Smartphones Hurt PC Sales

Details
Published on Sunday, 04 August 2013 09:46
The Middle East and Africa region's PC market experienced another quarter of steep decline in Q2 2013 as the proliferation of mobile technology continues unabated. According to IDC, shipments of PCs into the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey slowed 18.3% year on year during the second quarter of 2013 to total 4.4 million units.


Desktops were the hardest hit, with shipments down 20.0% year on year to 1.8 million units, while notebook shipments declined 17.1% over the same period to total 2.6 million units. "A growing portion of end users, primarily from the consumer segment, are shifting their spending from PCs to tablets and smartphones," says Fouad Rafiq Charakla, a research manager for personal computing, systems, and infrastructure solutions at IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey.



This was accompanied by ongoing instability in several parts of the Middle East and Africa region, which resulted in PC spending by both the commercial and consumer segments plummeting at an even faster rate. "Intel and Microsoft have made keen efforts to revive the position of PCs against tablets, particularly in light of the latter adapting its operating system to a touch-screen interface," continues Charakla. "However, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS still outperform Microsoft’s Windows 8 when it comes to the number of applications the respective operating systems offer, which has a direct negative impact on the user experience. At the same time, the growing availability of aggressively priced tablet models, including those offered by multinational vendors, is continuing to encourage growing numbers of end users to switch to this increasingly popular form factor."



Despite declining price points on the numerous ultra-slim notebook models available in the market, this product category failed to catapult its own popularity at the planned pace. Indeed, a large portion of end users still prefer to buy portable PCs with optical drives, which most ultra-slim notebook models fail to offer. All key markets in the region experienced double-digit declines year on year. Turkey suffered a significant drop in PC shipments owing to the ongoing protests and social unrest in the country, while poor economic growth and high inflation caused a dramatic fall in PC shipments into South Africa. A change in the labor law by the government of Saudi Arabia forced a large number of expatriates to leave the country, causing its PC market to suffer tremendously. Meanwhile, in the UAE, a sharp decline in PC sales through the retail channel combined with instability in a number of key re-export destinations to drive a considerable decline in shipments into the country.



"Ongoing political instability in neighboring Syria continues to negatively impact the PC markets of Jordan and Lebanon," says Victoria Mendes, a research analyst for personal computing, systems, and infrastructure solutions at IDC Middle East, Africa and Turkey. "And the impact of this instability is being exacerbated by the cannibalization of these PC markets by tablet devices. The home segment suffered the most as consumer sentiment remains very low in these countries, while the absence of large commercial and public sector deals further contributed to the decline of the overall PC market across the Levant region." HP continued to lead the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey PC market during the second quarter of 2013, despite suffering a decline of 19.5% year on year.



Similarly, Dell posted a 17.5% year-on-year drop in shipments into the region, but was able to hold on to second place in the vendor rankings. Dell also managed to secure a large PC delivery into the Saudi education sector during the quarter. As was the case in previous quarters, Lenovo experienced the fastest growth in the region among the leading vendors, with its shipments increasing 17.1% year on year to maintain its position at number three. Samsung climbed to fourth place after posting year-on-year shipment growth of 7.9%, while a drastic 42.1% decline for Acer resulted in the vendor slipping down to fifth.

---IDC

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Internet of Things Opportunities

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Published on Sunday, 04 August 2013 09:31
The Internet plays an increasingly central role in the modern world, not only at the level of infrastructure, but also in culture, society and business. The Internet of Things extends that role to encompass an increasingly diverse range of devices and communications streams, many of which will be essentially machine-to-machine communications, rather than involving a person at either endpoint, according to Gartner. The analyst firm defines the Internet of Things as the network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and interact with their internal states or the external environment.



"The volume of opportunities arising from the Internet of Things over the long term is generally agreed to be in the realm of very large to huge," says Stephen Prentice, vice president at Gartner. "Manufacturing opportunities, deployment, activation and ongoing management of millions of devices, and the analytical opportunities arising from massive streams of potentially real-time information all represent huge untapped business opportunities. Business and IT leaders should explore these developments, and focus not on what is new and different, but look more closely at what is essentially the same as existing business processes."



