magazine
10
Readers may not be aware that in 2011, the government set aside
£100 million for an Urban Broadband Fund (UBF) to initially create
ten ‘SuperConnected Cities’ across the UK. This was followed in 2012
with an additional fund of £50 million for a ‘second wave’ covering a
further twelve cities to benefit from this programme.
Supported cities include Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford/
Leeds, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, Edinburgh,
Derby, London (including Croydon, Enfield, Redbridge, Sutton,Westminster),
Londonderry/Derry, Manchester/Salford, Newcastle, Newport, Oxford,
Perth, Portsmouth and York.
The scheme remains open until 31 March 2015 and provides up
to £3,000 towards business customer installation costs for Ethernet
connections in the 22 cities. To be eligible, a business must have less than
250 employees, a turnover of less than £40 million, and require a circuit
which is 20Mbps or faster.
The Ethernet connectivity services covered by the scheme provide a
dedicated high speed, uncontended, full duplex symmetrical bandwidth
solution that has lower overhead, greater throughput and higher reliability
than all broadband (ADSL/SDSL) services. This makes the service highly
attractive to business users requiring high quality, resilient connectivity for
Voice over IP and other unified communication applications including SIP
trunks.
Ethernet is excellent at providing secure and stable internet
connections, making it the best solution for accessing data storage services
and applications in the cloud. Ethernet over fibre is definitely the gold
standard of high quality internet connectivity and is something that every
business that depends on an internet connection should consider. Fibre
Ethernet for direct internet access is the optimum solution for businesses
that have mission-critical applications requiring high bandwidth, including
financial businesses, advertising agencies, the print and graphics industry
and professional service providers like legal and accountancy practices.
Spitfire is one of only 20 vendors, out of 400 participating in the
‘SuperConnected Cities’ programme, that can pre-approve application
vouchers under the scheme. In practice, this means that customers
applying through the scheme for an Ethernet installation grant do not need
to get competitive quotes for installation work or local authority approval,
as Spitfire can authorise the whole installation process.
The ‘SuperConnected Cities’ programme has been hugely successful
and it is a great opportunity for business customers in major metropolitan
areas to benefit from Ethernet connectivity. But with the scheme due
to end by April, this window of opportunity is about to close and, with a
general election in May, its future is uncertain.We know from experience
that once customers install Ethernet they are able to access a range of
cloud-based services, such as hosted telephony, storage and applications,
that cut costs and raise productivity. So business users should investigate
this time-limited government scheme while there’s still time.
For more information visit
by Tom Fellowes, Sales Director of
Spitfire Network Services
There’s still time to take
advantage of the
Government-
backed Ethernet
scheme
The Spitfire Communications Column
agenda
Application convergence, the cloud, mobility and social
technologies are transforming web conferencing, resulting in
ground-breaking technology shifts that are empowering users
with greater productivity benefits, Frost & Sullivan claims in a
new report,
Analysis of the Global Web Conferencing Market.
In 2013, the total web conferencing market, including software as
a service (SaaS) and on-premises solutions, grew 10.5% to $2 billion.
Frost & Sullivan expects continued growth at a CAGR of 8.8% until
2018 when the market is expected to be worth $3.05 billion.
SaaS, which contributed 83% of total web conferencing revenue
in 2013, will remain the dominant model. However, there is expected
to be a shift from ‘vanilla’ web conferencing solutions to all-in-one
collaboration solutions that offer screen sharing and desktop video as
standard features, along with file sharing and content management.
Frost & Sullivan Unified Communications & Collaboration
Industry Director Roopam Jain said: “Convergence is leading to the
emergence of all-in-one virtual workspaces that offer always-on
messaging, instant voice, video, web multipoint meetings and content
sharing in a team-centric space. Built on the premise of continuity
of collaboration even after the meeting has concluded, these virtual
workspaces are expected to become a central repository for contacts,
meetings and content, making
collaboration solutions stickier.”
UK businesses in dark over new
EU security rules
One in three organisations in the UK, Germany and France doesn’t
fully understand the impact of new EU security rules and 39%
have not yet implemented appropriate compliance measures,
warns cyber attack prevention specialist FireEye.
A report by FireEye,
Mixed State of Readiness for New Cybersecurity
Regulations in Europe
, found that many businesses have grasped the
potential impact of neither the Network and Information Security (NIS)
directive, which comes into force this year and imposes new security
and incident reporting requirements on a broader range of private
sector companies, nor the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR),
which is due to be finalised in early 2015 and come into force in 2017.
Businesses are critical of the level of support provided ahead of
these changes, with 60% complaining that they have been given little
or no guidance and 64% describing the additional expenditure on
hardware and software needed as a challenge.
Even so, FireEye warns that lack of preparedness for the new rules
could be costly, as NIS proposes to increase the maximum penalty for
serious breaches of new data protection regulations to either
€
100m
or 5% of an organisation’s annual global turnover.
Richard Turner, VP EMEA of FireEye, said: “The past year has shown
that breaches are inevitable as hackers continue to evade security,
and the EU directives are an important step toward addressing these
threats. Organisations need to ensure that they have the capabilities to
detect, prevent, analyse and respond to breaches in a timely manner.”
All change in web
conferencing
Mobility is transforming web
conferencing. Photo shows the
Timba Table and Timba Stool
designed by Pearson Lloyd for Bene.
Timba is designed to stimulate
creative co-operation and dynamic
teamwork.
