Welcome to the CEO talkback, this page is written by ControlCircle's CEO Damian Milkins. The aim is to openly discuss market decisions, business strategy and new technologies.
Will the iPad be the next big thing to hit business?
2 June 2010
Apple had just announced that worldwide iPad sales have soared to 2 million in less than two months. The iPad was released in the UK on 28 May and judging by the throngs of people waiting to get their hands on Apple’s latest wonder product, sales are set to continue at this incredible rate.
I’ve had my iPad for some time now and I have to admit that it’s something that I use everyday. I’m proud to say that I’m never without it. I’ve now seen past the slick design, lightweight frame and powerful interface to what makes the iPad an exciting innovation. The plus points for me include the fact that there is no boot time, no device drivers, a very long battery life and it’s incredibly mobile.
The chip is very small and superfast making it more powerful than most desktops. It also has a 3G card so is truly mobile. There are a number of dedicated iPad apps and you can also download all of the existing iPhone apps such as QuickOffice Mobile Office Suite and iTimeSheet. I love the cost. It’s what a net book should have been; well built, good performance and mobile. It has good all round performance and the best news is that even dummies can operate it.
The iPad has been seen as largely a consumer product, but after wiling away many hours at the airport using my iPad to write emails and generally run my company, I think that it will prove to be an essential business tool. It’s great for presentations, email access and writing documents; works well as a notepad and is amazing for research and browsing the web.
In fact, the argument for the iPad becoming a valuable business tool is so strong that we are now developing our popular mobile management app Max2Go, for the iPad. Max2Go is ControlCircle’s mobile monitoring and management application that gives users real time views of their mission critical infrastructure. Max2Go provides them with the tools to manage their systems from anywhere in the world. The iPad version will be released in conjunction with our new iPhone app.
Max2Go enables IT staff and management teams to access the real time stats and the availability of their entire infrastructure from a mobile device.
The iPad and iPhone app will have all of the functionality of our current mobile app enabling users to:
· Generate reports
· Create tickets
· Provision new services
· Manage documents
· Access monitoring tools
Look out for our new iPad and iPhone apps coming by the end of the quarter.
Is Iceland still hot?
For years now Iceland has been promoting itself as the perfect place to locate datacentres. The cold temperature makes it the perfect place to house thousands of servers using natural cooling methods. This in turn brings down the cost of cooling servers. It's also a greener way of hosting your IT Infrastructure which scores an endless number of brownie points.
Last month, Iceland's dream of being the go-to provider of datacentre space shattered into a million pieces following the eruption of a volcano that had been dormant for 200 years. As volcanic ash fell from the sky, all internal flights were suspended and three flights from the US bound for Reykjavik were ordered to return to America.
The volcano erupted under a glacier causing flooding and a giant cloud of ash that grounded flights across northern Europe.
Suddenly, Iceland isn't the attractive proposition it once was. Having your mission critical infrastructure there would be a nightmare. The volcanic ash would cause millions of pounds of damage to cooling chillers and rotary generators. To avoid this, it would be vital to replicate your systems at other datacentres which would negate the savings made on cooling systems.
Another problem would be getting your IT team out there to fix any problems, with flights suspended, your systems would be left to literally crash and burn.
My advice to anyone considering placing their systems in Iceland datacentres would be to try to avoid placing production systems there. The country suffers from performance issues like poor latency plus a limited number of carriers. Third party technical support is also limited. The best way to manage the risk from natural disasters is to have multiple datacentres around the world.
17 February 2010
I am currently at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This is the biggest mobile industry event in the world and believe me, it's truly incredible.
We've just uploaded a video onto YouTube. Make sure you check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQnSnJ6-zR0
To be or not to be?
29 January 2010
On Wednesday, Steve Jobs succeeded in wowing the world (not just us tech geeks) with Apple's newest product - the iPad. As with all of Apple's product launches, it was accompanied by wild speculation, a mix of enthusiasm and scepticism from analysts.