“Business leaders find the diversity of current Internet of Things applications fails to make a compelling business case to explore or commit resources to this emergent area. Equally, existing 'serious' enterprise applications seem worlds apart from the apparently consumer-focused Internet of Things buzz," according to Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner. "However, over the past decade, the consumerization of IT has increasingly encroached on enterprise IT, steadily infiltrating and subverting enterprise infrastructure — first, with PCs, and then Wi-Fi, followed by the Internet, smartphones, media tablets and social networks. The days when technology originated in military and government circles and then filtered down via enterprises to individual end users are long gone, and the direction of technology migration has now been totally reversed, so skeptics would be well-advised to monitor these consumer-facing developments closely."


The sheer diversity of Internet of Things applications that have emerged to date is so broad that it is easy to become overwhelmed and yet find nothing that appears to relate directly to one's existing business. In reality, many applications that appear to be completely unique share an underlying functionality that is essentially common across the different applications. Much of the differentiation and value of the Internet of Things resides not in the device, nor even the connectivity, but in the data aggregation, data-processing and decision-making activities that take advantage of the data streams emanating from the device (or the ability to remotely influence that device).



IT leaders are the natural entry point for new technology ideas in the enterprise. They can use their understanding and insight to objectively assess where and how these new developments might benefit their organizations in reducing the costs of existing operations and processes, or creating entirely new revenue streams and value opportunities. The use of embedded systems in industry is well-established, and the Internet of Things extends these systems into significant new areas but also raises some confusion over the potential similarities.



"By understanding the various classes of devices that will likely populate the Internet of Things, the CIO will be well-placed to spot additional opportunities or see similarities that business colleagues may overlook," says Prentice. "By ignoring the details of each application and looking instead at the underlying characteristics of the different device types and how they can populate an Internet of Things infrastructure, the CIO or IT leader can bring clarity and insight to what appears to be a very confused set of possibilities. By simply classifying device types and functionalities, IT leaders make market segmentation and the identification of new business opportunities much simpler."


----Gartner

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Technology Platform of the Future

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Published on Wednesday, 01 August 2012 06:32




A nexus of converging forces — social, mobile, cloud and information — is building upon and transforming user behavior while creating new business opportunities, according to Gartner. Although these forces are innovative and disruptive on their own, together they are revolutionizing business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders. As such, the nexus of forces is the basis of the technology platform of the future. "Information is the context for delivering enhanced social and mobile experiences," says Chris Howard, managing vice president at Gartner.



"Mobile devices are a platform for social networking and new ways of work. Social links people to their work and each other in new ways. Cloud enables delivery of information and functionality to users and systems. These forces of the nexus are intertwined to create a user-driven ecosystem of computing." Not that long ago, people's most sophisticated computing experience was at work and computing was limited at home. Now, in most cases, the opposite is true. The consumerization of IT is a result of the availability of devices, interfaces and applications with minimal learning curves.



As a result of using these devices, people have become more sophisticated users of technology. People expect access to similar functionality across all their roles and make fewer distinctions between work and nonwork activities. Social is one of the most compelling examples of how consumerization drives enterprise IT practices. It includes personal activities of sharing comments, links and recommendations with friends. Consumer vendors have been quick to see the influence of friends sharing recommendations on what to buy. Social technologies both drive and depend on the other three nexus forces:



Social provides an important need for mobility: Accessing social networks is one of the primary uses of mobile devices and social interactions have much more value when they are possible wherever the user is located.
Social depends on cloud for scale and access: Social networks benefit from scale, the kind of scale that is really only practical through cloud deployment.
Social feeds and depends on deep analysis: Social interactions provide a rich source of information about connections, preferences and intentions. As social networks get larger, participants need better tools to be able to manage the growing number of interactions, which drives the need for deeper social analytics.


Mobile computing is forcing the biggest change. Mass adoption forces new infrastructure, it spawns new businesses and it threatens the status quo. For business, the opportunities — and the stakes — are high. To a retailer, the same device that navigates a customer into a store can redirect the final sale to the competition. To a bank, the mobile phone is a new wallet that could make the credit card obsolete. To a sales organization, mobile computing keeps salespeople out in the field talking to customers. To a medical caregiver, a patient's vitals and behaviors may be constantly monitored, which increases the effectiveness and efficiency of treatment. Every industry is affected.


However, mobile does not stand alone as an isolated phenomenon. People will interact with multiple screens working in concert. Sensor data will transparently enhance the experience, integrating the virtual and physical worlds contextually. The information gathered in this immersive world will have tremendous value and, ultimately, the lasting relationship will be between a user and a cloud-based ecosystem.

