3 July

Approaches to successful innovation

I read an interesting article on innovation today that looked at the ideas of David Midgely, marketing professor at INSEAD, who has written a book called the Innovation Manual

Although many companies are looking towards innovation to help them gain market share or increase sales coming out of the downturn, Midgely says that many of them are wasting resources by not managing the innovation process properly. He is quoted as saying, "It's not the effort that companies put into innovation that decides success. Instead it is how firms go about doing innovation that separates leaders from the rest."

So how can companies be sure that their innovation dollars are being spent in the right place? What's important, says Midgely, is to look at innovation across all functions. Companies looking to develop an innovative product and service need to consider where they are trying to innovate. This could be in any of the following: customer, technology or business model. The article outlines examples of each of these:

  • Customer: Nintendo developed the Wii to appeal to a new customer base that didn't traditionally buy games consoles;
  • Technology: For its PS3 console, Sony focused on developing a new chip that would give its games the edge amongst gamers;
  • Business model: Apple's iPod was successful, not because it was a great device, but because it created a new business model around iTunes that would allow users to easily buy only the tracks they wanted.

What's interesting about these examples is that the company focused on innovating in a single area. The Wii, for example, doesn't have any real innovation in its business models and even its motion sensor remote can be considered as helping establish the product amongst a new segment of gamers.

Once a decision has been made about where to target the organizations' innovation efforts, Midgely suggests a number of steps to make it a success. These include:

  • Set up a cross functional team responsible for developing the innovation;
  • Work directly with customers in the development phase;
  • Make the right organizational changes to deliver the innovation (this is particularly important for service or business model innovations);
  • Build momentum for the innovation through proper marketing.

2 July

Cisco teleworkers are proud and productive

Cisco has released the findings of a study of 2000 teleworking employees - it seems they are a happy bunch, more productive and helping the technology giant save a whole pile of cash. The consulting arm, Cisco Internet Business Services Group, reckons it has annual savings of $277 million in productivity by allowing employees to telecommute and telework. Of course, being the technology company behind telepresence, Webex and series of remote connectivity solutions, eating your own dogfood is a must. But these figures are none the less very interesting: 

For starters, the survey reports that teleworkers are a happy and productive bunch of souls:

  • 69% surveyed cited higher productivity when working remote, 
  • 75% said the timeliness of their work improved
  • 67% of survey respondents said their overall work quality improved when telecommuting.
  • 83% of employees said their ability to communicate and collaborate with co-workers was the same as, if not better than, it was when working on-site.
  • 80% cited an improved quality of life 

So the majority of teleworkers - which telework on average two days a week - enjoy the flexibility of being able to work from home. They reckon that 60% of the time that they saved on travel is now spent on work (does that mean they do the same work but in less time, or more work?), and 40% is on their personal life. The general feelings of happiness may also be in part because just 40% work in the same city as their managers.

For Cisco there's quite considerable environmental and economic benefits reaped from their teleworkers. Cisco estimates that in 2008, teleworkers prevented approximately 47,320 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from being released into the environment due to avoided travel. Round-trip commutes varied from region to region, with North American employees reporting 30-mile commutes, Europeans reporting 46-mile commutes and Asia Pac employees just 14 miles. 

There's a very negative article in The Guardian which dismisses technology companies' self-published reports of their environmental activities. It says companies tend not to assess the rebound costs of teleworking, such as the use of telepresence which requires vast amounts of data. Telepresence, asks the Guardian, must surely be contributing to the rising levels of e-missions? 

What this article doesn't recognise is that as computer processing power increases, and that is the same for routers, energy requirements do not increase at the same pace. Emissions from digital equipment are indeed rising, but it's surely not at rate to counter the positive benefits for avoiding travel. The increase in size of the IT carbon footprint will be offset by the positive benefits IT can have in reducing building, travel and manufacturing emissions. So if a company is proud that its technology can improve employee productivity and happiness while reducing the environmental impact of its business activities, surely it's good to stand on a pedestal? 

26 June

our recommendations to businesses vis a vis security issues in social media (2/2)

Following our previous post in which we were able to demonstrate how one could get into the private life of an individual thanks to the information the latter has provided about him/herself on various social networking platforms, this second instalment of our demonstration shows how a hacker can use this information as a starting point for a foray into the targeted person's company information system.


3 strategies have been exposed in this video. All 3 scenarios selected are straightforward in order to prove that everyone is potentially concerned. However, a myriad of other scenarios can be devised, all depending on hackers' skills and mainly their powers of imagination. Our aim is not to disparage social networking tools let alone the Web 2.0 in general both of which remain great tools. One just has to play by the rules if one wishes to use such tools correctly and safely and make sure  things don't get out of hand. Take a chain-saw for instance, noone would deny it's a great wood-cutting tool, but it would be really foolish and dangerous to use it wrongly. Web 2.0 is just like that too. As a consequence, don't disclose personal information undiscriminatingly! 

