The answer, I think, is that the network’s capability usually precedes the services and products that will take advantage of it. To borrow from the Field of Dreams quote, “If you build it, they will come.”

We have seen this very clearly over the last 10-15 years with the rise of video consumption over the internet. When I started work in 1994 it would have been unthinkable to see a music video on-demand from a web site: at home, dial-up internet speeds were measured in kilobits-per-second, not megabits. At the time, even large images were slow to display.

The generation that’s never known anything but the web

Nowadays, my kids’ first port of call for everything they need to know (once they’ve asked Mammy and Daddy of course) is the Internet. They think nothing of it, as they never knew the world without the web.

For businesses, the ability to move large files quickly and to collaborate in real time with remote colleagues is equally transformative. That super-fast home broadband network can enable your staff to work from home when it suits (unless you work in Yahoo, of course…), and still stay connected to what’s going on in the office.

Real-time, high-quality video and voice communications are network-hungry creatures, and to get the great experience that makes people want to use them time and again, you need the bandwidth.

So, do I think we need all this extra speed? Yes, absolutely, I think we do; and if you can’t see yet why you might need it, you’ll find out quick enough – just ask your kids!

How will superfast broadband change what you can do at home, or at work?

Stephen Mulligan is Solution Principal at eircom, specialising in Unified Communications. Contact Stephen on Twitter, or here to discuss how UC can benefit your business. 

This might all sound fuzzy, but it’s not: organisations who feel their workplace atmosphere needs improvement can take tangible steps to achieve that change. The objective of what I’ll outline below is to create an environment of openness, trust and respect for each other and the company.

1. Encourage communication among employees and management.

Do employees feel out of the loop? Is management too divorced from operations to really understand what’s happening on the ground? It’s vital to set up structures – for example updates on company intranets, internal newsletters, feed-back & feed-forward surveys, that encourage individuals and teams to communicate, and keep reviewing these mechanisms to assess whether they’re working.

2. Agree together what the company core vision and values are.

If the vision and values are collectively agreed, buy-in from everyone is much more likely than if management dictates these in a top-down manner. The objective must be to develop a vision and values that genuinely resonate with the majority of employees.

3. Does everyone understand the business strategy?

If you want people to walk in the same direction, they need to know the destination and how they’re going to get there. Clearly articulate how senior management plans to lead the company to success. People Management teams should ensure all employees understand the strategy and the valuable role they play — that includes understanding the roles of departments outside the employee’s own area, to help foster mutual respect. Keep linking employee activity back to the company strategy, and let people know how the company is progressing in its strategy.

4. Help employees see the full impact of their roles

Salespeople who achieve targets can often consider this revenue as a net contribution to a company, but may forget to account for their own cost to the business. Once this realisation is communicated and accepted, it is easier for an employee to understand the need to perform not just as expected but beyond expectations, to help the company achieve success. Understanding how individuals impact company financial performance also allows for quicker acceptance of change that employees may face as a result of turbulent external factors.

5. Employees are often the best source of insights for innovation

Companies rely on innovation to leave the ‘me-too’ approach behind and offer something different in the marketplace. Employees dealing with consumers at the coalface are often the best source of information on what’s working, and what’s missing in the market, providing key insights that can drive an innovation strategy. Employees may also have specific ideas for innovation; soliciting and acting on these suggestions can lead not only to real competitive advantage, but also to a virtuous circle where more employees are inspired to make suggestions.

It’s the customer, not the employees, who ultimately determine the success of organisations; but a positive internal culture is where everything starts. Customers are more likely to have a good perception and experience of organisations where the culture is positive and enabling.

And don’t forget, positivity has its own contagious quality. Even in entrenched workplaces where it seems a new atmosphere can’t be cultivated, it is surprising how quickly positivity, openness and respect can catch on, once the enabling infrastructure and genuine commitment to change are in place.

What steps has your organisation taken steps to create an enabling culture?

Lorraine Butler is Head of Acquisition at eircom Business. Connect with Lorraine on LinkedIn or contact Lorraine here for more information.