Cloud computing represents the glue for all the forces of the nexus. It is the model for delivery of whatever computing resources are needed and for activities that grow out of such delivery. Without cloud computing, social interactions would have no place to happen at scale, mobile access would fail to be able to connect to a wide variety of data and functions, and information still would be stuck inside internal systems.


The model of cloud computing is what Gartner calls a "global-class" phenomenon because it focuses on outcomes connected across the globe rather than technologies and outcomes centered on an internal enterprise strategy. In a global-class computing world, everything shifts to the culture of the consumer and the externalized view of computing.


Mobile independent software vendors using cloud services have more options to access information and processes than ever before — without having to own it all. Crowd sourcing can be done through mobile communities because the cloud allows them all to exist in the same "work space" rather than being isolated in enterprise or single-PC environments. The cloud is the carrier ecosystem for a wide variety of data forms, both structured and unstructured. This data can be gathered from cloud-based communities, through cloud services, from mobile endpoints, and all in a consistent and globally available environment.


Information is not stored anywhere in particular. Rather, it is stored everywhere. For years, technologists have discussed the ubiquity of information without realizing how to take full advantage of it. That time is here now. Social, mobile and cloud make information accessible, shareable and consumable by anyone, anywhere, at any time. Knowing how to capture the power of the ubiquity of information and utilize the smaller subsets applicable to a company, a product and customers, at a specific point in time, will be critical to new opportunities and for avoiding risks.


Developing a discipline of innovation through information enables organizations to respond to environmental, customer, employee or product changes as they occur. It will enable companies to leap ahead of their competition in operational or business performance. An enterprise can succeed or fail based on how it responds to trends such as social media, cloud computing or mobile.


"The combination of pervasive mobility, near-ubiquitous connectivity, industrial compute services and information access decreases the gap between idea and action," adds Howard. "To take advantage of the nexus of forces and respond effectively, organizations must face the challenges of modernizing their systems, skills and mindsets. Organizations that ignore this will be displaced by those that can move into the opportunity space more quickly — and the pace is accelerating."

----Gartner

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Mobile Phones Sales Plummet

Worldwide sales of mobile phones reached 419 million units in the second quarter of 2012, a 2.3 percent decline from the second quarter of 2011, according to Gartner. Smartphone sales accounted for 36.7 percent of total mobile phone sales and grew 42.7 percent in the second quarter of 2012. "Demand slowed further in the second quarter of 2012," says Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. "The challenging economic environment and users postponing upgrades to take advantage of high-profile device launches and promotions available later in the year slowed demand across markets. Demand of feature phones continued to decline, weakening the overall mobile phone market.



"High-profile smartphone launches from key manufacturers such as the anticipated Apple iPhone 5, along with Chinese manufacturers pushing 3G and preparing for major device launches in the second half of 2012, will drive the smartphone market upward. However, feature phones will continue to see pressure," Gupta adds. In the second quarter of 2012, Samsung's mobile phone sales remained strong — up 29.5 percent from the second quarter of 2011 and managed to extend its lead over both Apple and Nokia quarter on quarter.



This quarter's growth was driven by sales of Galaxy smartphones, meaning smartphones now account for 50.4 percent of all Samsung mobile devices, or 45.6 million units. Demand for the new Galaxy S3 was strong, with a reported 10 million units reached in the two months after its release. In the second quarter of 2012, consumer demand for the Apple iPhone weakened as sales fell 12.6 percent from the first quarter of 2012, but grew 47.4 percent year on year.



Depending on the exact launch date of the new iPhone, Apple may experience another weaker-than-usual quarter in the third quarter of 2012, while Apple will be ready to take advantage of the strong holiday sales in North America and Western Europe that have historically remained immune to economic pressure. "Samsung and Apple continued to dominate the smartphone market, together taking about half the market share and widening the gap to other manufacturers.” says Gupta. "In the race to be top smartphone manufacturer in 2012, Samsung has increased its lead over Apple and its open OS market share increased to one-and-a-half times that of Apple in the second quarter of 2012."


