Saturday, October 24, 2009

Green telepresence to save Dimension Data time and travel costs

Datacraft, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dimension Data, has extended the Group’s telepresence footprint with the newly installed systems in its New York, London, Johannesburg, Singapore, Tokyo, Brisbane and Canberra offices.
The move is in line with the Dimension Data Group’s Green strategy to reduce employee travel globally, and increase accessibility of TelePresence to a broader audience in order to communicate and collaborate globally in real time.
Andy Cocks, Solutions and Strategic Alliance Director at Datacraft said: “We expect to cut travel costs among the Group’s senior management alone to between 15% and 20% – and that’s without comprising crucial, real-time, face-to-face contact which makes for successful leadership.”
Cocks said Datacraft has been successfully using telepresence to communicate between their Singapore and Tokyo offices. “In fact, we have even conducted job interviews as well as internal review meetings via telepresence.”

Click Here for the original and complete article

Friday, October 23, 2009

I have a few questions for those who favor so called net-neutrality.

First, is it possible that this is not about protecting the internet for the little guy, but rather a high stakes game between very large corporations, each with their own agenda? In this corner... the telecom and cable companies and in that corner.... The Content providers, Google, Facebook, and others. Why do you think Google and others are lobbying so hard for net neutrality? Because, they want to flood the Internet with mega-files without constriction. They do this without paying a nickle for HOW the content gets delivered. This is like flooding the freeway traffic in LA with thousands of semi-trucks and trailers without regard for the impact they have on the traffic or damage to the freeway itself.

Is it possible that the telecom companies want the opportunity to do their job which is to insure that the networks get managed so that the largest number of users have the best possible experience? Aside from the ham handed way that comcast slowed traffic, what other evidence is there that any network provider has deliberately slowed or blocked traffic?

Does it make sense to treat ALL traffic equally? I mean, why in heavens name would you treat an email data packet exactly the same as a video stream? Wouldn't it make sense to allow the network providers to offer the ability to prioritze the traffic based on traffic type and the willingness of users/providers to pay for a higher quality experience.

If net-neutrailty as proposed is enacted as policy, it will preclude the opportunity to develop high quality consumer applications such as high performance telepresence like you see on shows like 24 and others because to deliver applications like that demandes that the data traffic be actively managed and higher priority given across the network for the video transmission.

Are you really satisfied with the quality of your experience on websites like hulu and youtube? What is the likelihood that your experience of these sites will significantly improve without active management of the network? All the bandwidth in the world will not solve this problem, just ask Cisco who tied in vain to deliver telepresence in an unmanaged environment only to have the performance be so poor that they recommend their video equipment be used over a managed network?

So, before you buy into the idea that net neutrality is simply a way to stop the "evil, profit hungry" network providers from imposing their way on halpless and innocent users, stop and think, who is really behind net neutrality.

If you think Google (and Facebook) is on your side and they are only doing this to protect you, then you probably believe in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and I have bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you.