There are many technology trends right now that cause me to favour a
particular investment decision I have made and I wanted to share with
you. In the interest of full disclosure, I have a direct investment in
Level 3 Communications (Performance). I make no representations that this investment
is right for you. You should consult a professional investment advisor.
I am not a professional investment advisor and make no representations
that the information below is accurate or heavily researched. They are
my personal thoughts alone.
The answers to many questions that companies are dealing with right now
in regards to security, redundancy and accessibility lies in an expanded
use of the internet to solve these problems.
Security
There is not a company in America, or the world for that matter, that
does not cringe at the thought of having to disclose that a lost laptop
contained sensitive customer information on it. Why is all of this
information being schlepped around on laptops anyway? It is related to
the accessibility to the information to the mobile professional and
availability of any always on internet that currently is limited to a
few people. I'll want to look at that tonight from home, on the plane,
on the train, etc. The future of data management from a corporate
perspective is to not allow the information to leave the corporate
premises. Some prognosticators are saying that within a few years that
there will be enough bandwidth out there you will not need to have a CD
drive on your PC. Huh? How will I install a programme if there is no
CD drive? Download it. How will I buy music? Download it- we already
do anyway. In essence you will access all programs and information
stored from a remote, centralized, secure, redundant location over the
internet. This saves a lot of problems for companies that do see
laptops as a potential legal nightmare.
Most IT departments wrestle with the fact that their security policies
are left to the judgement of many unknowing employees in the
organization. Those employees that consistently skip the updates to the
OS or Virus protection, leaving systems exposed to hackers and malware
that could spread across the entire company network. The employee that
never has the time to let the laptop backup programme run and clicks
through it, losing hundreds of valuable hours of work and information
when the laptop crashes. These all add up to lost man years of
productivity from minor lapses in policy.
Also, think about the reasons why you currently need to upgrade laptops?
Usually because the RAM and storage become insufficient. New programmes
are coming out that are rendering laptop hard drives and RAM useless as
they are too small to meet current needs. But, if this is all managed
centrally- your program is hosted as a service and your data is stored
centrally, your laptop just becomes a GUI network device. For this to
be a reality an abundance of bandwidth needs to be available. This will
force Data traffic from the LAN to the Internet cloud.
Software as a Service
The environment outlined above is called Software as a Service or SaaS.
It is emerging as the right choice for many people and corporations that
don't want to have to manage their own internal IT departments. Why
host an exchange server when you can find someone to do it for you?
They can do it better than you can and for less money. Similarly,
anything that is not part of your core company competency can be bought
on a subscription basis. When this happens, companies can focus on the
customer service aspects and a lot less on the internal administration
of their organizations. Similar to above, SaaS will drive network
traffic off of the corporate LAN and into the cloud.
Expansion of Wi-max
Soon Wi-max will emerge as a reliable standard and enable more people to
work in a mobile way. This enablement will drive a further trend in
home workers and less reliance on the physical office to perform daily
tasks. Again, this will drive more and more activity to the internet
from the LAN. This is further being driven by the ever rising cost of
petroleum around the world.
What else can be said? It is now costing more and more to fill up the
tank. Less and less people will be able to afford the use of standard
gas powered vehicles to drive and home based working arrangements will
increase. This will be aided by Cisco Telepresence, and other
applications that facilitate the collaboration for businesses across
great distances without people having to travel.
Our technology future relies on expansive and ubiquitous bandwidth.
Level 3 Communications is a company that is positioned well to meet the
ever growing demands for bandwidth between major cities. The company
operates one of the largest communications and Internet backbones in the
world. The internet is not going away any time soon.
particular investment decision I have made and I wanted to share with
you. In the interest of full disclosure, I have a direct investment in
Level 3 Communications (Performance). I make no representations that this investment
is right for you. You should consult a professional investment advisor.
I am not a professional investment advisor and make no representations
that the information below is accurate or heavily researched. They are
my personal thoughts alone.
The answers to many questions that companies are dealing with right now
in regards to security, redundancy and accessibility lies in an expanded
use of the internet to solve these problems.
Security
There is not a company in America, or the world for that matter, that
does not cringe at the thought of having to disclose that a lost laptop
contained sensitive customer information on it. Why is all of this
information being schlepped around on laptops anyway? It is related to
the accessibility to the information to the mobile professional and
availability of any always on internet that currently is limited to a
few people. I'll want to look at that tonight from home, on the plane,
on the train, etc. The future of data management from a corporate
perspective is to not allow the information to leave the corporate
premises. Some prognosticators are saying that within a few years that
there will be enough bandwidth out there you will not need to have a CD
drive on your PC. Huh? How will I install a programme if there is no
CD drive? Download it. How will I buy music? Download it- we already
do anyway. In essence you will access all programs and information
stored from a remote, centralized, secure, redundant location over the
internet. This saves a lot of problems for companies that do see
laptops as a potential legal nightmare.
Most IT departments wrestle with the fact that their security policies
are left to the judgement of many unknowing employees in the
organization. Those employees that consistently skip the updates to the
OS or Virus protection, leaving systems exposed to hackers and malware
that could spread across the entire company network. The employee that
never has the time to let the laptop backup programme run and clicks
through it, losing hundreds of valuable hours of work and information
when the laptop crashes. These all add up to lost man years of
productivity from minor lapses in policy.
Also, think about the reasons why you currently need to upgrade laptops?
Usually because the RAM and storage become insufficient. New programmes
are coming out that are rendering laptop hard drives and RAM useless as
they are too small to meet current needs. But, if this is all managed
centrally- your program is hosted as a service and your data is stored
centrally, your laptop just becomes a GUI network device. For this to
be a reality an abundance of bandwidth needs to be available. This will
force Data traffic from the LAN to the Internet cloud.
Software as a Service
The environment outlined above is called Software as a Service or SaaS.
It is emerging as the right choice for many people and corporations that
don't want to have to manage their own internal IT departments. Why
host an exchange server when you can find someone to do it for you?
They can do it better than you can and for less money. Similarly,
anything that is not part of your core company competency can be bought
on a subscription basis. When this happens, companies can focus on the
customer service aspects and a lot less on the internal administration
of their organizations. Similar to above, SaaS will drive network
traffic off of the corporate LAN and into the cloud.
Expansion of Wi-max
Soon Wi-max will emerge as a reliable standard and enable more people to
work in a mobile way. This enablement will drive a further trend in
home workers and less reliance on the physical office to perform daily
tasks. Again, this will drive more and more activity to the internet
from the LAN. This is further being driven by the ever rising cost of
petroleum around the world.
What else can be said? It is now costing more and more to fill up the
tank. Less and less people will be able to afford the use of standard
gas powered vehicles to drive and home based working arrangements will
increase. This will be aided by Cisco Telepresence, and other
applications that facilitate the collaboration for businesses across
great distances without people having to travel.
Our technology future relies on expansive and ubiquitous bandwidth.
Level 3 Communications is a company that is positioned well to meet the
ever growing demands for bandwidth between major cities. The company
operates one of the largest communications and Internet backbones in the
world. The internet is not going away any time soon.
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