Worldwide Mobile Device Sales by Vendor in 2Q12 (Thousands of Units)



Company
2Q12
Units
2Q12 Market Share (%)
2Q11
Units
2Q11 Market Share (%)
Samsung
90,432.1
21.6
69,827.6
16.3
Nokia
83,420.1
19.9
97,869.3
22.8
Apple
28,935.0
6.9
19,628.8
4.6
ZTE
17,936.4
4.3
13,070.2
3.0
LG Electronics
14,345.4
3.4
24,420.8
5.7
Huawei Device
10,894.2
2.6
9,026.1
2.1
TCL Communications
9,355.7
2.2
7,938.9
1.9
HTC
9,301.2
2.2
11,016.1
2.6
Motorola
9,163.2
2.2
10,221.4
2.4
Research In Motion
7,991.2
1.9
12,652.3
3.0
Others
137,233.4
32.8
152,989.70
35.7
Total
419,007.90
100.0
428,661.15
100.0

Source: Gartner (August 2012)

Nokia's mobile phone sales declined 14.8 percent in the second quarter of 2012. Nokia is battling with white-box and new emerging device manufacturers to defend its feature phones sales. Nokia succeeded, to a certain extent, in winning feature phone market share as its sales grew quarter-on-quarter. While posting sequential growth in the feature phone market, Nokia's Lumia devices continue to struggle to find a place in consumers' minds as a replacement for Android.

"Declining smartphone sales is worsening Nokia's overall position, as it had already lost the No. 1 position to Samsung in the previous quarter and is facing reduced profitability due to continuous declining sales of premium smartphones," says Gupta. In the smartphone OS market, Android extended its lead with an increase of 20.7 percentage points in market share in the second quarter of 2012.



While Apple's iOS market share slightly grew year over year (0.6 percent), it declined 3.7 percentage points quarter on quarter, as users postponed their upgrade decisions in most markets ahead of the upcoming launch of the iPhone 5. The analyst firm says the arrival of the iPhone 5 should provide an upgrade opportunity yet as the expected new design with a larger screen and likely other stylistic changes to the form factor will make a strong case for iPhone 4 users to upgrade.

Worldwide Mobile Device Sales by Operating System in 2Q12 (Thousands of Units)



Operating System
2Q12
Units
2Q12 Market Share (%)
2Q11
Units
2Q11 Market Share (%)
Android
98,529.3
64.1
46,775.9
43.4
iOS
28,935.0
18.8
19,628.8
18.2
Symbian
9,071.5
5.9
23,853.2
22.1
Research In Motion
7,991.2
5.2
12,652.3
11.7
Bada
4,208.8
2.7
2,055.8
1.9
Microsoft
4,087.0
2.7
1,723.8
1.6
Others
863.3
0.6
1,050.6
1.0
Total
153,686.1
100.0
107,740.4
100.0

Source: Gartner

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EMEA IT Spend Will Grow 1.4%

IT spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will reach US $1.154 trillion in 2013, a 1.4 percent increase from 2012 projected spending of $1.138 trillion, according to Gartner. Despite the ongoing economic malaise, the analyst firm sees pockets of growth in IT in Europe, mainly driven by devices and software. Big data will also change the landscape of IT – creating new jobs. “This year is a pessimistic year for IT spending in Europe,” says Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner. “In 2012, we estimate IT spending will decline 3.6 percent in EMEA and 5.9 percent in Western Europe.



However, the EMEA region will return to growth in 2013 and continue to grow through 2016 when spending will reach $1.247 trillion.”  The mobile device market is currently the bright spot of the IT industry. “We are seeing tablets and smartphones significantly outpace purchases of traditional PCs,” says Sondergaard. The spending on mobile devices (notebook PCs, mobile phones, ultra mobiles and tablets) in EMEA will amount to $136 billion in 2012, reaching $188 billion in 2016.



In Western Europe, both consumers and businesses are adding tablets to their portfolio of mobile devices - increasing the total mobile device market growth by 8 percent in 2012. This contrasts with a decline of 5 percent in the mobile PC market in Western Europe. In Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa, mobile phone shipments will dominate the market, with tablet adoption increasing through to 2016. By 2016, two-thirds of the workforce will have a smartphone or tablet device. This will change the way consumers buy software and transform the market. Traditional software providers will have to rewrite their applications for these tablet-based environments, and there will be a strong increase in software spending.



The EMEA IT spending in software will grow 3.1 percent in 2013, nearly reaching the $100 billion mark in 2016. Consumers and workers becoming more mobile will lead to a complete change of architecture. Information will expand and accelerate driven by the Nexus of Forces, becoming a higher strategic priority for businesses. “The nexus of Forces are the confluence and integration of cloud, mobile, social and information that will transform IT architecture and create a new information layer in our economy that will create new jobs, new revenue, and require new skills,” says Sondergaard.