On first impressions, the iPad follows Apple's signature style. It's well built, has a sleek design, and offers more than your average netbook.
The first netbook was created by MIT as a university project to provide usable, low cost laptops for the third world. Since their launch in the western market, the demand for them has been incredible. They have become a must have for a wide range of people. They have attracted everyone from students looking for a low cost laptop, to tech savvy business minds who need an ultra portable laptop.
The need that we have for something that is so portable and that has the functionality to become everything we need in one product; phone, computer, MP3 player etc means that the iPad will sell.
The key successes of some of Apple's other innovative products are the apps. The huge quantity and low cost of the various apps on the iPhone has revolutionised the way that we use mobile phones. Apple products have the usability and consumer focused styling that we crave. The iPad continues this tradition.
I think that the iPad will be just as successful as the iPhone and the iPod before it. The pricing will also attract people who aren't prepared to shell out for a MacBookAir.
There is the possibility that the iPad will change the way we use laptops dramatically. Will everyone now want to carry around a lightweight tablet? It's a very real possibility. There's less chance of damaging it, or it being stolen. The iPad is half the weight of the MacBook Air!
It may have some of the flaws that Apple's other devices had when they first launched. I'm sure you'll remember that both the iPod and the iPhone had teething issues, but as consumers, we are committed to the Apple brand. I can say that I hope that this won't be an AT&T and O2 monopoly, as it will inhibit the performance leading to network congestion.
Will I be getting one? Definitely, but I'll be waiting for the 3G version.
BT on the ropes
21 January 2010
The recent news about BT appointing the former US head of EDS as the new CEO of their beleaguered Global Services division definitely caught my eye. After only 12 months at the helm, their current CEO will be handing over the reins in March.
The Global Services unit has been the worst performing division of BT, recording a massive £96m loss in the second quarter of 2009. I've been thinking about the reasons why a giant like BT could be experiencing so many problems with one division.
Perhaps they're spreading themselves too thin. They're not really specialising in a core set of services. Having a finger in all of the IT Services pies only serves to make them a jack-of-all-trades and master of none.
The fact that Global and Professional Services are a very niche sector doesn't help their cause. You need highly skilled, highly trained and highly committed engineers to be able to deliver global mission critical infrastructures and BT is simply not delivering. They are very expensive, yet are still losing money and going over budget on projects.
The incoming CEO certainly has a challenge on his hands. It is possible to turn the division around but only possible if BT allow him to be creative and innovative. If he is greeted by a wall of bureaucracy, it will be impossible for him to make the necessary changes.
I believe that he should concentrate on slimming down the business and partnering with quality companies to help provide solutions and services to their clients. In order to stay ahead of the curve, they must also invest.
The real test will be if the new CEO is able to make significant savings while also keeping up investment in research and development.
The Big Freeze Continues7 January 2010
The cold weather refuses to release its grip on the UK. With weather conditions predicted to worsen during the week, is your business equipped to cope with employees being unable to actually get to the office?
Last February the UK ground to a halt after experiencing extreme weather conditions. The Federation of Small Businesses revealed that disruption caused by excessive snowfall meant that a fifth of UK workers failed to make it into work. To add to this, school closures left working parents having to take time off to look after children.
A staggering 6.4 million workers stayed away from work costing the economy an estimated £1.2 billion a day. A simple solution like remote access would have reduced this cost drastically. ControlCircle’s Secure Sockets Layer Virtual Private Network (SSL VPN) services ensure that your employees are able to continue working no matter where they are. The ultra secure connection guarantees maximum productivity without the massive losses experienced during the last big freeze.
For more information simply email sales@controlcircle.com
Coming out of the Freeze
2 December 2009
There have been various reports in the media that we are finally coming out of the IT freeze. They are confident that IT spend is set to recover in 2010. What we’re seeing at ControlCircle is a real shift from the historical large IT projects, and a move towards scaled down, quick win, more manageable projects where critical internal resource is utilised to develop business day-to-day differentiators that will add value.
