich (version 4.0) edition of Google’s Android operating system.
To keep the phone’s graphics up to speed, it uses a 12-core NVIDIA graphics processing unit. The screen of the One X is a 4.7″ touchscreen running at a high definition resolution of 720p, and uses Corning’s Gorilla Glass material.
In its media release, Optus promised that HTC One X would lift the smartphone game to a new level with its ‘amazing camera that was faster and better.’ The HTC ImageChip allows for photography in adverse conditions of lowlight, no light and bright backlighting. The camera also capture video and still images simultaneously. The phone offers an ‘authentic’ sound experience across all multimedia and comes with a built-in HTC Sync Manager software which allowed for easy transfer of songs from users’ music libraries.
PC World Australia had reported last month that the HTC One XL, would launch in Australia through Telstra, since it was the only mobile carrier, currently, that supported 4G.
Virgin’s HTC One X plans:
Optus’ HTC One X plans:
Image credit: HTC, Optus, Virgin
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/JBstxuOukqw/
news Australia’s number two telco Optus announced late last week that it had successfully completed what it said was the nation’s first 4G mobile broadband trial using 700MHz – a new mobile frequency providing wider coverage and faster speeds as compared to the existing 4G mobile services that used the 1800MHz spectrum.
Optus’ successful trial marked a critical step in delivering competitive 4G mobile services in regional and rural Australia. The 700 megahertz spectrum, commonly known as the digital dividend spectrum, had been made available as a result of the switch-over from analogue to digital television, and was to be auctioned in November 2012.
“Our trial was in Bendigo, regional Victoria over the past few months and I’m pleased to announce today that it has been a success,” said Optus chief executive Paul O’Sullivan. “We achieved peak download speeds of over 70 megabits per second. This wasn’t in the lab – it was in the middle of the Bendigo CBD.”
Optus Managing Director Günther Ottendorfer said the company used everyday scenarios to test the capability of the 700Mhz frequency to deliver 4G services. It tested a variety of Optus services and applications over the network, including smartphone apps, mobile TV services, Internet TV and online gaming. It also installed a High Definition (HD) video conferencing unit on the famous Bendigo tram and conducted HD video calls to staff at Optus’ headquarters in Sydney.
The conclusion was that 4G services using the 700Mhz frequency had the potential to offer a better experience for customers with peak download speeds reaching 70Mbps and upload speeds of 32Mbps.
What’s more, Optus demonstrated that 4G coverage delivered on 700MHz could be achieved over 13km from a single tower compared to the 3-6 km area covered by the existing 4G 1800MHZ spectrum – a significant fact when deploying high-speed mobile services across large distances. The Optus release said that despite mobile services operating alongside TV channels, there were no reports of interference either with local or out-of-area TV services.
Ottendorfer added that since the experiment was successful in Bendigo, Optus was excited by the potential of taking 4G services to more locations as soon as possible, benefiting customers in hitherto unreachable areas.
This new development comes just about a month after Optus bought wireless broadband player Vividwireless in its bid to create a new 4G mobile broadband network across Australia. At that time, Optus had said that the deal would give it access to up to 98Mhz of wireless spectrum in the 2.3GHz band — a band which was already used by “some of the world’s leading operators” to provide 4G services.
It planned to use this spectrum “to build a new 4G network using LTE-TDD technology”. Optus planned to integrate this with its 1800MHz network, which would be launched in Newcastle and the Hunter region of NSW in April 2012, and which would provide increased mobile speeds to their customers in metropolitan Australia.
opinion/analysis
It all sounds rather nice, but we haven’t yet heard much about when Optus will actually deploy these 4G services. Meanwhile, Telstra has been signing up new customers to its fledgling 4G network — which is actually commercially ready right now in metropolitan CBDs — at a rate of knots. We’ll have some more info on that later this week.
Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay
No related posts.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/vlB8Eaov4gA/