Over the next three years, together with the North America and Japan, EMEA will be the most active region in using big data. By 2015, 4.4 million IT jobs will be created globally to support big data, creating 1.3 million IT jobs in EMEA, including 1.2 million IT jobs in Western Europe alone. However, public education systems, as well as training within companies, are not sufficient to satisfy that demand. “We expect organizations will be unable to fill out these positions, and we estimate that only 31 percent of the IT jobs will be filled in Western Europe. It places a requirement on our education systems and on companies to start to train those roles. We need these kinds of roles across all businesses to analyze data and information, which will ultimately generate new revenue,” notes Sondergaard.


----Gartner

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The Challenge of Wireless Data

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    Published on Tuesday, 14 August 2012 05:49

Since the U.S. government began assigning broadcast rights in the 1920s, the process has worked on a simple principle: A licensee received the exclusive right to the use of a slice of wireless spectrum, usually limited to a specific geographic area. Today, we are facing a big problem. All of the usable spectrum has been allocated, but the explosive growth of smartphones and other wireless devices is creating rapid growth in the demand for bandwidth. Technology that allows existing spectrum assignments to be used more efficiently has helped considerably. The government has also released some existing bandwidth for wireless data use, most recently a big chunk of 700 MHz spectrum that was freed by the transition to digital television.


But neither spectral efficiency nor the slow process of freeing and reassigning spectrum seem adequate to meet soaring demand. A recent report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST) concluded that technology that allows spectrum to be shared among multiple radio systems will be needed: "Spectrum should be managed not by fragmenting it into ever more finely divided exclusive frequency assignments, but by specifying large frequency bands that can accommodate a wide variety of compatible uses."

The Federal Communications Commission, which shares responsibility for spectrum assignments with the Commerce Dept.'s National Telecommunications & Information Agency, is responding. At a recent forum, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said: "We are still operating on the same assumptions and parameters as when we began. But the world has changed."

The FCC is currently working on strategic "band plans" for two chunks of spectrum that are going to become available. One is for bandwidth that will be cleared as TV broadcasters agree to auction off spectrum they hold in the 600 MHz band. This will take a few years, because the process mandated by Congress is complex. But it is prime spectrum for wireless data and new technologies will increase the efficiency of its use.

Another band being considered, at 3.5 GHz, poses different challenges. In general, the higher the frequency, the shorter the range of radios using it, and current cellular-type radios operate at between 800 MHz and 2.1 GHz. One idea is to make a virtue of necessity and use the higher frequency spectrum to build large numbers of very small cells, greatly increasing the reuse of channels in any given area. (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work in much this way.) But there is an additional challenge in the 3.5 GHz band. Certain types of military radar are currently using the band. So the radios will have to avoid interference with these vital installations by respecting "exclusion zones" that bar the use of specific frequencies in specific locations.


To do that, one possibility being debated is the use of "smart," "agile," or "cognitive" radios that are able to operate on a wide variety of frequencies, using software to sense unused and available channels. One recent twist on cognitive radios is to have them interact with a secure database that will warn them away from protected radio systems, such as military radar.  Still, many issues remain to be addressed. For example, one concern expressed by participants in the FCC forum was whether these new, more complex radios could come close to matching the battery life we have come to expect from mobile devices.

These are early experiments in what is likely to become a much broader move toward spectrum sharing as a way to use bandwidth more efficiently. And many critics have doubts about the reliance on unproven technologies. Writes Richard Bennett of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation: "Advances in technology are often messy and disruptive, so it's much more sensible to continue pursuing a multi-faceted strategy that allows technologies to compete on the basis of the value they offer consumers than to tilt the scales in favor of one and only one system."

Wireless carriers, too, would rather the government just surrender some of its spectrum for wireless data use. Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president for regulatory affairs of CTIA: The Wireless Association says that while "it is sensible to investigate creative approaches for making federal government spectrum commercially available, including the development of certain sharing capabilities," the CTIA believes "the gold standard for deployment of ubiquitous mobile broadband networks remains cleared spectrum."

The problem is that it is growing increasingly hard to find spectrum that can be easily cleared. The time and effort needed to clear bandwidth means we will need major technological advances in efficiency to close the gap, including potentially the development of more ubiquitous frequency-sharing technologies.