Companies are looking for an outsource partner that can manage the day to day support and also continuously evaluate the performance, technology, and on-demand services such as Cloud Computing.
Traditionally, large scale IT projects have ended up being over budget and have never met the required timescales. Companies who choose to work with a Managed Service Provider are able to bring IT spend in line with revenue which has an immediate business benefit.
We’ve seen an 80% increase in on-demand services such as storage and cloud based services. This confirms the market’s need for OPEX based IT services. We can now deliver these services in 20 datacentres globally giving customers resiliency, reliability and coverage.
All of the signs are pointing to 2010 being the dawn of a new age in technology, one where companies can pay on a monthly basis bringing down their IT costs. Although large IT Projects will not disappear altogether, I believe that Managed Service Providers will offer an earlier, better return on investment. Businesses should be readying themselves to receive the services that they need at a cost that will even have their CFO grinning from ear to ear.
Razzle dazzle ‘em
18 November 2009
Having been placed 36th in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 back in October, we’ve been invited to the awards dinner at Vinopolis in London.
The awards dinner is both a celebration of the fastest growing privately owned tech companies in the UK and also an opportunity to network with industry leaders.
As it’s ControlCircle’s first year at the awards, we have a wonderful opportunity to build the ControlCircle brand and informally present our services to some great names like Lovefilm.com, The Hut Group and Just Giving. These thriving companies are ideally placed within their relevant markets to look at outsourcing to Datacentre Services or Managed Services Providers.
ControlCircle can really assist these fast growing businesses to exploit the latest and greatest technology.
I’ll update you on the night’s events. Watch this space.
Outsourcing in a cold climate
10 November 2009
The technology world has been comparable to a Shakespeare play recently. There’s been comedy, drama, and tragedy. What stood out most for me was the news that Savvis lost $10m in Q3. This was compounded by the fact that they lost The American Stock Exchange as a client during the third quarter. To add to Savvis’ pain, three more major clients are to leave them in the near future.
Although Savvis has attributed this loss to a number of factors, including companies taking their IT infrastructure management in-house, ControlCircle’s experience has been the complete opposite.
We’ve found that more and more companies are looking to outsource. Confidence in outsourcing is growing. We’ve seen 65% year–on-year growth, but 2009-2010 will see us better this. The reason for our growth is that technology is getting more complex and costly to manage in-house and so more enterprises are outsourcing to fill the knowledge gap. Companies are looking to downsize, save money and increase performance. A viable way to do this is to outsource. We see this continuing over the next 12-24 months.
A report by sourcing Consultancy TPI has predicted the European outsourcing market will experience a surge in the next six to nine months. We’ve already been experiencing an upsurge for some time now.
I think Savvis has made such a huge loss because they come from a networking background and have acquired and bolted on managed service elements to their offering. Clients now demand a more application and service uptime focused outsourcing partner.
My advice to Savvis is to realign their business and to turn away from being so typically US focused and become a more global provider.
How to be a lean and green enterprise
14 October 2009
I’m becoming more and more interested in carbon footprints and sustainability. It’s been a hot topic for several years, and I believe that the government will bring out a carbon tax with a carbon budget. I think that IT projects will be given a carbon budget to stick to. IT managers and CTOs will have to look at implementing tools that give a break down carbon footprint, per datacentre, per suite, per rack, per device, per CPU, per Gig.
At ControlCircle we’ve been busy figuring out how we can deliver this type of information to our customers. We’re taking various metrics from air conditioning units, PDUs and correlating information to give all customers a per square foot carbon cost. The fact that we have taken space in 94 datacentres globally means that we can tell you the optimum ‘green’ location for your IT kit making it more carbon efficient. We are currently working on this research with various vendors and will announce the results shortly.
A recent report from analyst Forrester found that the main drivers for the adoption of ‘green’ IT initiatives are financial and efficiency issues brought on by the recession. The analyst warned that IT managers and CTOs shouldn’t take the greening of the datacentre too far as it could put their operations at risk if it compromises infrastructure performance and availability.