It’s too onerous to spend time and money evaluating the full operating model of every managed service provider you’re considering. But here are key aspects you should consider, which will help you validate the provider’s abilities:

1. Can the provider go beyond reactive service?
   The service provider must be able to deliver true managed services – not just break-fix services based on reactive phone calls. On-going management of the service needs to be proactive; anticipate change and issues; manage change; and deal with the unexpected; draw on the right resources when in trouble. It must also have systems in place to manage your estate such as SLA Management, Ticketing, Configuration Management (CMDB), Event Management, Event Correlation, Knowledge Management, Status and Management Information Dashboards.
2. Discrete ICT services have converged – can the provider cope?
   The service provider’s operating model must be able to deal with the merger of traditionally separate ICT services in a way that meets demanding business needs. It also needs to be able to take advantage of technology advancements to reduce costs and drive the business through innovation. ICT elements to consider here include:

i.         Network
ii.         Fixed Voice Solutions
iii.         Mobile Solutions
iv.         Security
v.         Managed IT – Compute and Storage
vi.         Private and Public Cloud

3. Look for standards and certifications
   Does the service provider operate to standards that are effective and can be verified? Is it operating on an ITIL model and certified under industry recognised standards for service provision and security, based on a portfolio of services (e.g. ISO 27000 for Security, ISO 20000 for Service)? Some partners may be certified only for a single service or customer instance.
4. Is managed service provision core to the provider’s culture? 
   From design through to implementation, support and on-going development, the service provider must think about the full life cycle of service provision.

Above all, you must investigate whether the provider under consideration can add value to your business beyond what you’re paying for. Remember, you want a flexible service that lets you tap into a broad range of capability, so you are positioned to grow your business and deal with the unexpected.

What key factors do you consider when choosing a Managed Services Provider? Is a flexible managed service contract an important factor for your business? Go here to read Part 1: Four questions to ask your IT managed services partner.

Enda Doyle is the Director of Assure and Customer Service for eircom Business. Connect with Enda on LinkedIn or contact Enda here for more information.

But here’s the challenge: it’s difficult to maintain the cost base associated with this level of capability, especially given the current economic climate and the diversity of technical skills required.

That challenge has driven the need for Managed Service Providers to provide solutions to address this. Opex based models for the provision of Managed Services for ICT solutions are now commonplace, particularly with the growing acceptance of cloud-based infrastructure, and the capability that cloud solutions provide.

Focusing on the core business 

Most organisations today are trying to focus on their core business and on customer needs – another reason that delivering core ICT services through Managed Services is an increasingly attractive option.

But as the operating model changes, the organisation needs to be very specific about what it asks from a service provider, because it’s the organisation who still carries the risk if something doesn’t work. The IT manager rightly asks this all-important question: If I’m relying on a service provider, how can I be sure they will give me the same attention when something not clearly outlined in the service happens and causes a major issue — such as a major security breach, or an IT environment failure?

Key questions to ask your managed services provider

When considering a managed services operating model, here are key aspects you should consider:

1. Can the service provider deliver combined multi-vendor, multi-technology expertise for networking, compute, storage and application solutions?
2. Can the service provider deal with multiple operating models for IT infrastructure provision – on-premise solutions, hosted and collocation solutions, private cloud (virtual machines), public cloud (internet)?
3. Can the service provider manage the full life-cycle associated with ICT solutions? Service provision is not about having someone available to phone you on a 24 hour basis to tell you when something has gone wrong. It’s about understanding your business and building a fit-for-purpose solution that proactively supports your business objectives.
4. Are the services based on a portfolio of services that are core to the business of the Service Provider? Any IT expert can design and roll out a solution, but if it’s a unique one-off solution, it can not be properly industrialised to allow for ongoing management and evolution of the ICT environment as your business grows. The Managed Service Provider should have a service catalogue that’s relevant to the business solution you are procuring.

Next time I’ll consider other factors that are important in evaluating the suitability of a Managed Service Provider, including the culture of the service provider, and accreditations to validate that the service provider can operate effectively in providing managed services.

What are the qualities you look for in a managed service provider? How are you currently balancing the issue of cost and availability of ICT skills?

Enda Doyle is the Director of Assure and Customer Service for eircom Business. Connect with Enda on LinkedIn or contact Enda here for more information.

