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Loading ...Apple Stores and ‘Green’ Computing
Apple and the Corporate World:
Apple has been making a huge inroad in the consumer market with its desktop. There is even buzz about corporations switching to Macs, much to the horror of IT Microsoft Windows support departments. However, I don’t see Steve Jobs going this route. Why? Two reasons are that the iPhone and the iPod are more profitable. Both offer much larger margins than computers. Apple also dominates those areas. If the company tries to grow its computing business, it will have many more competitors. This would include Dell and HP. Even more significant to note is that PC makers no longer sell just desktops to the enterprise. They are selling wireless solutions, enterprise storage and security, and virtualization solutions, to name a few. The companies also partner with software vendors to supply business intelligence, ERP, CRM, just to name a few of the mainstream abbreviations we keep reading about. Does Apple have the capacity right now to supply any of this?
As a consumer, I think that iMacs are beautifully designed. As IT support, it will take more than pretty icons and a nice laptop furnish to convince me that Apple computers are ready for the corporate world. Just because a Mac can access email, access a browser, and share files with the corporate network, it’s not enough. Why don’t I just buy $500 laptops and load them all up with a free Linux distribution running OpenOffice, Wine (windows emulation), and VMWare? That way, I’d save several hundred dollars on the OS, not to mention on the hardware too.
‘Green’ Computing
What are your thoughts on ‘green’ computing? Is it a marketing ploy? Is SAAS and ‘cloud computing’ the means that justifies the greens? I would argue that running server farms contusing several tens of thousands of servers 24/7 is not green at all. This infrastructure reminds me of the mainframe/terminal model as opposed to distributed or the client/server architecture. The world is better off with an infrastructure that does not demand for larger growing server farms. Is there a p2p-like infrastructure that throttles power consumption only when it is needed? Why can’t server farms have a distributed computing infrastructure, much like folding@home?
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...An Example of How Wireless Changes Everything
Has anyone asked whether wireless creates a paradigm shift, regardless of how much it costs? It could be argued that cell phones are just telephones with no wires, nothing really new, and other wireless functions are just an improvement over things that already existed, so nothing has really changed much.
I recently received my little XO computer which I got through the give 1 get 1 program of the One Laptop Per Child initiative. See http://laptopgiving.org for more details.
This computer is based on the idea that wires aren’t available in many places in the world where kids could benefit from a computer. The idea of the XO laptop is to build a $100 computer that is optimized for learning and communicating. The goal is to give away millions of them. I think this could be a dramatic change and, if successful, may have a real impact on the world.
If we can get the cost of a fully functional computer with a set of applicaitons down to $100, surely we should be able to make the wireless networks they depend on affordable too!
Check out the web site. And if anyone else has one, let me know what you think of it. I’ve been looking for someone in my area (downtown Toronto) to try the chat program with!
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(2 votes, average: 8.5 out of 10) Loading ...Apple Store in downtown Vancouver - Is it important?
Vancouver had the pleasure of getting a new Apple Store open in Pacific Centre Mall over the weekend. The store itself is not a big deal, but it was met very enthusiastically by a fairly large crowd. For those who haven’t had the pleasure, the store’s concept is simply a big white box and is geared simply to showcase apple products in a clean and simple way. The question for us IT managers is what does this store and Apples technology do to the businesses we support.
Since Apple’s move away from PowerPC chips and to standard Intel hardware a few years back, I’ve been debating the pros and cons of re-introducing the Mac into our corporate IT mix. I started my career supporting a network of over 7000 Macs at a large professional service firm. The Mac gave us a huge competitive advantage that was hard to over look in an industry with approximately 30% staff turn over. A Mac was simple to use, didn’t require much in the way of end user training and basically never failed. Now lugging around a Mac SE/30 and later the Mac Portable was never fun, but they just worked.
In 1995 we were forced by software issues to finally make the transition to a Wintel architecture. My support costs ballooned as my capital costs plummeted.
The simple fact of the mater was, the Mac OS and applications were less expensive to network, support and deploy. Our training and service desk calls were lower and user satisfaction was higher. The down side was limited software availability and higher (substantially) hardware costs.