Our research and the services they will lead to will be instrumental in helping IT managers and CTOs to avoid this fate altogether.
We are the champions!!
02 October 2009
Everyone at ControlCircle Towers has been celebrating with a glass of bubbly. We received an incredibly good piece of news. ControlCircle was ranked 36 in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100. This was based on three years growth up to 2008. We’re expecting to grow even more substantially in the coming year. I believe that we are in this position because we are agile enough to deliver what the customer asks for, when they need it. We’re tuned in to the trends that are occurring in our market space. This is why we’re in the process of developing and bringing the new products to market that our clients have been crying out for such as Cloud and Virtualisation solutions.
Currently, our existing customer base is looking at ways to consolidate and save money. We have the tools and services in place to help them to do this. As well as existing customers, we’ve also had new business approaching us to help them consolidate and make cost savings. There has been a marked increase in businesses coming to ControlCircle because they want us to manage their infrastructure.
Overall, we’ve witnessed a very large increase in companies interested in the outsourcing of mission critical applications. They want a high level of support but delivering this internally is cost prohibitive. Turning to an outsourcer like ControlCircle can save companies money and deliver the high level of customer service that they demand.
Another trend that we’ve noticed is companies looking at ways to reduce their carbon footprint and reduce servers. We are working on some innovative projects to help with this. Watch this space…
Once more unto the streets dear friends
19 August 2009
We're having some lovely weather at the moment. Ok, it's far from the barbecue summer that we were promised, but it's not half bad.
Picture if you will a cold, hostile street in winter, and me lying down with nothing but a tatty old blanket to protect me from the elements. Well, if you're wondering around London on October 2, you'll see me and some of the ControlCircle team braving the freezing cold weather all in the name of charity.
After raising £1,000 last year, we were eager to try and beat that figure. This year, we aim to raise £5,000! All of the money raised goes to Action for Children who are dedicated to tackling the root causes of youth homelessness and getting thousands of children and young people off the streets and into secure accommodation. If we reach our £5,000 target, it could help pay for a new kitchen in one of Action for Children's leaving care and homelessness projects.
Action for Children is dedicated to its aim of helping the most vulnerable children and young people break through injustice, deprivation and inequality allowing them to reach their full potential. This is why our one night of homelessness is so important. It will help them to provide much needed resources to the young and vulnerable. For more information about Action for Children and the work that they do, visit http://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/
This year our Byte Night team is much bigger and prepared to try and beat our donation target. Please click on this link to help us raise lots more money for youth homelessness.
F-f-f-freezing for a good cause at last year's Byte Night event.
What's DDoS got to do with it?
12 August 2009
Last week three websites were rocked by DDoS attacks. Twitter, Facebook and Gawker were the unlucky victims. Twitter was down for two hours. Facebook fared a little better with a slowed down service. Gawker came off worst as their site was down for four days!
I can't say that this surprises me. Within our own client base, we've seen a marked increase in DDoS attacks.
This kind of attack usually comes from Russia or Asia and more often than not, is carried out by bored teenagers who are anti West. This disaffected youth target companies that are doing well in the current economic climate.
Another factor that is contributing to the rise of DDoS attacks is the fact that businesses are no longer focusing on security. The economic slump has led to them tightening their belts. Attackers are vigilantly looking out for vulnerable, un-patched systems and the opportunity to expose any security holes. This is the reason that itÕs important for businesses to keep a high level of maintenance of their critical systems.
ControlCircle can offer a fully managed service that can protect companies against DDoS attacks. We can provide 24/7 monitoring & management, behavioural monitoring, DDoS mitigation and identify and filter attacks in under two minutes while also forwarding normal traffic through the network. This has no impact on service with end users blissfully unaware of what is going on.