They say – or at least Alan Kay did, see Kevin Kelly’s blog – that it’s not technology if it was invented before you were born. For many, that grumpy two year old included, lack of a ubiquitous internet connection is unacceptable. The expectation is that the internet will be there as an inalienable right, without fanfare and without an unearned expectation of applause for being merely fast and reliable. That’s progress.

Growing up in multichannel TV-land in the Pale, I had BBC’s Tomorrow’s World to keep me informed of the frontier of technology. Take a look at this list of what Tomorrow’s World correctly announced. It includes fibre optics, announced in terms of comparative mathematical estimates of scale of capacity – usually the number of simultaneous phone calls that could be supported. Exponential stats and TV still go hand in hand when it comes to network planning: take a look at the latest infographic that tells us 60 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute – a stat that is probably out-dated by the time it’s announced. By Kay’s definition, video streaming like YouTube, and the fibre optic underpinning it for that matter, is still ‘technology’ to my Generation X.

Technology: always there, always meeting demand

That Kevin Kelly blog also refers to Danny Hillis’s pointed definition of technology as ‘everything that doesn’t work yet’. By this definition, we stop thinking about technology when it reaches an optimal intangible state, always there, always meeting demand. This is a difficult definition for anyone investing to provide a service, which only becomes a topic in the mind of the customer when it breaks, but I think it’s a good one. We deal with this all the time in eircom Business. Customers expect service to be excellent, and while they are aware that technology and related processes and experts are required to deliver their business outcomes, it’s those outcomes they want, not a feat of quality network engineering.

Fibre optic networks: powering the next-generation of business

For the consumer, the ideal network will be as fast as the internal processing of their device of choice. For the business, the ideal network will flexibly support its business plan. Fibre optic networks, expanding closer to customer locations, are the underlying platform that can deliver this. As outlined in a previous blog fibre is critical for mobile services too, as the traffic needs to get from the shared and congested radio space – be it WiFi, 3G or 4G – to the more abundant uncongested speeds of the fibre network for services to scale.

eFibre is here – but where is it available?

So there is huge interest in eFibre.

It was great to hear a colleague who is testing eFibre describe how the PC was straining to keep up with the network. Speeds up to 70Mbps downstream and 30Mbps upstream, powered by ‘fibre to the cabinet’ and using in most cases the existing copper access, makes this an attractive service for the domestic consumer and for business, whether it’s for home working, branch offices, or shops. For more info on the cabinet technology, take a look at this.

If you are thinking “it’s about time too!” and are interested in when and where eFibre will be available, you can check out the eircom eFibre rollout plan here.

For Business and Government customers looking for private networks as opposed to internet, eFibre will become another cost-effective means of accessing eircom Business’s IP VPN service complementing the scalable symmetric services we already deliver at Gigabit speeds to support the most demanding ICT and Cloud services.

And if our fibre services won’t reach you, faster broadband services are on the way via mobile LTE (Long Term Evolution) later this year too.

Andy O’Kelly is Chief Architect at eircom and a speaker on IT solutions and innovation. Follow Andy on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn.

Customer analytics, centred on both structured and unstructured data, is playing a large and growing role in helping organisations use the data they have to identify what’s important to customers, pinpoint next steps, and follow through with the appropriate response. (Did you know that customers usually defect because of the excess effort it takes to interact with an organisation? A typical next-step action following an analytics program may be for the organisation to reduce the work customers must do to get issues resolved quickly).

Structured and unstructured interactions offer customer insight

A good analytics solution will allow you to look both at the structured data (transactional data, location) and unstructured information (social media, contract history) arising from customer interactions. By analysing this mix, organisations can identify the preferred channels of communications based upon the circumstances of the contact.

Real-time and near-real time analytics of voice calls from the contact centre are one of the more intriguing aspects of customer analytics, allowing an insight into changes in customer sentiment or the market. Keyword analysis of calls, for example, can provide the earliest warning that a competitor has launched a promotion. Tone of voice analysis, meanwhile, may indicate a developing problem with an agent whose calls frequently result in an agitated or angry tone on the part of the customer.