By Steve Wildstrom

The contents or opinions in this feature are independent and do not necessarily represent the views of Cisco. They are offered in an effort to encourage continuing conversations on a broad range of innovative technology subjects. We welcome your comments and engagement.

Used with the permission of http://thenetwork.cisco.com/.

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Mitigating BYOD Risks on Network

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Published on Tuesday, 17 July 2012 16:03

Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) trend has resulted in a growing number of employee-owned devices on the network. Unauthorized use of the corporate network leads to security issues, as well as potential disruption of the network. In order to mitigate some of the risks on corporates networks, Blue Coat has introduced mobile application controls.


As employees increasingly bring their own mobile devices to work, the mobile app security gap has widened. The vendor says its new solution gives IT the ability to manage the use of unsanctioned applications and enforce policies across all devices on the network. The growth in BYOD initiatives has driven an increase in mobile devices and unmanaged applications on the corporate network.

According to Forrester Research, 57 percent of employees chose and purchased their own smartphone without any direction or guidance from their company. According to mobile application measurement company Flurry, each smartphone has, on average, 65 mobile apps installed. With 350 million employees expected to use smartphones at work by 2016, the number of mobile applications using the corporate network will continue to skyrocket.

The increase in mobile devices on the corporate network creates two distinct risks that lead to undesired or unpredictable network impacts. First, it contributes to the growing problem of unsanctioned applications on the corporate network.  Second, corporate policies cannot be consistently enforced across all devices.

Like web-based applications, the use of mobile applications is eroding IT control of the network. Unlike browser-based web applications, however, mobile applications and their corresponding operations are typically self-contained and fall outside the control of traditional web security solutions. Blue Coat says with these operational controls, businesses can set policies around specific functions within both web-based and mobile applications.

This enables businesses to enforce policy across all devices and allows them to regain control over the applications on their network. For example, a business that wants to mitigate unintentional leaks of confidential or secure location information could set a policy for Twitter that prevents employees from sending tweets but allows full reading or monitoring access.

“The growth of BYOD initiatives has created a situation where IT security managers are facing a deluge of untrusted, unmanaged devices and applications on the corporate network,” says Dave Ewart, director of product marketing, EMEA at Blue Coat Systems.

----Blue Coat

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Power Firms Delving into Data

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Published on Sunday, 26 May 2013 05:02

A power cut in most places will bring down the street lights for a while. But in India last July blackouts nearly brought down the country. Around 700 million people were without power because of a grid collapse dubbed ‘Blackout Tuesday.' The power outage stretched around 2000 miles (3200 kilometers) across the north of the country, from Arunachal Pradesh in the east to Rajasthan in the west.

The disaster, like major outages previously in Paraguay, Java, and America, highlighted the frailty of power grids and put the spotlight on how utilities could avoid such events in future. The answer, many believe, is smart grids: power networks with embedded intelligence and a bigger capacity to deal with highs and lows in energy demand and supply.

Smart grids are deemed to be so critical to our energy future that in many countries there is a legal requirement for them to be introduced within a given timeframe. The data they supply, from advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to distribution automation devices, can help utilities make more informed choices about how and where to generate and deliver power and how much to charge or pay for it. But this data poses a challenge for utilities, because there is so much of it. Traditionally, a power company might take a meter reading from a customer once a month to collect data. With smart grids, the amount of data has skyrocketed. Some utilities admit they have not yet really worked out what to do with all this information.

"It is not unusual for power companies to still be managing data at a level of granularity comparable to that of pre-smart grid days, despite now having technology that can deliver much more detailed information," says Smart Grid Update in its Data Management for Utilities briefing. However, it adds: "While the challenges associated with managing the masses of data associated with smart grids are certainly significant, they are not overwhelming. "Indeed, utility information management is simply one of several ‘big data' areas which a growing number of IT vendors are rushing to solve. The tools to deal with AMI data may yet need some refining, but they certainly exist."

So how can data analytics help power companies? They can help cut blackouts in two ways. First, having intelligence on the grid can help utilities catch failures as they are beginning to happen, and come up with workarounds that stop them from spreading. Second, a better understanding of grid behavior can help a utility balance supply and demand so the conditions for a blackout are less likely to happen in the first place. There are several technology companies that have developed advanced analytics systems for utilities, but for some utilities the problem is not what systems they need to buy to deal with smart grid data, but what changes they need to make to their own businesses.