We recently signed Cool Diamonds, Europe's largest online retailer. They approached us because they were suffering from DDoS attacks. Within five minutes of their service going live, they were attacked. Because of the efficacy of our services, they were, and still are operating with no problem.
If large entities like Facebook and Twitter can be affected, anyone can. It pays to be protected. If youÕre curious about our DDoS service, give us a call. Cool Diamonds are very glad that they did.
Green rules
24 July 2009
The greening of the datacentre is a topic that is becoming hotter by the day (please excuse the pun). No matter where you go look, you are bombarded with information about why greening the datacentre is important, why it will never work, and what certain companies are doing to reduce their carbon footprints.
It appears as though the IT industry is finally beginning to take the whole 'green' issue seriously. Technology companies like Google have been in the news recently when it was revealed that their Belgian datacentre operates without the use of chillers. When the datacentre gets too hot, Google shifts the datacentre's compute loads to other facilities. Now, Google has always presented itself to the world as a technology company with heart. They care about their employees, their customers and the environment. Is this caring sharing approach to IT too good to be true? Some people would say so.
Pundits have commented on the fact that Google use manual tools to for load shifts between datacentres. The two much talked about outages that they experienced earlier this year, involved load shifting between datacentres.
So does being green mean that the services that companies provide to their customers suffer? It doesn't have to. ControlCircle works hard to be as green as we can be. We've already adopted a green policy which works extremely well for us and our customers. We won't say we're the greenest IT services company around. That would be ridiculous. We're in the datacentre space and that means that we're part of the problem by default.
What we do is ensure that we implement every conceivable way to green the datacentre that we can. We use hot and cold aisles and use blanking plates to ensure that we don't lose any precious cold air. Our green strategy doesn't impact on the service that our customers receive. They don't suffer outages, but they can sleep at night with that warm fuzzy feeling that they get from being a ControlCircle customer, and knowing that we are a responsible company doing our bit for the environment.
Please click here to see more about ControlCircle's green initiative /AboutControlCircle/greeninitiative
We're going to be on TV
9 July 2009
The ControlCircle Microsoft Challenge team will see their names in lights! They're going to be featured in The Brain Cell on Sunday 19th July at 07.55am (Channel 4). Make sure you tune in so you can share the pain they went through!
The intrepid ControlCircle team completed the Microsoft Challenge in June. The Microsoft Challenge is a corporate challenge which calls on companies to send their fittest employees to do battle in series of activities including orienteering in the dark, cycling through the deepest mud and generally causing them to excrete blood sweat and tears.
The team were particularly pumped when they had to bike through the night with only head torches and a map to find their way through the course.
All of this good work was done to raise funds for the NSPCC. The ControlCircle team did extremely well, and if you scroll down, you can see pictures of them looking, hot, sweaty and tired. You can see the glee on their faces as they beam with pride at helping to raise funds for a stellar charity.
Rackspace has a boo boo
15 June 2009
Last week Rackspace suffered another power outage when an electrical connection failed.
This follows on from the outage they suffered at the end of June, which affected customers in their Dallas, Texas datacentre. The outage lasted 45 minutes and was branded a major outage. Following the June outage, Rackspace announced that they would issue $2.5 million to $3.5 million in service credits to those affected.
At the rate Rackspace is going, they will be run out of credit vouchers fairly soon. These kinds of outages must be really frustrating for Rackspace clients. I am so glad that we take the proper preemptive measures to keep our clients up and running and happy.
ControlCircle couldn’t be more different and we’re happy to shout this from the rooftops. Where competitors slip up, ControlCircle stands head and shoulders above them thanks to our emergency recovery plans. This is proven by our good track record but also, and mostly by our happy customers.
If your Hosting provider is failing your business, give us a call at ControlCircle. We’ll make sure all your mission critical systems are available 24/7/365.
Last.fm datacentre blues4 June 2009
Last.fm, the awesome music site, has been having a bad time lately. The site was down, unavailable or generally not functioning properly over a few days last week. It all came down to datacentres. The company uses a few datacentres, unfortunately for them, Level 3 datacentre in Braham Street, central London is one of them.