Cross-selling and upselling

Applying analytics to customer databases, especially if these stretch over years, also allows the building of rich customer profiles that can reveal cross-sell and upsell opportunities that have been hidden in the past. Smart analytics can enable the contact centre agent to be prompted with relevant information to introduce an upsell or cross-sell during a customer interaction; alternatively, the same mechanism can prompt an online customer with suggestions of what else they might like to purchase (“Customers who purchased this product also purchased…”)

Predictive analytics and decision management

Predictive analytics and decision management tools are useful in helping companies understand what prevents customer churn and contributes to retention. Simple things like text-message reminders (to warn customers who are about to go over their limit on a bank account, for example, or to remind customers of a consultant appointment the following day) all help prevent problems and lead to higher customer satisfaction.

The mountain of customer data is growing, and provides a significant opportunity for organisations to get closer to customers, improve retention and prevent churn. There may be obstacles – for example the integration of multiple customer databases following acquisitions, or data silos resulting from years of standalone systems. But the effort is worth it, allowing organisations to develop intelligence that can bring customer service to the next level, including communications with customers on their preferred channel, truly personalised offers and significantly improved retention.

What is your plan for integrating customer analytics in the enterprise? Could better insights about your customers help you react faster in a changing market?

Danny Cole is Principal of Enterprise Voice at eircom. Connect to Danny on LinkedIn or contact Danny here for more information.

So it is when I meet with customers embarking on their journey to unified communications. As with the unfortunate motorist, with a unified communications (UC) implementation most organisations have no choice but to start from where they are. For some, a green field site may smooth the move to a UC environment; but for most there will be legacy networks, phone systems and video conferencing systems to deal with. And you simply have to start from where you are right now.

The network – a great place to start

The question I get asked most often is “so, where do we start?” The simple answer, I think, is that it has to start with the network. If your LAN and WAN infrastructures are not up to the job then, much like building a house on insufficient foundations, your entire project will struggle. Your voice and video quality will not be good enough and therefore the user experience will not be good enough. If you do not provide a great user experience, your UC journey will end before it begins.

In parallel with this, get your User Directory in order. Whether it’s Active Directory (AD) or another LDAP type directory, make sure everyone has an entry and that their phone numbers are in E164 format (e.g. +35316009999). This will make life a lot easier later on.

A quick win with instant messaging and presence

The one possible exception to the “start with the network” rule is Instant Messaging and Presence. These tools require very little network resource and are often implemented in parallel with a network remediation.

However, I would offer one word of caution. Many Instant Messaging solutions offer in-built point-to-point HD video and IP voice. If your network is not ready, consider disabling or restricting these features until it is. Better to have the users wanting more than having a poor experience to start.

Once you have a great network with QoS (Quality of Service) enabled, you can begin to build up from there, adding Voice over IP (VoIP), Click to Call, Desktop Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Remote Working – wherever your imagination takes you!

Are you wondering where to start your journey towards UC? Have you considered how to protect the quality of the user experience?

Stephen Mulligan is Solution Principal at eircom, specialising in Unified Communications. Contact Stephen on Twitter, or here to discuss how UC can benefit your business.

Cloud computing provides faster and more cost effective Development and Test capacity to application teams in any type of business, but particularly to those with a variable or dynamic development usage profile. It offers developers the resources they need to speed up application development, while ensuring the core business makes the most efficient use of its resources.

Why purchase IT assets when demand is highly variable?

In a typical software development lifecycle (that includes software development that uses the waterfall methodology or any other framework), peaks in the development and testing activity are followed by troughs of significantly lower utilisation. Buying traditional IT assets to meet this variable demand requires customers to purchase equipment to meet peaks in demand, while assets subsequently sit idle during slower periods of cycle.

While the cloud allows the business to avoid upfront investments, it can also help address the variable demand associated with development and test activities. The availability of on-demand capacity, coupled with ability to automate deployments, allows for rapid provisioning of complex development environments. This reduces the lead-time associated with development and speeds time to market.

Matching or exceeding the volume, transaction or traffic requirements of a production environment during the test phase in particular can identify issues and improve overall quality.