Mind you, I don't mean that you shouldn't communicate to the outside world. On the contrary, over-communicating can be a viable strategy in order to influence the market or even to ensure that your competitors are buried in search engine results. A bit of risk assessment should do the trick, not much more is required to keep danger at bay. Yet, proper risk assessment should take all available information into account in order to better anticipate hacking techniques which could target your organisation or yourself. 

Information security extends way beyond IT security, it must encompass the whole spectrum including the human factor, i.e. the human beings who create, process and transform information. Hence a simple technical IT security audit cannot suffice to provide a comprehensive view of all security issues. Similarly, an organisational audit isn't sufficient either. A holistic approach is required, and the human factor must be taken into account. Today's hackers and crackers actually do this, hence why not mimic them when trying to protect your information.

The next step after these short demonstration videos will be devoted to the actions that can be taken to mitigate the risk in social media, such as:

  • how to erase unwanted information or information which needs be hidden
  • or, depending on your strategy, how to use social media tools not just to protect but to master, manage and lead.

25 June

US broadband market picks up in Q1 2009

The latest world broadband statistics from Point Topic have just been published By the end of Q1 2009, there were 429.2 million broadband subscribers worldwide, an increase of 4% over the last quarter of 2008. This put global broadband household penetration at 27.3%, an increase of 17.7% over penetration in Q1 2008. This growth comes in spite of the economic slowdown which affected take-up worldwide in 2008. Growth in Europe and Japan was still slow at the start of 2009, but the survey shows that growth in the US picked up again in the past two quarters and it has seen the fastest real growth in net adds since 2007. 

Regionally there hasn't been much change in overall direction, with growth in mature markets slowing as they reach saturation and emerging markets responsible for the bulk of net additions. Western Europe still has the largest proportion of broadband lines at 25.18%, followed by South and East Asia at 23.07% and the US at 21.79%. Growth in Eastern Europe slowed the most of all regions down to 5.75% from 7.9% in Q408, but it was still the third-fastest growing region after Latin America and South & East Asia. China remains the world's largest broadband market with 88 million lines, followed by the US with 83 million.

As for broadband technologies, fiber is continuing to make inroads into the market, with its growth outpacing both DSL and cable modems. However, DSL continues to be the dominant broadband technology with 65% of all broadband lines, with fiber only making up 12%. Broadband technologies vary quite dramatically in popularity between regions, with the Asia-Pacific and South and East Asia contributing 82% of all fiber connections. The fiber powerhouses are China (20 million connections), Japan (15.1 million), Korea (7 million) and Taiwan (1.2 million).

The full report can be found here.

18 June

Good news: IT spending out of step with economic cycle


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When IDC forecast global IT spending earlier in the year would remain the black, it did not foretell the utter collapse of the IT industry. Instead it suggested that while demand will be down in all regions it would not be catastrophic. Seemed odd at the time - surely, IT spending would mirror the general economic trends and head south very quickly.

Well according to venerable IDC chief analyst John Gantz, speaking at Orange Business Live in London, the IT spending cycle doesn't always follow economic cycles. With decades of experience, Gantz pointed out that that the current economic crisis is not necessarily leading to a crunch in IT spending. The last great depression in IT was 2001 (remember the dotcom bubble, satellite bubble and expensive 3G license fees?) yet the general economy was not suffering at the time. 

According to Gantz, to assess the impact the economy will have on ICT spending, we need to take the long view because IT spending cycles are singing to a different tune. Looking at the US economy over the last 50 years, and the IT spending during the same period, Gantz said "1982, a bad year for the economy, a great year for IT. 1984 was a great year for the economy, a bad year for IT. The same in 2002, a mild slowdown in the economy, a disaster in IT. In fact the biggest IT collapses have NOT coincided with the biggest economic collapses, but instead have been part of a long term IT boom and bust cycle." IT has its own cycles and fortunately we are in the right part of the bell curve to be facing a financial crisis. "Without knowing it, we have been getting ready for a crisis for 5 years. No need to freak out," he said.

Echoing Forrester's Mike Cansfield earlier in the day, Gantz also believes that this is the ideal time for companies to leverage IT to transform their business. "I think the real impact of the economic crisis will be as an agent for change. Change that might not always be pleasant.as far as I can see no company transforms itself willingly. Usually it's only under threat and duress. Schwab's threat from Etrade, Merrill Lynche's threat from Schwab. Microsoft's threat from Netscape. British Airways threat from Ryanair."