Earlier this week while we were enjoying the scorching weather, one of five chillers in the datacentre failed, the other four couldn’t take the strain and temperatures in the facility rocketed. Servers shut down to cool and it took them four hours to get back online.
The music site's users couldn’t access their accounts, upload playlist data or listen to streamed music. The sad thing is, this isn’t even the first time that they have suffered in the Braham street datacentre.
The facility was broken into in March. The thieves even managed to break into their suite . They tried to remove the door of a rack containing the core router for the company's site before they were finally stopped.
In ControlCircle datacentres we take security seriously. All our secure suites have floor to ceiling caging as well as under floor caging. Entry to the suites is only possible with biometric access. We also monitor the Datacentre environment closely which means that we anticipate break downs and take remedial action early on, minimising downtime for our customers.
We also have Business Continuity services that would have kept the music site's website running normally during the chiller melt down fiasco. If they were our customer, we would have ensured that they were on our dedicated 20Gig dark fibre ring to eliminate downtime. This ring guarantees resiliency. If there was a break in the fibre, our layer 2 technologies would self heal ensuring that our customers’ service would remain unaffected. We would also have made sure they were working with an active-active model. This is when a business’ systems are hosted in two datacentres and both environments are live, as opposed to the traditional disaster recovery model of having one live site and the other laying dormant until the live site goes down. The active-active model is brilliant for bi-directional replication and means that if one site goes down, there is no wait to get the other online. We have a whole host of services that keep businesses up and running if this sort of thing happens. Savvis in hot water
1 June 2009
The IT services company Savvis is being sued by a US bank. It appears that the bank, Merrick, lost $16m after hackers managed to steal unencrypted card data from its payment processor, CardSystems Solutions.
The bank says that Savvis checked the payment processor to ensure it complied to Visa and MasterCard’s security regulations. Savvis allegedly ran a check and told the bank that the processor met credit card regulations. Less than a year after the alleged assessment, the bank had its computers broken into. The hackers stole millions of credit cards, leaving the bank to pay $16m in fines to Mastercard and Visa.
The jury’s out on whether or not Savvis made an adequate assessment. What is clear is that this sort of mistake should never have happened. ControlCircle is all about customer service and making sure that projects run smoothly. Of course, there are some situations that arise which can’t be avoided. But the fundamental rule that ControlCircle follows is to check everything again and again, and once more to ensure that nothing can go wrong. It’s this attention to detail that keeps our customers coming back over and over again.
On their website, Savvis has the tag line, “Where companies get the IT they need to be successful…” It seems that the IT that Merrick got from Savvis only helped them to successfully pay millions of dollars in fines.ControlCircle reaches HP Preferred Partner status26 May 2009ControlCircle has been granted HP Preferred Partner status and everyone at ControlCircle is very excited about what this means for us and our clients.
We’ve worked extremely hard to achieve this and the office is buzzing now that the news is official. Only 5% of HP’s resellers throughout EMEA receive this accolade, it is more proof that ControlCircle is a key player on the market offering world-class services to our customers.
I have to stress that we are still a vendor neutral company, but this partnership means that clients who require HP solutions and support can rely on us to deliver the best there is to offer. As with other partnerships, our staff have passed rigorous testing procedures to ensure they are experts on the solutions and support they are selling.
We’ll be adding a whole host of new partnerships over the coming months ensuring our customers have the widest choice possible for the hardware solutions that are best suited for their needs.......Watch this space.
ControlCircle doing our bit for charity21 May
We’re a sporty bunch at ControlCircle. We like to put our bodies through hell, and we do it all in the name of charity.
Our next event will be the Microsoft challenge in aid of the NSPCC. Our team made up of the bravest, fittest (and probably the most bonkers employees) will be mountain biking, kayaking, running and much more to raise cash.
