British Land deploys Greenfield wireless network

RF, Wi-Fi and VoIP capabilities give real estate giant flexibility and security at new corporate headquarters.

British Land, the property development giant has deployed a new wireless network infrastructure at a new development in London's West End that incorporates its new head office.

After the appointment of a new chief executive two years ago, it was decided the company's existing London headquarters no longer fitted with it culture of open communication and collaborative team working.

Jay Hunter, British Land group infrastructure manager told IT PRO that the company looked for a more open plan head office space, so that its staff could work more easily in a collaborative way on projects. Having benchmarked its own design for the new office development against other possible properties, it developed York House itself.

"We decided to move to our own, new open plan offices, to be as environmentally efficient and future proofed as possible" he said. "That gave me the opportunity to get involved at the design phase for the new building's IT infrastructure."

As the largest UK real estate investment trust (REIT), with total assets under management of £21.4 billion, Hunter said British Land was able to draw on its existing supplier base and best practices in scoping and designing the network for the new building.

Hunter said: "It was an excellent opportunity to get cabling installed during the build, to not just support wireless networking, but also to extend our cellular capabilities, to 3.5G or HSDPA for example, for the future."

British Land contracted wireless professional services company, Red-M to deliver a complete wireless network for the new York House, which was handed over on time and to budget in time for its opening in March this year.

Red-M carried out a site survey and audit to precisely measure the building's radio frequency (RF) propagation characteristics, establishing and locating potential sources of interference. It also assessed the building's characteristics to identify any radio, equipment or implementation issues or constraints.

It then installed a complete wireless infrastructure, with routers and access points, as well as wireless system settings such as Quality of Service, virtual local area network (VLAN), security and LAN switch configurations, to integrate the new Wi-Fi system with the existing British Land corporate IT network.

"Part of York House is residential, so we wanted to make sure we didn't throw the signal beyond our office boundaries," added Hunter.

The network has been designed to supply high quality, secure wireless data coverage in all customer and employee occupied areas to support corporate roaming data users and guest user internet access.

"Security was uppermost in our mind," Hunter said. "So we tackled it at design phase so we got the physical boundaries in place alongside the logical ones, like running wireless on a separate BT network."

He added that previous work to secure application access through a portal behind the firewall using a SSL VPN mitigated the risk involved in layering wireless access over the top. "We also make sure we regularly patch our routers and access points so they're running the most up-to-date firmware," he said.

BT to supply fixed-lines for Orange landline service

Move into unbundled landline telephony will be managed and hosted by BT's wholesale division, as Orange assembles quadruple-play offer.

The wholesale arm of BT has signed a deal to provide the fixed-line and support services for Orange's planned landline service.

The launch of a Orange-branded landline service is part of the mobile operator's efforts to provide a unified service across mobile, fixed line, broadband and TV services, competing with the likes of Sky and Virgin Media.

The agreement will allow Orange, owned by France Telecom, to offer a unbundled landline phone service under its own brand but managed and maintained by BT Wholesale.

Under the terms of the agreement, BT Wholesale will manage line rental, calls and customer management, including the setup and management of Orange's customer call centres.

The two companies said the deal would allow Orange to enter the market for fixed-line and bundled services faster and at a lower cost.

"It is our goal to provide mobile, broadband, fixed line and TV to every house in the UK," Asif Aziz, director of home products at Orange, said in a statement. "This is an important step in making that a reality by providing our customers with all of their communication needs from one supplier."

Orange said it had over 16.5 million customers in the country by the end of March - 15.1 million of which are active mobile phone customers on contract and pay-as-you-go, while the remaining 1.5 million are broadband and dial-up users.

The company is planning to launch a IPTV service before the end of the year.

Service level monitoring increases UK coastal readiness

New management tool assures vital maritime communication and search and rescue systems.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is in the midst of a major programme to update its specialist monitoring and alert systems.

It is rolling out service level monitoring and management tools to guarantee the uptime and performance of IT infrastructure key to its monitoring of over 1,000 Class A vessels at any one time and managing approximately 16,000 search and rescue (SAR) incidents a year.

The use of NimBUS from service management vendor, Nimsoft as its corporate standard for monitoring IT infrastructure and key applications across the entire organisation, will help the MCA monitor vital communication and search and rescue systems.