"The utility is being inundated with phenomenal amounts of data," says Brian Rich, Vice President of Business Technology at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), one of the largest combination natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. "Process analytics means that for the first time the company is breaking down traditional silos that haven't had the information required to integrate their processes." PG&E has so much smart grid information (70 terabytes of AMI interval data alone, increasing by 3 terabytes a month) that it has decided to replicate its data sets so it can perform deep analytics on the replicated set without interrupting the operational criticality of the data. This may sound like a lot of effort, but Rich says it is paying off for the utility.

"Before we were flying blind," he states. "Now we can have much more meaningful conversations with our customers about demand-side management programs." Plus the technology is helping PG&E to reduce grid failures. "We do a lot of over-the-air remediation," Rich explains. "If we have a meter not giving us readings we would previously have had to roll a truck. Now we can fix it by pushing a firmware upgrade over the network. "This, coupled with our significant investment in fault location, isolation, and service restoration, has enabled us to be more proactive about asset failures."

Ultimately, such measures may help make blackouts much more a thing of the past. Ben Kellison, a smart grid analyst at GTM Research, says: "Analytics and processing power on the grid is beginning to allow utilities to identify and isolate the causes of major blackouts before they cascade across the transmission grid. Meanwhile last-mile grid devices are providing the insight to reduce local outage duration, improve customer service, and increase a utility's operational efficiency."

By Jason Deign

The contents or opinions in this feature are independent and may not necessarily represent the views of Cisco. They are offered in an effort to encourage continuing conversations on a broad range of innovative technology subjects. We welcome your comments and engagement.

Used with the permission ofhttp://thenetwork.cisco.com/.

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Proof of Concept

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    Published on Thursday, 05 January 2012 16:29
    Written by Craig Sutherland



At some point you will want to start the process of evaluating NMS suppliers and equipment. The proof of concept (PoC) is an important phase of the NMS evolution process. Sometimes it is difficult to be impartial during this process. Organisations often have a long standing relationship with one of the vendors involved in the PoC process, and they may have intimate knowledge of your network and its challenges.



To get the most from a PoC, you need to furnish each perspective vendor with as much information about your network and application as possible. In many cases, you may even find that a vendor withdraws from the evaluation process because its solution does not meet the PoC criteria. The following template can be used to send to perspective equipment vendors before the PoC starts. You will need to adjust the PoC criteria section to suit your own need. 



However, I have included some relevant sections which are generic and should help to get you started. Another suggestion with the PoC criteria is to invite each vendor to write the PoC criteria based on the information you provide in the template document. This way, you can compile the best questions from each vendor into a single criteria document, which is used as a common template document for all vendors.



Download pdf of the template here Proof of Concept template

Sample PoC Template Starts here.



    Background Information and Company Profile

XYZ corporation manufactures/provides [description of what the organisation does]. Each perspective vendor is invited by means of a PoC to demonstrate their proposed solution fills the business and technology requirements required to deliver a comprehensive network [performance] management solution.



The organisation operates in a [hub-and-spoke/distributed architecture] with a data distribution centre[s] located at [name of site]. Redundancy is achieved by [Hot Standby Core switching architecture/multiple redundant WAN links/Fully meshed MPLS topology]. The core switching infrastructure is running at version [enter version release] and the routing infrastructure is running at [enter version release].



CPU and memory utilisation on the network devices is generally[Low/High/Critical]. The organisation operates [Monday to Friday/24hrs] and network management operations are [continuously staffed by the operations centre/are required continuously during hours of operation and support staff are on standby outside of these hours].



    Duration of the PoC

The XYZ PoC evaluation process will last for [1 week/3 weeks]. Central management equipment will be hosted at [name of site] which has full management access to the network. To minimise disruption, vendors are requested to install software off site as much as possible. Vendors are asked to complete the following form:



 Duration

Please specify the amount of time required to set up the equipment and configure the system to achieve the requirements outlined in section 4 (Evaluation Criteria)? ___________



Space

Please specify the rack space required to house the equipment in RU units. In addition, please specify the depth of the equipment and power requirements. _______________



Network Map

The vendor is requested to submit a network map [included in this document] showing the placement of its equipment and the interaction if any with other components on the network.