Gantz identified some key technologies that companies should be using to transform their business and resist newcomers. These include: 

  • Security management
  • Mobile data
  • Enterprise social media
  • Business analytics
  • IT outsourcing & BPO
  • SaaS
  • Virtual machines.
  • Search and discovery
  • Storage replication
  • IT automation

And his recommendations for technologies/ issues to watch were:

  • Visualisation management software
  • Real-time analytics
  • Ethical hacking.
  • IT-driven sustainability
  • Location-based services
  • Video search
  • Compliance
  • Reputation management software
  • M2M

18 June

our recommendations to businesses vis a vis security issues in social media (1/2)

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Needless to say how much we love social media at Orange Business Services and especially on the Orange Business Live blog. The likes of Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and TWitter are instrumental in letting us express our opinions, ideas and even develop our skills online, not to mention the management of our online reputations via powerful, user-friendly tools and platforms 

Having said that, the blue-sky world of social networks is somewhat darkened by certain hard facts related to serious web 2.0 security issues. Private and business information is particularly at risk on certain social networking platforms - not because of the said platforms in actual fact - but due to their usage and the lack of precautions by certain users.

The problem is that one might tell users to behave and highlight the consequences of bad online behaviour, and even develop nice theories but users usually can't understand the issues unless they see them with their own eyes. Seeing is believing and this is what I have decided to do here in order to prove our point and convince the sceptics.

I have therefore recorded a video demonstration (see hereafter) of these security issues which I have published in 2 instalments and which prove the serious - if not lethal - danger of disclosing sensitive private and business information in social media platforms. 

In part one of this video demonstration, I'll describe the danger itself and in the second part I'll deliver our recommendations for better using this great invention securely. Don't forget to turn the volume on and enjoy the presentation. 





As I say in these videos, my aim is not to criticise social media, which I think is a great invention, but to highlight the security issues related to its usage and emphasise that online behavioural patterns can have serious consequences. It would be stupid to prevent the usage of social media - in fact it would also be ineffectual - and it is much more recommended that users be educated so that social media does not become a danger but a true ally.

The second instalment of this article on social media will demonstrate how easy it is to use the secret information collected about the targeted lab described in instalment one and will deliver our recommendations to business owners so that they better protect their confidential data and also their personnel and reap the benefits of the safe use of web 2.0. 

In the meantime, please surf carefully!

Important notice: special thanks to Paul Hayter from Alpha plus anglais for the English version of these videos and the voice-over commentary. Paul can be contacted at 13 Square Général John S Wood, F-35700 Rennes, France (Tel: +33 (6) 6147 1127

16 June

Green IT and cost savings align

While much of the talk here at Orange Business Live 09 has been about saving costs in a tough economic climate, Green IT is still bubbling under, with a certain amount of cross-over between the two meaning that is possible to be both green and cost-conscious. 

Topics drawing the most interest included server virtualisation, data centre energy efficiency, and video collaboration. Rising oil prices will affect the cost of power and air travel, which can be offset by the deployment of new technologies, and can in-turn bring productivity benefits -- looking like an all-round "win/win". 

Sonny Reid, Global Network Director for electrical components company Legrand, noted that the deployment of audio and video conferencing technology is expected to lead to a 10% reduction in the company's travel CO2 output, and that figure may well turn out to be conservative. But Reid also pointed out that these "green" credentials have come as something of a side benefit for what was started out as a cost-reduction exercise -- travel costs have also been significantly reduced as a result of the use of conferencing technology.

David Metcalfe, Chief Executive Officer of research firm Verdantix, noted that "climate, energy and regulatory trends make sustainability a competitive issue", and that "leading firms innovate on sustainability today, to ensure a strong and strategic position in 2012". The fact that it is possible to save costs while remaining green may mean that companies will become more environmentally-friendly by stealth, with Metcalfe stating that the 2009-2011 period will be characterised by "incremental changes". 

According to a matrix assessing the green credentials of various telcos, "Orange leads the market on solutions because it has invested in extensions to existing products and services".

Some video from the event featuring Sonny Reid is in the pipeline.

15 June

Orange outlines sustainability strategy

Mark Fossier, Chief Corporate Social Responsibility for Orange, outlined the company's sustainability strategy at Orange Business Live '09, which hinges on three principles:

  • Include: provide access for all (fight geographic, economic and physical exclusion); forge solidarity ties with local communities.
  • Preserve: reduce environment footprint; develop innovative solutions for the protection of the environment.
  • Care: provide security of information and protection of privacy; promote safe and responsible use of Orange products and services; act as a responsible employer; promote responsible sourcing principles.

In line with these goals, Orange is acting to reduce its own carbon footprint, of which the lion's share (around two thirds) is the result of its network equipment, with a significant proportion of the remainder coming from travel.

Options available to address networking overheads include the consolidation of infrastructure, server and storage virtualisation, and optimised cooling. The deployment of collaboration and mobility solutions will enable business travel cuts (including employee commuting).