We do the hard work so that you don’t have to. All you have to do is to help us by donating here: http://www.justgiving.com/controlcircle_microsoft.
The challenge takes place from 10-14 June in Wales. I have to admit that my fitness is not really at my usual superman levels. June is just around the corner and I have barely any time to train! The thought of running around the countryside for three days is giving me nightmares.
I’m willing to put those fears to one side because I want to support the good work that the NSPCC do. I will huff and puff my way through it for the good of the kids. Come on, put your hands in your pockets and support us. Let’s try and beat our target. We need your help to do it. http://www.justgiving.com/controlcircle_microsoft.
Give generously and we’ll even post some photos of the team red faced and panting!Is cloud computing the best thing since sliced bread?
15 May 2009Cloud computing is still a technology that has an amazing amount of hype and buzz surrounding it. A new Forrester report says that cloud security needs more scrutiny than traditional IT outsourcing.
I can understand how the analyst reached this conclusion. Not knowing where your servers are located or who has access to them is a worry for a number of businesses. The transparency that's available through traditional outsourcing is certainly a reassuring factor to CIOs. In my experience they find losing control of sensitive data in the cloud too much to cope with.
Of course, there are businesses that rave about cloud computing and how it's saving them buckets of money. We have seen a huge take up from SMEs who are looking for 'Business Continuity' or just basic web services right to Corporate level where larger firms are living in hostile times where they don't know when or where there next request will come from and are finding it very difficult to manage the delivery. Customers are finding real benefits from using our Cloud offering for Development platforms, testing and short term capacity issues. The Cloud model fits this perfectly.
A lot of the cloud service providers have no business offering the service at all. Amazon for example. Don't they sell books? They don't have the expertise to address customers fears or research and implement security solutions that will keep their current customers happy, or get more people flocking to sign up for the cloud.
As a 'traditional' managed services provider, we have all the expertise we need in-house to make our cloud offering secure. At the end of the day, cloud computing is not for everyone, but we do everything humanly possible to keep our customers in the cloud secure.
What do you think? Am I right, or am I right?DVLA tax disc fiasco
12 May 2009
Have you heard the one about the Driving License Vehicle and Licensing Authority (DVLA) sending out 62,000 duplicate tax discs?
For once it's not one of my lame jokes. It actually happened. A software glitch on a system run by IBM caused this massive balls up.
Apparently, people who applied for a tax disc on 11 April this year via IBM's system were sent two discs just days apart. After wiping the egg from their faces, the DVLA had to issue apology letters to those affected and cancel the duplicate discs. I felt like ringing the government head of IT and explaining why it would never have happened on ControlCircle's watch.
This IBM catastrophe comes hot on the heels of a power outage at their Warwick datacentre leaving several customers mission critical systems off line for a number of hours. Not only did IBM's customers experience unacceptable downtime, they also had no customer support!
Before this 'incident', the DVLA's online tax system had been praised as one of the governments more successful IT projects. It goes to show why choosing a partner with a good track record and an industry leading SLA is important. If you use IBM and you are getting worried (and rightly so) drop me an email and we will talk...
Swine flu. Can your business cope?
6 May 2009
The Swine Flu outbreak has the world in a panic. It's the talk of the ControlCircle office this week and I've heard figures thrown around all over the place. 'Four in 10 people around the world will become infected', 'we're in the grip of a pandemic' etc. We haven't reached pandemic proportions yet, but the 101 suspected deaths in Mexico and now the first US death has organisations thinking about their business continuity plans.
These plans aren't just in place for potential natural disasters. They are useful to minimise the impact of everyday disruption too. We've had scares before like SARS and bird flu, but just because they didn't cause the disruption we thought they would, doesn't mean businesses shouldn't have plans in place. You need to be able to keep your business going and your customers happy.
With that in mind, having both production and replication sites fully active-active has to become a standard to aspire to. It means that if there is a disaster and your production site goes down, it won't impact your customers; they won't have a clue that your services were ever disrupted.
