Industry voice: Tablets in the workplace: it's not just about the iPad
A school's success is judged on its performance in the classroom and in examination results. A local government agency is scrutinised for its adherence to data protection and security guidelines. Private sector organisations are increasingly demanding of technology to deliver improved customer service.
Digital devices are absolutely, 100% crucial to that performance, to the new curriculum and student engagement – and for enabling secure remote access on ruggedised devices. So what devices are you going to buy for your school or business? If you're like a lot of our customers, you've had in mind what you want before you started to shop around. And it's probably iPads.
Kids want them. Parents want them. Employees want them. If your organisation has a BYOD policy, you might already have a lot around. However, I hope that you may already have seen that there is so much more to providing a means to effective mobile working than turning to an estate of just one type of 'most wanted' device.
Business purpose
We can, and frequently do provide iPads and other devices to our customers and they have fantastic benefits. But sometimes they might not be right for business purpose. For example in education, they might not be right for the teaching methodology or the subjects on the curriculum. Intuitive, lightweight and capable though they can be, they are not designed specifically for education.Devices that are specifically designed for education, or for young people, display a myriad of innovations that pay dividends when it comes to economical and pedagogical value. They are tougher, more suited to smaller hands and fingers, and can be carried and dropped without fear.
When Intel was researching the new iteration of its Classmate 3 device, which is 100% manufactured for the education market, the top teacher and student requirement was identified as portability without damage.
Tablets and laptops designed with a school in mind can carry applications that are essential for pupils to be able to complete subject lessons, such as full versions of Microsoft Excel and Word. They are simple to operate and as intuitive as the consumer device equivalent, and, crucially, they are able to work in conjunction with other devices, sharing and transferring information between student and teacher, to allow for BYOD or mixed device estate situations.
The same can be said for businesses in industries such as transport and logistics, who require mobile devices to track deliveries and process orders. Not only is a rugged device essential, but preference should be placed on one that can be easily adapted to business needs and secured from potential theft.
It's not that there's no room for consumer devices like iPads in schools and businesses, there's plenty. It's that there's room for other hardware too.
Purchasing decisions
So, my advice to anyone looking to draw some conclusions, and taking purchasing decisions back to their purchasing director, whether in a school, college or business setting, can be summed up in four points:- Look beyond the aesthetics of a device now – think about what it will look like after a year and whether it is robust enough to survive that use
- Create a list of the applications and programs that your staff expect to use in the next year, and make a decision based on which devices can support their choices
- Rather than making an immediate order for your chosen device, speak to your suppliers, tell them what features and functionality you need, and let them help you choose a suitable solution
- Think about integration – how will your new investment fit together with your legacy IT hardware and current infrastructure to deliver benefits for the medium to long-term?
- Simon Harbridge is chief executive officer at Stone Group, a leading provider of ICT Solutions to UK public sector and education organisations
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Fighting Talk: Quad-play will only end in tears... and Gary Barlow's first erotic novel
Everyone's got a mad friend who claims to be so cool and leftfield he hasn't got a home landline connection, but if it's true, it's probably for technical reasons to do with credit histories or living in a dumpster that BT refuses to hook up.
You need a home phone line, even now, even in the age of 3G and 4G and Wi-Fi, because it's an infinitely more reliable way of getting all your home things online and it's better than a mobile for talking to old relatives for hours at a time.
And you need a mobile, because not having one makes you look weird in this day and age, like you're so unimportant and worthless that no one would ever need to get hold of you in a hurry.
A TV is compulsory too, else no one will want to visit you, and the internet, well, that's more important to us than having a mains water supply in 2015. I'd rather wash myself at a standpipe at the end of the road than go without home internet for an hour.
All of these things, in fact, are so important to us that it's madness to suggest dealing with anything other than a specialist for each.
Do you trust one company to do everything right? Because that's what BT is proposing.
Would you trust Vodafone to manage your home broadband? What does Sky know about mobile phone contracts? Nothing. It'll be blagging it.
What if the entertainment industry went quad-play and you were expected to read erotic novels written by Gary Barlow and the cast of Coronation Street held all of the top ten spots on the singles chart? It would all be wrong, that's what.
It's also madness to think that any of the companies lining up quad-play deals plan to do us any favours in terms of price. Sky isn't going to devalue its standalone TV products by offering discounts to people, just because they're also getting a SIM in the post via whoever's network they're reselling.
Vodafone's not going to suddenly start offering the same sort of unlimited data SIMs you can get with Shonky Mobile for £3.99 a month, as that'd eat into the ludicrous profits it makes from people happy to pay £37.99 for a "free" iPhone.
Quad-play means you have all the inconvenience of dealing with the enormous call centres of aggregated corporate giants, with none of the fun of shopping around to save yourself 99p a month on a new PAYG SIM or spending a weekend productively shopping around for a Freesat box so you can stick it to Rupert Murdoch on Twitter.