James Findlay, MCA head of ICT told IT PRO the use of software to monitor core, often outsourced IT components that support key specialist tracking and SAR systems has improved IT support response times and helped the agency carry out its duties without technical interruption.

"It's often not realised that 97 per cent of the UK's trade by weight comes in by sea, so the systems we support are pretty vital to the UK economy," he said. "We are required to have high system availability from the perspective of the function we provide for the coastguard communications systems too, where we're dealing with the safety of human lives as well as the prevention of pollution."

The MCA operates 19 Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres (MRCC) along the UK coastline, which house these mission-critical systems, such as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), a Navigation Warning System and an Integrated Coastguard Communication System (ICCS). The Agency's Incident Management System (IMS) provides the mechanism to coordinate and record search and rescue events. And all these systems run across over 130 Windows servers at locations around the UK, while being managed remotely using the service level tools.

"By taking a service level management approach, we can essentially monitor the availability of systems and sometime even spot faults before the users do," said Findlay. "We already have very high levels or redundancy in the systems, but NimBUS also helps us assure the tough service levels with our contractors are met. It's also really simple to use and really user friendly."

The move to NimBUS also comes as the MCA prepares to complete its implementation of a European Union directive that extends the UK's vessel traffic monitoring systems to cover over 10,500 miles of coastline and some of the busiest international seaways in the world such as the Dover Strait.

Colt prepares to make customers live on NGN next year

The communications company is readying itself to support the first customers on its new platform during 2008.

Telecoms giant COLT today confirmed plans to move its customers to its next generation network (NGN) next year.

The company is in the final stages of vendor selection for the new single, three-layer IP and Ethernet-based network which, when completed and switched on, will give its business users a number of benefits including faster service speeds, the ability to add to and modify service provision and upgrade bandwidth of their own accord using an online portal.

COLT's NGN will span its 20,000km pan-European fibre network and feature a transport layer, service control layer and application layer, the latter of which help deliver new solutions to businesses such as unified communications, collaborative and mobility tools.

The new, open standards-based infrastructure will also help the company to incorporate new services and functionality from a wide pool of software vendors and bring those solutions to market more quickly as well as modifying them speedily post launch.

"We are accelerating our investment in network and data centres in the next two years to ensure our customers benefit from the best communications solutions for their business and the best possible customer experience," said Rakesh Bhasin, COLT's chief executive.

"COLT already has a sophisticated fibre network built around Europe's business centres and this latest development will enable us to offer customers more flexibility and innovative new communications tools, as well as the resilience they are used to with traditional networks. Ultimately our goal is to make telecommunications transparent, with customers being able to access any application they need, using any device, no matter where they are. This upgrade is a key step in our evolution towards that goal. We will also be upgrading our data centre footprint and will be able to communicate more in the near future."

Analysts looked upon COLT's news as positive but suggested that the real test is yet to come.

"COLT is doing everything it can to make networking life easier for its enterprise customers. The big question is how easy or difficult COLT and other operators will find it to use the NGNs being built by Europe's incumbent telcos, when the time comes to use them," said David Molony, principal analyst at Ovum.

"The issue is not interconnection, but the degree of support for applications services from another network. COLT's CTO says he wants to provide a plug-and-play environment for his customers' applications, and that this should be extended across all networks."

Molony added: "By standardising on Ethernet he has kept things simple and increased the chances of exchanging data effectively through the national NGNs (BT, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Telekom Austria) where COLT needs to do that. But maintaining quality of service for each and every new application will not necessarily be so simple. NGN operators do not have applications management agreements with each other, so won't be able to guarantee QoS from day one."

IDF 2007: WiMAX and ultra-mobiles will unleash web next year

The way we access broadband will change next year thanks to WiMAX technology and Intel's new mobile platforms, according to predictions made at IDF.

The way we access the wire-free web will be transformed in early 2008 by the roll-out of the first commercial WiMAX networks, coinciding with the launch of new Wi-MAX notebooks and a brand new platform for ultra-mobile devices, according to Intel.

"We are on the cusp of a new global network, seamlessly integrated," Intel's chief executive Paul Otellini told delegates at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), before quoting projected WiMAX coverage figures of 150 million people (mostly in the US) by the end of 2008, 750 million in 2010 and 1.3 billion in 2012.

WiMAX is the next step in wireless internet technology, enabling the transfer of data at broadband speeds over long distances. Notebook and mobile device support is only one part of the solution; building the network and encouraging adoption is likely to prove the bigger obstacle.