Apple has made a huge comeback these last 5 years. In part inspired by the IPOD dominance in the MP3 market, but also due to their attention to integration of the OS and the hardware. With the advent of Parallels, VMWare, Thinstall and other virtualization platforms the software issue is pretty much a thing of the past. The question is if the integration issues can now trump the hardware premium which is relatively small?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue. Can business seriously consider moving back to a Mac?
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(2 votes, average: 5.5 out of 10) Loading ...Wireless Reality
I happen to agree with my fellow bloggers here. The real questions isn’t one of if the cost of wireless is too expensive, it is, but the bigger question of why and what if anything can be done about it. The fundamental problem in my opinion is one of market competitiveness and basic economics.
Canada is a big country. It is also relatively sparsely populated. That means you need deep pockets to finance a cross country network. Steven Nikkel has a great Google map mashup of all the known cell towers at his site to give you a feel of the number of towers required to provide coverage to even a portion of the country.
I had the opportunity last year to deal directly with Rogers on the installation of a cell tower at one of our facilities.
Even with us as a “willing” site for a tower, it still took close to 9 months of contract negotiations, legal reviews etc before we could get the tower put installed. That tower was a relatively simple build out for Rogers but it never the less cost them well over $150,000. Now assume that the cost of every cell tower is roughly the same and that for a Canada wide build out you need to deploy 10-15,000 towers to establish your network. That’s upwards of 1.5 billion in up front capital costs alone. For a complete build out a new company is looking at upwards of 10 billion dollars in start-up financing to cover your first 5 years of operations without the guarantee of a single customer or a slice of the relatively meagre $16 billion per year in revenues generated by the wireless industry in Canada.
The economics for allowing a new wireless operator to establish themselves in the marketplace at this point are basically impossible..
The only option would be to have CRTC actively take action in some way.
Not withstanding the Honourable Jim Prentice’s statements yesterday about opening up the Canadian market place to addition competition. The simple fact is that less than 40% of the new spectrum under the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum auction is actually being reserved for new providers. The incumbents will be able to bid and drive up the costs on the other 60%. Worst yet the auction rules preclude the ability to negotiate or have discussion regarding roaming agreements till after the auction is completed. For new players the risks go up as a result.
What if you can’t get the right to use spectrum in an area like Toronto because another company out-bids you for that geographical area? Without the ability to negotiate a roaming or partnership agreement with that competitor, you may decide not to even bid on the other areas.
That leaves us with only one hope, direct government intervention on pricing. Yet the CRTC’s own mandate clearly states that it does not include this level of oversight to the Canadian market place.
The bottom line is costs for wireless services in Canada are very high, and the current round of spectrum auctions are not about to drive those prices any lower.
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(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 10) Loading ...A Survey - No wires Needed!
Ok. I’m going to turn this week’s “assignment” into a survey by adding to the text provided by Dave Webb.
Here goes:
Canada lags Europe and the US in wireless penetration.
a) Is there something about Canada and its geography that makes this understandable? Yes or No
b) What are the benefits of striving to have higher penetration? e.g., economies of scale
c) Is this just because of costs or are there other reasons? for example, the infrastructure overhead
d) Does the level of penetration of wired systems act as a deterrent?
SeaBoard Group calls this “a national disgrace”
a) Is it a disgrace? If so, why?
b) How much penetration is needed to change this view?
There’s a dearth of affordable plans
a) How many plans are there now? How many plans do we need?
b) How low do rates need to go to be affordable?
c) Is affordability different in Canada compared to other countries?
Would new carriers make it more competitive (and hence be a good thing)?
a) Yes or No ?
b) Enough to make the rates become acceptable?
Would foreign ownership be beneficial?
a) to improve services
b) to reduce costs
c) to increase penetration
d) all of the above?
Would you spend 25% more on wireless services if the data rates were 10%, 20% or 30% less costly?
What would it take for you to double your spending on wireless systems? Better services? New functions? Dramatically lower costs?
Inquiring minds want to know your views……..don’t be shy!
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...How Much is Wireless Worth?