Addressing

XYZ corporation operates a [IPV4/IPV6] addressing scheme and has allocated the following subnet for use during the PoC evaluation. [Subnet Range included here with network mask and gateway]



Connectivity

The equipment will connect to [Our live Network/Our test network] and as such, the vendor is required to submit the ports and port ranges and protocol types required for connecting to the network. Where not well known protocols are used, the vendors is required to provide an explanation of the ports' requirement and purpose it serves.

Ports and Protocols required for PoC evaluation: ________________________



Access

The vendor should use the following user name/password combination for accessing the system if multiple user name password combinations are used.

User name: [User name_Here]

Password: [Password_Here]



Configuration Change

If integrating the solution into the XYZ network requires modification to the existing network's routers or switches. The vendor should detail the changes needed to the current configuration to accommodate the monitoring solution. XYZ will then assess the changes requested and may recommend changes which are in line with the organisation's [security/IT] policy.



Anti-Virus

The vendor is required to specify the primary operating system proposed for this evaluation. Servers configured with Microsoft Windows [must have anti-virus software provided by XYZ installed and run the current recommended service pack. It should also/should have up to date virus software installed and the latest service pack installed] before any connection to the XYZ network is possible. Vendors should provide details of operating system hardening (if any) which is provided by default.



PoC Setup Form [Ends Here]



    Purpose of the PoC

    XYZ Corporation is in the process of selecting a solution and a partner to provide a [performance/management solution] for [which part of the network does this cover/the whole network] the purpose of the PoC is as follows:

    Demonstrate how the proposed solution integrates into the existing network without disruption to day to day activities.

    Meets the objectives outlined in the evaluation criteria.

    Copes with the volume of traffic currently present on the network and has the ability to scale to meet the future demand.

    Intuitive interface, should be easily accessible to the XYZ staff.

    Understand limitations of the proposed solution within the scope of the PoC.

    Evaluate all features to understand cost plus benefit.

    

    Evaluation Criteria

 The evaluation criteria will be a four-stage process and is outlined as follows:

    Ease of set up and connection to the network. [Score Maximum 25 pts]

    Ease of use, logical work flow, context sensitive help [Score Maximum 25 pts]

    Ability to meets or exceed technical requirements [Score Maximum 25 pts]

    Additional features, cost plus benefit [Score Maximum 25 pts]

    

The vendor shall generate or capture screen shots for functionality assessment for each of the questions outlined in the evaluation criteria. This will be included as [hard copy/soft copy] at the PoC wrap-up meeting.



 [Evaluation Criteria Starts Here]

    Access

    The system was accessible from all areas of the network within the scope of the PoC and functionality was not limited by firewalls. Changing the user name and password for the default access account and adding additional accounts with less access worked. Concurrent user access worked, how many concurrent logins were demonstrated.

    

    Compatibility

    The proposed system should be compatible with the existing routing and switching infrastructure in the network. Any issues such as software versions and memory should be highlighted.

    

    Performance and Accuracy

The accuracy proposed in the solution should be stated. Please state factors which may affect the accuracy of the proposed solution where applicable. Any shortcomings introduced by the scope of the PoC should also included.  If any performance related issues were discovered during the PoC phase such as, additional load placed on routing and switching components, delay and packet loss as a result of the solution integration, this shall also be stated.



    Reporting

    A list of interesting reports generated should be included in the PoC. This will include the report name and include a sample where applicable. The system shall also state the limitation in terms of custom report generation based on user defined fields and which custom reports worked well in this environment. Reporting generation- what was the most effective means to generate reports, scheduled or Ad-hoc, manually or via third party solution.

    

  [Evaluation Criteria Ends Here]



    Sample Reports

Sample reports should be taken during the peak hours of traffic activity. It should clearly indicate the name of the report and the link or network segment the report was taken from and the time interval for the report. Reports should be made in portable document format (PDF) as a soft copy where possible.



    Revised Bill Of Materials

 If for some reason during the PoC evaluation it was determined that:

    The evaluation equipment did not have enough capacity/storage/processing power to meet the objectives in the PoC criteria, the vendor is invited to submit a revised bill of materials which covers the unforeseen demands of the network or an alternative solution.

    

    To meet the objectives of the PoC criteria, if additional equipment is required either from the vendor or a third party, then the revised bill of materials should include this additional inventory.

    

    Additional features are not realised in the original PoC criteria, then the vendor should include this in the revised bill of materials.

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