The six benefits of cloud for Development and Test

1. Improved quality
   By enabling test scenarios that were previously cost prohibitive due to significant hardware requirements.
2. Improved productivity
   Implementing high availability in development platforms, limits the downtime associated with infrastructure failures.
3. Faster innovation
   Cloud can support faster cycles of development, for instance allowing early deployment of a demonstration environment that would otherwise require substantial capital expenditure as a precursor to a full business case. This is particularly beneficial in road-testing innovation, where a tangible test experience will accelerate business commitment to a project, or alternately screen out unsuitable development candidates, thereby ‘failing faster’ and consequently reducing wasted development effort.
4. Operational efficiency
   Setting up and tearing down application environments comes at great operational expense. Allocating capacity between projects not only creates cost, it also costs time. The ability to instantly stand up capacity in the cloud cuts operational expenses, but more importantly it makes capacity available to dev/test teams almost immediately.
5. Resource efficiency
   Demonstrating the ability to rapidly provision resources for a new project lessens the tendency toward “server hogging” and reduces server sprawl. If your test team knows it can turn up a test rig in a matter of hours, they are less likely to hold onto expensive resources during “downtime”
6. Cost efficiency
   The utility (pay as you use) cost model is more cost effective than overprovisioning dedicated dev/test capacity. If a test requiring massive server capacity needs to only run for an hour, the business need only pay for this capacity for the hour. After the hour is up, the environment can be “stood down” and attract no further charge.

Of course like everything else to do with cloud computing, once you get past the metaphors, puns and hype you need to figure out if it’s right your own organisation, and how best to leverage it.

How do you buy and use IT resources for test and development purposes? Does the cost or quality of those resources ever let you down?

Mark Cawley is Principal of Managed IT Services at eircom. Connect to Mark on LinkedIn or contact Mark here for more information.

Which brings us to Ian in IT – imagine Ian’s distress as the pressure grows on him to make the applications and services available to Stephen in Sales at all times; even as Ian’s IT infrastructure is starting to creak. You have to feel for Ian: the last 36 months of conferences have told him to embrace the cloud, yet he’s struggling with the concept, and isn’t quite sure how to approach Frank in Finance with an argument that will convince him to make new budget available. If Ian wants to make a change in IT, the message from Frank is clear: Ian will just need to work within the current budget envelopes.

If I were working with Ian, what I’d do is advise him to take a step back. It may be that he does not need a bigger budget, rather a new way of thinking about the IT services he delivers, and a more rational way of delivering them. What he needs is an enterprise architecture.

What’s an enterprise architecture?

The length of the business cycles have changed over the past 15 years: these fast paced cycles are called hyper competition; to survive in this new economic reality, businesses need to be nimble throughout their organisations. IT is increasingly an enabler of this agility: IT underpins change, innovation, services and value perception.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a framework for articulating this evolution for the business, in technical, and more importantly, in business terms. It creates a common basis for understanding and communicating how systems are structured to meet the business objectives and will create advocates within the business for this evolution.

Based on a 2013 Gartner survey of IT & operational leaders, over 50% of respondents have identified that reducing IT cost was their number one priority. The EA is a key enabler in the realisation of that goal.

The EA identifies the current system deficiencies, those rigid and brittle IT systems with silos of functional data that cannot easily be shared. It identifies some triggers for change:

1. Change in competitive landscape
2. Change in business strategy
3. Change in business processes or resources

It provides the business with a map to a more efficient, nimble IT posture that encompasses emerging trends, cloud, BYOD security and data integrity, and demonstrates how these trends will be relevant to business agility.

What does an enterprise architecture do for your organisation?

1. It helps convince Frank in Finance that every euro Ian spends on IT is a contribution to the evolution of the business
2. It is the foundation of the IT strategy for the business, helping galvanise Frank and the rest of management behind the IT strategy
3. It demonstrates to all stakeholders – Stephen in Sales, Frank in Finance, even Martin the MD – that Ian in IT has a vision that is in concert with the business goals
4. It allows Ian to identify the parts of the work he can out-task, the elements he can put into the cloud, the applications that must be adapted for cloud delivery and the applications that are far too cumbersome to move to the cloud
5. It identifies the information security concerns for each of the communities within the organisation (including Sales, Finance, IT, Management)
6. It provides a roadmap towards better collaboration between the different teams in the organisation

What’s the first step to developing an enterprise architecture?