Okay, I’m going to admit I’m not a heavy duty wireless user. I don’t have my cellphone glued to my ear. I don’t use the Internet when I’m walking down the street (I tend to bump into things and can’t see the screens anyway). I don’t watch television on a 2 inch screen. I do play with my Blackberry GPS a little bit, and I do have periods where I’m text messaging all the time. I don’t use special devices like the couriers use, and so far I haven’t tried to use wireless devices in really remote corners of the world. And….I don’t really keep track of how much it costs me to be wireless!
So, the Blogging Idol topic is: Is wireless too expensive? Perhaps this question should be re-stated more simply as: Is wireless expensive?
From a consumer point of view, it probably doesn’t really matter how Canadian costs compare against other countries. After all, do we really compare the costs of telephones from country to country (I’m sure someone does, but is it newsworthy)? And what would we do if they were indeed higher? I wouldn’t move just to cut telehone costs.
Next, how expensive is too expensive? What would it take to make people stop using wireless? Hasn’t wireless phones become part of the culture, too late to be killed by cost alone? If wireless was ridiculously cheap (lets say free!), then would we all convert completely to wireless for all communications? My guess is no.
Next, from an economic point of view, I will concede that lower wireless costs would reduce the cost of doing business and hence make Canadian companies more competitive, leading to more sales. Lower costs would also stimulate conversion of older systems to take advantage of wireless. I do think it is useful to track parcels as they are being delivered almost in realtime - due in large measure to hand held wireless terminals. It might be interesting to postulate what a total conversion to wireless would mean. Can prices be kept low if all the wired infrastructure had to be written off? Should the target be that wireless telephony costs no more than a normal telephone does?
From a innovator/manufacturer’s perpective, reducing the cost of wireless in Canada would help make Canada a world-class showplace for wireless products and services. This can only be good - for jobs, for exports, and for general business productivity.
So, what is the the bottom line? Wireless is probably more expensive than we would like it to be, and as others have noted is more expensive than in other countries, but its certainly not too expensive for a large number of Canadian businesses and consumers.
Let’s focus less on current costs and more on how we can benefit from wireless. What can do to quickly exploit the opportunities that wireless offers? What is your favourite excuse for being wireless and paying the cost?
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Give Yourself a Break on Wireless Data Access Rates in Canada!
May 27th was supposed to be the day that wireless data rates would potentially fall. It is now longer the case. MTS desolved a consortium formed to bid in an upcoming auction of Canadian wireless spectrum. This is very good news for the three heavy-weights: BCE, Telus, and Rogers. When the auction was announced, Telus fell from the high $50’s to $41.05 on the stock market. Rogers bottomed to $32.92 from $50. It is clear that Canada is in major need for another viable wireless competitor. Canada needs a new company that will offer wireless data access at a rate compariable to other countries. Otherwise, there is really no incentive for the big telcos to reduce rates.
What will happen to data prices with the arrival of the iPhone in June?
Rogers announced last year that it will release the faster iPhone to Canada in June. That’s great. More data consumption from more users should mean lower rates, right? Wrong! Rogers is the only network with 3G. 3G is fast for data transfer, and is something that the newer iPhones will need. So, until there is another wireless entrant emerging from the auction (we’ll know 3 months from now who it is), high data rates will stick around for a while longer.
Incidentally, when Rogers made the iPhone announcement, the stock rallied $1.60 to $44.50. Perhaps the best way to subsize high data rate plans is to buy shares in Rogers.
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(4 votes, average: 7.5 out of 10) Loading ...Why is Canada More Expensive than Rwanda for Mobile Data Access?
Yes, you read that title correctly. The price of mobile data access is higher in Canada than it is in Rwanda. In fact when I first looked into this in April of 2007, some mobility providers in Canada were charging rates almost 21 times higher than Terracom in Rwanda. Mobile data rates are also significantly cheaper than Canada in Egypt, Botswana, Vietnam and Bolivia. In fact, why limit comparisons to things terrestrial? Sending data using a Canadian mobility provider costs more than sending the same amount of data from the Hubble Space Telescope! Canadian rates are so high that I almost have to wonder if mobility providers in Canada are deliberately attempting to grab a big chunk of cash at the expense of killing off their own market and taking down one of IT’s hottest growth areas at the same time.