What does that have to do with swine flu ? Well, making sure that your employees have alternative offices to work from, or can work remotely if they catch pig flu and not contaminate everyone else is brilliant. That disruption free plan is what kept us working at 100% on snowday!
Are you ready for disruption ?
Is Business Continuity on your agenda ? Let us know, I would like to get your input on this issue.
New York, New York
21 Apr 2009
Goswell Road is not all it's cracked up to be
One of our competitors has developed a special offer around the Goswell Road datacentre. We at ControlCircle only take space in the best facilities. We work hard to find datacentres that can house customers’ equipment in resilient, purpose built surroundings, benefiting from state of the art services such as power & cooling systems at the best possible price point.
This is why we have chosen not to use the Goswell Road facility. It cannot meet our customers’ needs. During these difficult times, it could even end up costing more than you bargained for.
If you are looking for a hosting solution that delivers quality without compromising on your budget, ControlCircle has an offer that will get you into GlobalSwitch 2. This tier 3/4 datacentre, the biggest purpose built datacentre in Europe, is specifically equipped to meet our demanding high standards. ControlCircle’s special offer could see you housed in one of our ultra-secure suites for just £1200 per rack.
Just finished a successful 4 days in Barcelona attending the latest GSMA World Conference and can I say how impressed I was from start to finish. It was my 1st year as a visitor and from the moment I stepped through the security booths that married ID tags distributed the previous night at Registration, I was blown away by the sheer scale of the exhibition. It's worth mentioning that the registration system can cope with 200 visitors every minute!!
So the ID tags are then checked with passports to prevent not only 'Snatch & Grab' incidents we had been warned about in Barcelona, but also the sharing of passes between companies. So I'm in and I'm greeted by an impressive scene of a palace with discreet pools and fountains dotted around cascading from hills above, and then this all-consuming barrage of 'Big Brand' technologies Juniper, Microsoft and Ericsson hit me like US billboards.
There are big screens displaying keynote speeches and tech talks updating the passer-by of areas of focus. So I'm walking up, and banks of exhibitor stands and tents are nested either side to give me the feeling of heightened excitement for what's to come and the names involved in such an event.
Moving from Hall 1 and working my way through the technology jungle of 8 halls, I'm surprised to see such a wide variety of companies meshed together, from the usual suspects to the innovators and start-ups. From the word go you get a pleasant mix that keeps you engaged and also of the mind that no area or rock can be unturned! I'm talking, networking with passers-by, and generally interested in what is on offer from Green Datacenters to Mobile messaging services to mobile picture and movie editing software.
The atmosphere is relaxed and a far cry from the exhibitions I'm used to in the US or UK, where the bustle and fast paced attitude that seems to embrace western technology exhibitions exhausts even the most avid follower. Here, you are left to stroll and consume at will without any heavy sales push. This is surprising due to the fact that I'm at one of the most expensive per metre sq exhibitions in the world. So over the next 4 days, I am continually enlightened by spirited individuals and enthusiasts of the mobile world, travelling from Sri Lanka, India, the US and Scandinavia. This passionate mobile community is buzzing with entrepreneurs looking for the next movement, but how far can it go? What is next? With gaming, gambling, social communities, and videos all now available on your iPhone, Smart Phone or Blackberry, how far can our portable friend take us?
I know from my experience during this short trip that I am now not just a user, but a follower, and will now become an early adopter to all-that-is-mobile. I will be putting efforts into getting closer to our mobile clients such as Nokia, Mfuse, GSMA, and DeviceAnywhere; aligning our services to better equip clients to cope with the forthcoming surge in mobile use from overseas, demand for convergence between online communities and mobile operators, and the performance and availability that is required for most of these mobile apps to run successfully.
I would urge anyone who hasn't yet attended a GSMA conference, whether you are in the mobile industry or not, to sign up and get down there. Be open to what is today an important part of our everyday lives, but what tomorrow will certainly shape how we lead our lives.
Click here to see Damian’s background.