Contract terminated
Another big thing we'd lose from going quad-play is the ability to leave a particular provider in a huff.At the moment, if our broadband connections are offering less than the advertised headline speed for more than 12 Speedtest checks in a row, we can flounce off, throw some cathartic abuse at the network's social media operative, and switch providers -- perhaps even saving £2 a month in the process.
Lock yourself into a QP deal and that won't be possible, not unless you want the substantial life upheaval that would come from swapping everything modern and important over at once and risking all of the entertainment pillars coming crashing down.
Quad-play is surely going to end up being like spinning plates for the companies involved. They'll be jacks of all trades, with the poor call centre operatives suddenly finding their troubleshooting scripts have quadrupled in length and complexity. Imagine phoning BT's call centre, only this time it's for making your TV and mobile phone work.
Then imagine the living hell of a day when your mobile, broadband and TV all switch off, leaving you stranded, like Morrissey on a Sunday in that seaside town, with nothing to do.
Like members of the royal family taking separate planes, it's best not to put too many eggs in one basket.
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Industry voice: Key attributes of Windows 10: personalisation, collaboration and convergence
Think back to 20 years ago and you'll remember Microsoft being the sole contender in the personal computing software market. In contrast to today, back then Apple was a boutique offering and others played second fiddle. But since the likes of Apple dazzled consumers with personal devices and the internet boom created strong rivals such as Google, Microsoft has needed to do more to keep competitive.
Each new edition of Windows has represented a play for competitiveness, but until now progress has been somewhat directionless. The unsuccessful attempt at a breakthrough with Windows 8 became more of a setback, so with Windows 10 the market is expecting a vast revamp that really takes into account what both consumers and businesses want.
Three central pillars
It seems that with Windows 10 Microsoft has spent time getting to know the needs of the user, with the big themes for me being personalisation, collaboration and convergence, whether the use is for work or pleasure.Looking at personalisation, the biggest problem with Windows 8 was that it represented a huge change in the way the user interacted with Windows, but with a lack of choice. The Windows start menu option that we were all so familiar with disappeared and we were instead given a whole new concept to deal with. While some were fond of this change, myself included, many struggled or refused to adapt.
With Windows 10, Microsoft seems to have learned from its mistake of pigeonholing users, by making the OS more configurable and allowing users to choose how they interact with the software.
Also on the personalisation front, Cortana seems to be evolving into Siri's smarter twin – able to be integrated with other services, understand user context and recommend things personal or local to the user. I can see this being taken further and being used across all Windows devices in the future.
On the collaboration front it's good to see the likes of the Microsoft HoloLens, which progresses the videoconferencing concept to a near virtual reality experience. With the use of holographic lenses, users can see and hear holograms. Ideal for the corporate world, a full boardroom can communicate digitally just as they would in each other's presence.
Most of all, convergence is the key thing I'm hoping for with Windows 10. Microsoft's long-term vision is to allow for a single software platform to be available on an increasing array of hardware and devices. It's time Microsoft got rid of all the platform confusion with Windows, Windows RT, Windows Phone and so on. As a Windows-based product developer I see this as critical to Microsoft's viability as an enterprise platform in the future. It'll make app development and utilisation far simpler.
True mobile synchronisation is also vital as part of this. To date Apple has beaten Microsoft to this level of unification, for example, Cupertino recently launched the ability for iPhone users to send SMS messages from a Mac, and the use of iMessage has become prolific across the Apple device landscape.
Enterprise champion?
Enterprises can easily implement Windows 10, as there is limited need to upgrade hardware to run it. This puts Microsoft on an equal footing with Apple on this front, which has traditionally not mandated a hardware upgrade with its new operating systems. Enterprise customers can enjoy the benefit of not having to buy a whole new set of PCs.Even with Microsoft facing competition in the market, there won't be a single person reading this who hasn't been a user of its hardware or software at some time. At Wax Digital, we developed our software on Microsoft's platform.
It's good to see that Windows is moving forward with what users and businesses want and has learnt from the hiccups made with Windows 8. The gimmicks are bound to draw in many of us but need to be well applied to deliver value. By optimising Windows as an enterprise platform, Windows 10 can hopefully secure its long future in the corporate environment.
It's been well-known for some time that Microsoft has been keen to go down the single platform approach with a view to migrating away from legacy desktop applications. This is sorely needed to break the ties to the rapidly declining x86-based PC desktop environment that was once its stronghold, and to keep up with or even speed past Apple and Google in the mobile market.
Can Microsoft do it? It tried very hard with windows 8 and 8.1 but was knocked back by consumers. The hope with Windows 10 is, while it may be more focused on getting the basics right, it gives Microsoft new foundations to wean people off desktop apps and into the new 'Modern' user interface focused world.