10 June

Improving the efficiency of IT infrastructure

This buzz session at Orange Business Live looked at how to improve the efficiency of the IT infrastructure and was led by Jean Critcher, Solution Director Orange Business Services. 

The current economic crisis is affecting most investment decisions, and research from analyst Gartner identified that improving business processes and reducing costs were the two most important business priorities for CIO at the moment. The session identified four key areas that can help CIOs in this regard. They were IT infrastructure optimization, virtualization and cloud computing, selective outsourcing and M2M.

Critcher stressed that it's no longer enough just to optimize the network because all parts of the infrastructure can affect the performance of key business processes - including the data centre, applications, storage, etc. Application acceleration is the latest trend in current WAN optimization processes with many companies particularly interested in optimizing Web 2.0 applications. Orange customers have had much success with WAN optimization including:

  • Tobacco manufacturer: used application performance management to offload applications such as mail into the Internet to free up the IPVPN for critical apps. It managed to achieve 80% more usage from the IPVPN with this approach
  • Lenovo: used WAN optimization to increase its WAN capacity three-fold at no extra cost
  • Leading hotel group: used WAN optimization to give it 99.9% uptime in applications and reduced its TCO by 27% through outsourcing

 The next speaker, Rob Hodgkinson, introduced cloud computing to the audience. He said that two main types of cloud computing were emerging: software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service - which he also dubbed platform as a service (PaaS), and said that Orange was more interested in the latter. Basically cloud computing is a scalable, opex-centrix model, which is accessed over the Internet.

Most cloud computing services are currently targeted at small businesses, such as Amazon Web Services, and there are a number of issues that need to be sorted out before they are a viable option for corporates, including SLAs and penalties, security and internal business processes. For example, rapid provisioning in cloud computing is pointless if the internal process for provisioning computing power is a bottleneck.

Orange has an ambitious plan for cloud computing services and already offers basic cloud servers. By 2010 it plans to offer a virtual cloud based data centre that can be automatically provisioned over the Web.

The final part of the session was on M2M, and the main theme was that M2M is ready for deployment right now, and that many Orange customers have already achieved substantial business benefits from it. Basically M2M helps companies optimize their business processes, and even in some cases create entirely new business models. Examples include:

  • The Belgian railways that used M2M to track its locomotives, helping it locate resources and prevent accidents;
  • Singapore Port Authority that is able to move twice as many goods through M2M;
  • Gefco, which saved 5% of its fuel bill by better route optimization.

We have carried out exclusive video interviews with all of the above speakers and they will be available in due course. 

9 June

Learning from experience

Orange Business Services provided wisdom generated from its own experience in the "how to boost employee productivity" session here at Orange Business Live 09, addressing how to use remote working technologies to improve on-campus communications for businesses with a mix of office-bound and nomadic workers.

Orange's Mark Fitzpatrick noted that as the company transformed from being a "networking company to a professional services company", more and more staff spent an increased amount of time away from the office - around 50% of the staff in the Slough can be described as nomadic. But this has meant that for the staff left in the office, there was a loss of the professional collaboration and social connections which drive business.

The rollout of fixed-mobile convergence technology has enabled staff to remain connected wherever they may be, with document sharing and telepresence enabling collaborative working between distributed staff. The addition of "presence" features, similar to those provided by instant messaging applications, mean that staff are always aware of the status of colleagues, including if they are on a voice call, so they can chose the most appropriate contact method and time.

For employees in businesses where staff spend off-site, for example auditors who may spend significant time at customer sites, calls can be routed to the customers IPT network, again extending communications beyond the physical boundaries of an enterprise.

But these products are equally applicable to enabling more flexible workplace practices, which Orange has adopted in Slough. Hotdesking is in place, with staff able to reserve places for when they are attending the site, and fixed-mobile convergence technology enabling reduced set-up and breakdown times. The office has also been restructured for collaboration, in recognition of the fact that staff generally visit the site in order to talk through ideas with their peers.

In addition to enhanced communications possibilities, flexible working has allowed Orange to reduce real estate costs, and "neutralise weakness" with regard to fixed office sites - attracting and retaining staff from a wider geographic catchment area, who may otherwise have been put-off by a long commute, especially if they already live near key customer sites.

There are, however, some issues which could hamper the rollout of flexible working technologies, not least of which is user attitude. For many staff who first came into the workplace before current working practices became commonplace, giving up the desk may not be an immediately popular option. But it was suggested that the adoption of new working practices among younger staff may rub-off among the old-guard, once they can see the benefits delivered by new technology.

Cultural issues also impact adoption of nomadic working practices. Among Orange Business Service employees, the figures range from 70% in New York, to 30% in Tokyo. A number of criteria come into play here, for example with the prevalence of small houses in Tokyo given as a suggestion why working-from-home may be less popular in this market.

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