There are many frameworks for the development of an enterprise architecture: TOGAF, ARCON, the Good enough Architecture Methodology, each with their own merits and processes. The important thing for Ian to understand is the workflows and interdependencies between the different pillars of the enterprise community, and the sub-communities within each pillar.

It’s also important to realise that each of those communities within your organisation has a different perspective on what the core business process is. For example Stephen in Sales would say that the core process is selling; Frank would say it is cash flow. For that reason, it is often useful to map out the core business processes from each person’s perspective, which lets you identify the quick wins for the business.

Often that quick win will be IP telephony – it’s a tangible service, as most workers in the organisation have a desk phone, and most IPT solutions come with some kind of smart phone and desktop integration with messaging.

This means that Stephen in sales can interact in a faster, better fashion with his sales organisation, Ian can create groups of functional users that deliver a better service experience to the external and internal customer communities.

And the financials will make Frank happy. The cost-benefit analysis can be quite simple. TDM system costs €X per year in maintenance and €Y per year in moves, adds and changes. Over three years the IPT Systems cost ((€X + €Y)*3)*0.8), it also comes with greater capacity, flexibility and services. If it is also cloud delivered then it is more resilient – which all adds up to a quick win for Ian in IT as he moves the organisation closer to his vision for what a nimble enterprise architecture looks like.

Ronan McCarthy is eircom’s managed services principal and advises customers on IT & telecommunications best practice.

If you don’t already know about the AWS Ireland User group, it more or less sprung up overnight. The catalyst was real demand for peer discussions around Amazon Web Services and its applications for developers and companies using (or considering) the cloud for deploying systems and apps. With over 100 registered members in the group and growing, there is clear interest emerging in Ireland in cloud. Dublin has a cluster of tech giants deploying data centres, and an eco system for developers is emerging thanks to growing demand for web apps and a buoyant start-up culture.

Eoin Keary from BCC

First up was Eoin Keary from BCC, with a distinct security and cyber threat theme. He reminded us that we can’t improve what we can’t measure and advised listeners to keep benchmarking their cloud and web security against best practice. He also wisely cautioned against “just trying to pass the audit,” but instead to strive to make your cloud-based business more secure: it’s about your organisation’s security, not just scraping past the auditors.

Eoin also noted that the focus on security can be misguided, and true threats overlooked. In a bizarre case in Canada last year, two returning visitors to the USA were detained due to the Kinder eggs in the boot of their car. They had bought the eggs in Vancouver as an Easter treat for their kids but US border guards deemed the toys in the eggs to be a choking hazard for American kids. The US border agency reportedly seized more than 60,000 Kinder eggs in 2011!

Pat Donnelly from bizmaps

Pat Donnelly from bizmaps gave a really engaging talk about his company’s experience of moving from a physical data centre to a cloud-centred virtual private data centre based on AWS.

He described with refreshing honesty his experience of lifting and shifting to AWS, and the difficulties that caused him. He hadn’t prepared a cloud migration strategy in advance, as he was under time pressure and didn’t want the extra cost of a lengthy cloud design process. He said he paid for that mistake later, in time and money. You must design for cloud: EC2 instances are not servers. Don’t hog them: use them and lose them if you don’t need them, and deploy in as few availability zones as you can get away with.

Before you move to AWS think about the best way to deploy, he said; design specifically for EC2; and write specifically for S3. And do use third parties when you can, he advised, citing useful applications from Pingdom, Zendesk and SAAS players.

Kevin Holler from Engine Yard

Kevin Holler from Engine Yard revealed that Engine Yard has 15,000 EC2 instances on AWS! Engine Yard provides Automation and Orchestration services and PAAS to clients and has a few years under its belt now. With offices in San Francisco and Dublin, they are well positioned to add value to the Dublin AWS user community. They heavily use S3, EBS and EC2 and have automated billing for clients for AWS usage.

Tadhg Concannon from eircom

Technical Architect Tadhg Concannon from eircom wrapped up the meeting by inviting discussion around the various presentations.

Would you like to join us or attend the next AWS Ireland meet up? Just get in touch through the meet up site at AWS-Ireland-Usergroup

Jason O’Conaill is organiser of the AWS User Group in Ireland and Head of Cloud and Data Centre at eircom Business in Ireland.