- Peter Kinder is CTO of Wax Digital
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Analysis: Has the Home Hub 6 been the catalyst for BT's takeover of EE?
BT's decision to buy EE might have come as a surprise to many, but it seems that the company has been, one might say, obsessed with providing a converged telecommunications solution for nearly 17 years.
BT launched a service called One Phone (not to be confused with Android One, HTC One or OnePlus One) in 1998 (and relaunched it last year). Even back then, the plan was to offer a unified communications ecosystem, bringing together fixed and wireless.
Later in 2004, shortly before the acquisition of BT's former mobile division, Cellnet, by Telefonica (to form O2), the company launched BT Fusion, a phone handset that worked both on mobile and fixed line networks.
Seamless dream
The dream was to have a converged, seamless experience that worked regardless of where the user was in physical terms. BT Fusion was widely regarded as a flop but the telecoms company didn't give up and was reportedly investigating femtocells as early as December 2007.These are small mobile base stations, mini-models of phone masts, and are especially useful for extending mobile connectivity on premises where network signals often fail to reach.
Just over seven years ago, BT said that the stumbling block was price. Fast forward to 2015 and it looks like this is no longer the case, and there are several hints that lead us to believe that the next version of the Home Hub (version 6) is likely to integrate a femtocell.
(Note that most networks on the market have a femtocell solution – Vodafone has Suresignal, Three offers the Home Signal, O2 the BoostBox, and EE has the Signal Box).
In February 2013, BT acquired a 2.6GHz spectrum licence covering a total of 50MHz. The spectrum, BT said, could be used to provide fast 4G connectivity to its customers with "an enhanced range of mobile broadband services" while building on its existing strength in Wi-Fi.
Back then, its former CEO, Lord Livingston, confirmed that they did not intend to build a national network. Instead, he added, that would be used to complement its existing strategy.
All about convergence
Unbeknown to many, BT operates the country's (and the world's) largest Wi-Fi hotspot network, one that was started – guess when – yes, in 2007, and counts more than 14 million access points globally (via the FON network) including five million in the UK and half a million in Greater London alone.The service is free for BT Broadband customers, more than 7.5 million of them, with 44% on its faster 76Mbps fibre broadband. Buying EE would allow BT to grow that number tremendously and also fulfil its long-term vision of a single converged communications platform.
EE boasts Europe's largest 4G network with more than 7.7 million customers surfing at superfast LTE speeds, and across its mobile, fixed and wholesale businesses, serves 31 million customers (of which 24.5 million are direct mobile customers).
As for the Home Hub 6, it is likely to be launched sometime this year. BT announced its predecessor nearly two years ago and last July, a job advert posted by BT looking for a principal engineer with a proven track record in LTE/4G small cell surfaced.
What was remarkable was that the advert was asking for someone to work in BT's consumer CPE (Consumer Premises Equipment) unit, more specifically, someone who has the acumen and the experience to drive the technical specification and design of "LTE small cell products".
Rolling out hundreds of thousands of Home Hub 6 routers is likely to be an exceedingly complex exercise, but one that could massively boost the mobile coverage of a merged BT/EE as well as enhancing connectivity in-house.
Using its fibre infrastructure would also ensure the sort of resilience that would allow BT to handle current and future demands, especially if it plans to roll out additional services.
Home Hub 6: what we want from it
Which brings us to the last part of the puzzle: Sagemcom. The French company is one of the two ODMs for the current Home Hub 5 (the other being Arcadyan) and gave us a peek at what to expect in 2015 at the International CES in Las Vegas last month.Of interest to us was the Sagemcom Fast 5360, which is the first media gateway on the market to implement G.Fast, a new Gigabit copper-based technology, which BT has already confirmed will be coming to the UK later this year. Sagemcom's latest hub looks like the ideal starting point on which the Home Hub 6 could be based.
It boasts 802.11ac MU-MIMO, a wireless technology that offers an aggregated speed of up to 1.7Gbps, NFC, Bluetooth, a rackable hard drive enclosure as well as four Gigabit Ethernet ports and two USB ports.
But the best is yet to come, as that router supports high-end triple-play services as well. Other than superfast broadband, BT could potentially offer HD voice to all its customers (thanks to DECT CAT-iq compatibility) as well as 4K-ready content.
What could that mean for BT customers? Well other than BT sports in 4K, there's also the lure of the UK's fastest broadband speeds and possibly bundled mobile minutes/texts/data thanks to the EE deal.
And let's not forget the formidable home automation market (hello Nest) as Sagemcom also positions its router as a home aggregator to avoid any extra box at home. Now if only BT could remove its ridiculously low data allowances on most of its packages, that would be fab.
Expect rivals to move fast though – Talktalk already has plans for 4G femtocells, while Virgin Media, Vodafone and Sky are also likely to follow suit with similar offerings.
Sources: Lightreading, Guardian, The Register
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