The use of mobile devices for applications is currently exploding. Even exterprise software giants such as SAP are committing themselves to adding mobile functionality to their offerings now or in the very near future. Internet domains within the .MOBI TLD are being registered at the rate of tens of thousands per week and Google, a company that seems to know what it’s talking about, has declared that growth in mobile data services is so important that it has developed its own platform (Android) to take advantage of the huge opportunities out there.
Canada, as a nation, can be described as large, wealthy, and technologically advanced. We have a long history of excellence in communications technology, perhaps borne out of necessity. Canadian research powerhouses such as Northern Telecom and Research In Motion continue to advance our national state-of-the-art, as well as the world’s. Mobile communication today, along with the network engineering and security they require, is quite possibly developing faster than any other part of IT. We develop incredibly advanced technology in this country, technology that much of the country cannot afford to use due to greedy and short sighted price gouging by mobile service providers. Bell, Rogers, Telus, Fido, all should be helping Canada to stay on the leading edge of mobile application delivery, but instead, they have chosen to make fat profits even if it means crippling the industry and destroying its promise. This is, plainly put, a national disgrace.
In my posts later on this week I’ll discuss specific cases where Canadian data rates have shut homegrown companies out of our own markets, and I’ll have suggestions about what individual Canadians can do until mobile data pricing is reduced to sane levels. I’ll also look at how the CRTC (which is governed by the Canadian Telecommunications Act) has failed to address these issues.
Mobile data offers opportunities that should be Canada’s for the taking. We have to prevent corporate greed from doing this much damage to our future.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Week Two’s theme: the cost of wireless in Canada
Dave Webb came up with the idea for this week’s theme. Here’s his challenge:
Canada lags Europe and the
U.S. in wireless penetration substantially, a situation described by analysis firm SeaBoard Group as “a national disgrace.” Many blame high prices and lack of competitive pressure.
While wireless data prices have come down by orders of magnitude in the last year, there’s still a dearth of affordable plans.Is wireless in
Canada too expensive? Would the entry of new carriers to the market make it more competitive? Should the market be opened up to foreign ownership? What would you like to see in a wireless plan?
Remember that this topic is only a suggestion and you’re free to take the conversation in another direction, as long as it’s related to the IT industry. Good luck to all.
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(3 votes, average: 8.67 out of 10) Loading ...Where Do ITIL Designations Fit?
So, to continue exploring the question of professional designations for IT managers (at least until we the Blogging Idols are challenged with the next topic) …….
We’ve seen a number of themes so far: how someone is classified as professional (takes responsibility for their work), what makes an IT manager qualified (a degree or a certification exam), and what use are pieces of paper that just show “book learning.” In some cases we’ve even dropped the manager part and talked about IT technical certifications.
I like to separate technical certifications from managerial certifications. The former have definite value if you are meant to be an SME (Subject Matter Expert). The latter is probably less useful, given the very wide range of areas to be managed (planning, design, programming, development, operations, human resources, facilities, finances, procurement, training, etc.).
So, where does ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) fit into this equation? I assume you’ve probably all heard about ITIL and the new version (V3) that came out last year? Does ITIL define IT management? And if so, is it ITIL expertise that’s really the key for anyone who wants to be called a professional IT manager?
ITIL has five key areas of practice: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement (ITIL thinks of IT in terms of providing services to users). Certifications include Foundation, Expert and Master. Note that the term “professional” isn’t used in these. In many ways, these resemble the classic functions performed by a manager: planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling.
How many of you are using ITIL in your IT organizations and using it as guidance for how to manage the “monster” called IT? If you aren’t, then can you or any of your managers really qualify as being professional? I think so, but perhaps some people wouldn’t agree. Certainly the ITIL promoters are likely to make the case that following ITIL is the litmus test for an IT manager.
Tell me whether you think ITIL is a good basis for a professional designation for IT managers.
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