Free laptop? (Got your attention didn't I?)

UK Telephone operator Orange has announced plans to bundle free laptops with data packages aimed at businesses and consumers. The move, scheduled for August, is the latest in a spate of 'free' laptop promotions from retailers and ISPs looking to tie customers into long-term subscriptions.

This latest offer requires customers to sign up for a 24-month mobile broadband contract in return for their 'free' notebook. Consumers signing up for the ISP's £25 per month mobile broadband service will receive an Asus Eee PC 900 16GB laptop with USB modem on Orange's Internet Everywhere tariff.

The deal includes a 3GB data allowance and 100 texts which users can send from their notebook. Business customers can choose from three HP laptops, with pricing depending on the monthly cost of the tariff. All three business price plans will be sold via Orange's direct telesales channel and come with unlimited data and 500 Wi-Fi minutes.

The entry level £35 per month tariff offers an HP 6730s Intel Celeron laptop and Orange USB dongle. Customers signing up to a £40 per month tariff will get an HP 6730s Intel Core 2 Duo in addition to the same Orange USB dongle. Business users opting for the top end £45 per month price plan will receive an HP 6730b Intel Core 2 Duo complete with an embedded Sim card.

There's no mention of a support package or warranty - but there's no doubt that this is competitive, and as ISP and mobile operators start to feel the heat consumers (and businesses) will benefit from these offers. If you think about the stack of services which are being offered here it's a very competitive and appealing prospect for many mobile workers.

Is Email the new Snail Mail?

In Korea email use has been on the decline since 2004, in the US email amoung teens and young adults is down 8%. The reason? Children are comparing email to instant messenger and calling it 'snail email'.

Over the past two years, email has been increasingly bypassed in favor of simpler forms of communication. According to Alex Iskold "The increasing speed of our lives and global connectivity reduces the need for lengthy emails. If we're in touch more often, then we reveal less every time we talk". Shorter, more frequent exchanges are replacing the lengthier communication of the past. "The rise of services such as Twitter and in-house company wikis or databases (such as BaseCamp) means that businesses are not only looking for easier, more accessible means of communication, but also are looking to embrace web 2.0 technology as a means to better position themselves to succeed in a rapidly changing business environment". Iskold admits that email isn't going anywhere soon, but insists that its "days of unquestioned dominance are over". I know personally Instant Messenger plays an important role in taming email, but it still feel like if this is going to happen it's going to be years before we see signficant shifts. What are your thoughts?

Security on a Stick

One of the big challenges of connecting non-managed or personal PCs to the corporate network is security - amongst other things the risk of either bringing something nasty into the network or perhaps worse leaving sensitive corporate intellectual property in the public domain.  It's been one of the primary reasons why remote access has been limited to company managed devices.

One of the more novel approaches to solving the problem - is 'security on a stick'. These diminutive USB sticks, look like conventional USB storage devices but they actually contain an entire mini-Linux PC which monitor (antiviral, anti malware etc) and manage the security of whatever they're connected to according (in line with the corporate policy which has been predefined when the stick is set up).

Picture the scenario - you're traveling and don't have your PC at hand - in today's model you'd either need a Corporate blackberry or you'd need to borrow a colleagues PC to log in to your mail remotely. With 'security on a stick' you can confidently plug the USB drive in any PC in the lobby of a hotel, airport lounge or internet cafe - the stick scans the machine for viruses, then if it's clear create a secure VPN tunnel so that you can login safely and securely. Over the next couple of weeks we'll be exploring the security on a stick in more depth - in the meantime if want to know more check out this link.

Alternatives to traditional support....

The war for support is heating up, and surprise, surprise many of the companies who are providing personal IT support are now offering it to businesses. These services are definitely not 'cheap' but they do in many instances provide PAYG (pay as you go services) so if there's nothing to fix there's no fee.

Strangely enough - one of our major retail customers is leading the pack in the UK. Tesco's recent purchase of 'The IT Guys' demonstrates how serious and competitive this market is becoming.

• Geeksquad
  
• The IT Guys
  
• BT Home IT Support
  
• The PC Guys
  
• FixIT
  
• PCProHelp
  
• OrderWork
  

Interested to know what services are out there in Asia and Americas - has any experienced them first hand? If so how do costs and service quality compare?

The illusion of choice

Couple of good articles popped up this week which are worth a read...

The first "Generation V to change corporate culture" relates to the recent Gartner Symposium - reenforcing 'Generation V' and the risk of loss of the baby boomers. Couple of good sound bites but one particular one which struck a chord was ...

"implement applications that enable configurability and flexibility without affecting underlying infrastructure ... to produce the illusion of free choice"

It's easy to be cynical about such a statement - it does sound rather 'controlling' - but if you think about it.  Put differently, I think this is really about 'freedom in a framework' how can we provide individuals with the freedom to be part of the decision making process. This doesn't mean providing a free-for-all, rather it's about being firm on the elements which are important e.g. the encryption rules, costs limits, interoperability standards, if you worry about those the 'rest' (e.g. the styling or interface) can be left to the end user.

The second "Why consumer blackberries are good for business" relates the value of propagating consumer technology to serve both personal and professional goals. This resonates with the Employee Purchase programmes (ePP) we previously blogged about. In a way Google is permeating the enterprise in a similar manner through consumer adoption. How conscious this is as a business strategy to drive penetration is really a matter or opinion.

