03 May 2010

In January, I was delighted to be asked to speak at Marcus Evans' Location Based Services Evolution conference in Berlin. LBS is something that has interested me for nearly 10 years - ever since we had requests to support the MAP interfaces required to build various location-enabling network elements when I was working at Brooktrout. We always tried to see if the requests amounted to signs of a real market opportunity and there was usually analyst data to suggest that a market was about to take off. Sadly, it never quite happened like that. Does anyone ever review forecasts retrospectively to determine whose where the most accurate? If not, someone should!

More recently, RCL has been involved in LBS through projects with three customers, helping create white papers, case studies and web collateral. So, I have been looking into things again and this was a terrific opportunity to obtain peer opinions and hear expert commentary.

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03 May 2010

Any one who has spent a few years in the technology/telecommunications industry knows that open hardware standards come and go.

Some standards gain that critical momentum that pushes them into widespread adoption while others fade into relative obscurity or flourish in some niche or other.

It wasn't so long ago that CompactPCI was the new technology on the block, promising new levels of performance and reliability.

Revisions and updates are an inevitable part of the life-cycle of every open standard, sometimes extending the useful lifespan of a technology by many years. For cPCI we had the 2.x series of specifications - delivering hot swap, telephony signalling and switched Ethernet. 30 years on and VMEbus is still going strong thanks to the efforts of the VITA organisation in ensuring that VME is still a relevant technology for the avionics and defence markets it serves.

This continual cycle of adoption, implementation, revision and decline is an integral part of the challenge faced by TEMs in designing next generation telecom equipment or refreshing existing products. Which way now?

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13 December 2009

I had the pleasure of attending Informa's RCS conference, held in Paris last week. Well, I say Paris, but CDG barely qualifies in my view. As a character remarks in John Le Carré's The Looking Glass War, "Another city, same hotel", or words to that effect. We could have been anywhere in the world and I only saw Paris because I sensibly chose to travel by Eurostar! At RCL, we always try to take the green option.

Let this not detract from the conference, however, as it was an excellent event. Informa had managed to gather a broad range of speakers, representing operators and vendors. Best of all, a wide spectrum of opinion was in evidence, making for a stimulating and, at times, provocative conference. But first, some basics. For those unfamiliar with RCS, here's a simple definition from the functional specification administered by the GSM Association:

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09 September 2009

If you're anything like us, you'll be a little sceptical when it comes to the latest fads and fashions. While we're certainly not a conservative bunch of guys here at RCL, there's something about the giddiness and bandwagon-jumping around certain internet phenomena that brings out the confused old lady in all of us.

Well...we're big enough to admit when we're wrong. If you're not a convert yet, then allow us a little preaching time. Now, there is no question, 80% of what goes on is mindless LOLs and LMAOs (if anyone can enlighten us please oblige) but here's the big revelation...Twitter genuinely might be a useful business tool, one day.

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