Intel entertainingly demonstrated the potential of WiMAX for tourism and leisure by driving three mobile vehicles through the audience, including a scooter and smart car with a screen and GPS for guided tours and directions, and a Segway set up for use as a golf buggy, interactive training tool and round-tracking caddy.

Menlow

As well as showing off a Montevina notebook with Echo Peak Wi-Fi/WiMAX capability, Intel also introduced Menlow, the first platform to be built from the ground up for ultramobile PCs (UMPCs) and mobile internet devices (MIDs) that can take advantage of roaming broadband.

It is based on a 45nm Silverthorne processor and a next-generation Poulsbo chipset with integrated graphics, and features Wi-Fi, 3G and WiMAX. A variety of early working prototypes were displayed from Samsung, BenQ and other manufacturers, with Intel claiming a 10x reduction in power consumption over the first UMPCs.

But with UMPCs so far failing to impress, the more general-purpose MID looks more likely to succeed. Even Intel's own Dadi Perlmutter admitted that a "UMPC just takes a PC and makes it smaller", but insisted that the pocket-sized form factor of the MIDs is better suited to roaming broadband. "It's a different usage model. You just get it out of your pocket, get what you need from it, then you put it away again."

The future: Moorestown

Intel's Anand Chandrasekher also gave a sneak peek at the next-generation ultra-mobile platform to follow in 2009/10. Moorestown will be the first system on a chip (SOC) design combining the CPU, graphics and memory controller.

"As we put all this together we'll be taking the size of the components down by half again. We'll take the power down by half again, and we will take, most importantly, idle power down by a factor of 10X," said Chandrasekher.

A mock-up of the expected design for a Moorestown-based MID showed a radically different approach, with a thin, panoramic shape that was almost entirely taken up by a screen which was receiving live map updates.

"The kinds of improvements we're making in Moorestown are effectively what enable this. So clearly the innovation that we're putting in place here, beginning with Menlow, continuing it with Moorestown, is what is going to unleash the internet."

Eircom wins £70million Northern Ireland deal

Irish firm will rollout "Network NI" over the next two years for the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

Eircom has won a £70 million contract from Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) to rollout a new network over the next two years, taking over from BT who previously provided network services.

The Irish firm will overhaul the networks, dubbed "Network NI", and maintain them over the next six to 10 years. The modernised network will be able to handle voice, video and data traffic and will be secure and scalable, the government said, allowing key reform projects to go ahead.

"'Network NI' is a key underpinning project necessary for delivering on the NICS Reform Agenda. The service is urgently required, so I am delighted that we can now begin the rollout and look forward to completion within the two year window," said Bruce Robinson, Permanent Secretary for the Department of Finance and Personnel said. "This innovative project will play a vital role in delivering the best front line public services that government can provide."

Serviced from Eircom's new centre in Belfast, the contract will lead to 20 new jobs in the area.

NetScout to buy Network General for $205 million

The latest takeover of the Sniffer creator comes just 10 years after McAfee bought the business for $1.1 billion, and sold it six years later for $213 million.

NetScout Systems has announced its intention to acquire Network General for $205 million (£102 million).

The deal, comprising six million shares of NetScout stock, $50 million (£25 million) of cash and $100 million (£50 million) of debt financing, comes after 20 years of competition between the network performance software developers.

NetScout, founded in 1984, specialise in pre-event real-time monitoring and troubleshooting technology. Network General began its operations in 1986 with the shipment of the first Sniffer network monitoring system. Since then, it has expanded its range to a full line of IT network analysis solutions.

"Today, we are bringing together two established companies with complementary technologies to form a new stronger organisation that will have the scale, technology, and mindshare to meet some of the greatest challenges associated with virtualisation, convergence, SOA and highly distributed network-centric operations," said Anil Singhal, president and chief executive of NetScout.

This purchase is the third in a line of exceedingly unsuccessful and unprofitable ownership changes for Network General, the first of which came from McAfee in 1997 for $1.1billion (£550 million). The second change of ownership took place in 2003 when private equity company Silver Lake Partners paid $213million (£106 million) to date the business private. It took Network General and McAfee just under six years to flounder eighty percent of the company's previous value.

NetScout hopes its $205million purchase will prove to be more profitable than those of their predecessors. In a statement released early Thursday, NetScout officials claimed that the acquisition will double revenue by 2009.