What protects the Boss's iPhone?

The glass used on the iPhone touch surface is a thin chemically tempered glass made by Corning.
At the CES 2012 show Corning have announced a version 2 of the glass which is thinner than the glass currently used on the iPhone. The glass is in use by many other vendors of smart phone and tablets, for example Samsung.

The video (flash) is an advertisement from Corning. The are a couple of other interesting videos available once the advert has played.

A change in School ICT?

Michael Gove has announced a change in the way UK schools teach computing skills to school children. It will be interesting to see how they schools will provide sufficient teachers with knowledge of computer science. It is suggested  there will be move away from teaching general office computing to teaching the kids how to write programs.

I wonder how treating the subject as a science/engineering discipline will go down with the kids?  Learning IT skills used to be a strong career path, but there have been repeated signals from UK businesses that this is not a highly valued skill when IT staff have been the first to be cut and replaced by outsourcing/offshoring.

Bank moves to Google

In an interesting development a large spanish bank with a large overseas branch network has committed to using Google's Business Apps for its office computing, IM Chats and desk top conferencing. Here is a BBC News article. This will affect 110,000 employees at the Bank.

In the early industrial age businesses used to run their own boilers on their sites to produce steam to drive systems of pulley belts to drive machinery. The companies used to have teams of boiler house men, fitters and engineers to support that power infrastructure. Then came the advent of Utility provided electricity to drive machinery in the business. The old ways soon died away. We are likely to see the same in businesses across the globe as they realise they do not need to retain IT staff to support the basic office function computing.

BBVA will need to ensure its data network is up to the job of handling this change in load, but the move will have major implications for its in-house IT Support staff currently engaged in supporting Microsoft Office products.

Edit 21/02/12 Another large company Roche is making a similar move to Business Apps .

Fire Risk Assessing

In the UK there is a requirement that a process of Fire Risk Assessment takes place in office buildings and places such as data centres where employees may be deployed. The fire risk assessment is a formal process. New criteria are being evolved to measure the competency of the Risk Assessors.  There is more detail here.

Reduce your company mobile phone bill.

Many employers provide their employees with mobile phones to allow them to stay in contact when away from the desk. However one down side to this is that employees will use the mobile phone even when a perfectly good extension telephone is within easy reach. It means the cost of mobile calls are higher than they need to be.
There is a a way to reduce this problem. It is call a private mobile phone network. In its most simple form the solution takes the form of a GSM base station located in the office premises. Through a registration process it recognises the employees' mobile phones and handles the call traffic for those mobile phones within range of the private GSM hub. Here's an example and another. There is some capital cost involved to set up the service, but the savings can be substantial.

Satellite Broadband UK

For those living out in the sticks in the UK it can, in some places, be very difficult to get an Internet connection. You can plead with BT but get nowhere. Many people do not realise that you can get satellite Internet ADSL connection at a not unreasonable price. For example a 4 Meg down/1 Meg up link is available via satellite for approximately £50 a month. The up front investment is around £500 for the dish and anciliary equipment. Here's one example of a vendor providing this service. This could be an ideal solution if you have a mobile office and can locate it in a site where the satellite can be "seen."

Robust telephony

If you business depends on in-coming calls to telephones for its survival you need to consider the BCP aspects of your telephone system. If there is a major failure in your telephony switch (PABX) how will your customers call you?  Are there alternate numbers they can call or does your telephony system allow your phone numbers to be immediately diverted to an alternate switch in the event of an outage?
What happens if the cable from your local exchange becomes damaged?

BT offer solutions to these type of issues such as Dual Parenting, Dual Routing, and Route Separacy. There will be a set up and operational cost associated with these services and they may not be offered in all locations. Similar services can be provided by third party companies such as Six Degrees Live Number Service and Gematech's DDI Call Recovery service.

If your business needs call recording as part of its business process you will need to give further consideration as to how this can be achieved in a outage event. Smaller businesses may wish to consider a hosted pabx service where these issues are handled by the provider.