Loss of the baby boomers

In conversations this week, I discovered that by 2014, more than 50% of a certain oil companies most prized oil and gas discovery workers will have retired. For an industry whose share price is measured on the number of oil and gas fields discovered each year this is a disturbing trend.

One of the possible solution - social networks. 'Alumni' knowledge networkers are emerging in high knowledge industries (such as biotech and consulting) to retain access to the people most valued. As well having access to the alumni, there's growing evidence that social networking tools signficantly help those at risk of isolation such as homeworkers, those on maternity/paternity leave, in turn aiding our diversity and vitality agenda.

We know our workforce are already self-organizing and connecting on social networking tools such as Linkedin and Facebook - so should we be starting new networks or harnessing the ones already out there? and How can we leverage an increasingly popular consumer trend to our benefit?

Rumble in the Jungle

Turning unutilized assets into a profit stream is pretty smart - and that's exactly what Amazon is doing with their book selling infrastructure to create Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). S3 is an online storage web service offering unlimited storage through a simple web services interface. Amazon charges fees for data stored and for bandwidth used in sending and receiving data.

So why might S3 be of interest? From a corporate perspective, a number of big companies are using S3 as a rapid development environment, to support cost effective experimentation and sand-boxing. As the model is a pure pay-per-use environment you only pay for what you use. There are no timely provision or sizing exercises to go through, so developers can do what they do best - develop.

S3 doesn't 'do' everything and should be approached cautiously as a serious alternative to professional data centers as it's not suited for most corporate apps. There are all the usual concerns around downtime, privacy etc. which is mostly out of your control - but many are willing to accept those risks in favour of the low costs.

Over 330,000 developers have registered to use Amazon Web Services, up more than 30,000 from last quarter, according to Amazon’s recent quarterly earnings announcement.

If you want to get a hands on experience of Amazon's S3 service, I would recommend trying out http://www.jungledisk.com/ which is a cloud based storage company which uses the S3 service as a backend. It gives users unlimited amount of data storage for only USD 0.15 per gigabyte. If you want to read more on S3 - there's a good blog entry here.

Darwin & Self-Service

On a recent vist to one of our national businesses, I was pleasantly surprised to see 'Xobni' (pronounced Zob-Nee) http://www.xobni.com/ featuring on many non-IT desktops.

Xobni is a small plugin which runs alongside Outlook providing a people-centric view of your mail, and attachments. Xobni has some neat features, such as analysis of 'most frequently emailed', a league table of 'average email response time'. It's not perfect but it's an improvment over standard outlook. Xobni is proof that

• Users are getting smarter and are self-serving


• News travels fast unaided and only partially influenced by IT


• Even heavyweights like Outlook can benefit from consumer enhancement

In a similar vain - I received an email directly from a business users saying 'Can we do this already, everyone here is already using it' he was referring to http://www.doodle.ch/ a stark reminder that technology doesn't need to be sophisticated or expensive to be of value.

So, should we be listening more to what people are 'discovering' for themselves? If so how can we capture and share the knowledge? How should we deal with apps like 'Xobni' which touch core apps like Outlook? What role will IT play in the future - should we be saying 'no' to users or findings ways to share good news?

ps. Unsurprising ... Bill's got his eye on Xobni ....

Join the evolution

How do we get the rest of the IT community engaged and enthused about consumerisation? Anthony "Hiro"Cockburn (my trusted side kick) and I have been discussing the challenges we have been facing to get across the need for more "action not debate" concerning consumerisation. We have been involved in anumber of internal IT battles over the last few weeks since we joined the team - mainly due to concern about what this agenda is really all about and how it may effect an IT community who have traditioanlly been about increasing control.

How do we get people to start thinking differently about IT and embracing consumerisation? Does anyone have any ideas for how we get the message out to the masses in the right way?

Does one size fit all? Would you give Superman the same technology as Batman?

Does one size fit all?
Are we all similar people with similar technology needs?
Would you give superman the same technology as batman, or wonderwoman for that matter? Go with me on this one....surely superman would need some sort of high tech mobile device with news streaming capability from across the world to keep good visibility of the turmoil Lex Luthor is trying to cause, whilst batman might needs a good sat nav in his bat mobile to make sure he doesn't take an embarrassing wrong turn. Superman can fly, batman...well he likes bats. Would they really need the same tools to do their jobs?

These are questions I often ponder as I'm drifting off to sleep, whilst the world of consumerisation is still whizzing around in my head. The idea of segmenting people into categories depending on the role they perform and the way they like to work is becoming a key step in defining those who may be suitable for a more "consumerised" approach. How do you like the sound of a world where you are able to identify the way you need and like to work...and then have a bunch of tried and tested tools available for you to chose from to support you? Further more, how do you like the sound of being able to comment on your experiences and share the learning's with those around you to either a) scream and tell the world how amazing something is...or b) warn people to steer clear...?

Understanding these initial "work styles" is a hot topic for me and a lot of other people at the moment. The UK "Leatherhead" team (UK Business is moving from 3 sites down to 1 in Leatherhead) has already defined a set of work styles to help understand how people will work in the new building - where there is intense pressure on desk space and parking spaces. These work styles will now be mapped to an IT service catalogue to provide users with choice concerning the technology that supports their personal style. In addition to this initiative, the new ways of working team have done some excellent research in this space and are now working with the consumerisation team to set up some practical definitions that we could test out in the field...

Is anyone else aware of current internal activity going on in this space?

It's a bit late now, but tomorrow I'll share some more about some work Dell have been doing in this space....good night for now