Last year I wrote about the Colossus rebuild at Bletchley Park. This is a reproduction of the machine that was used to break the German Lorenz ciphers during World War Two, and has a strong claim to being the first electronic programmable computer.
I’m very pleased that the Colossus room has now been greatly improved, enabling visitors to walk all around the machine, seeing between the racks of valves. It’s now much easier to get a good sense of the size of this computer, and the number of components required to make it work. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bletchley park, ciphers, codes, colossus, history
in: Aerospace & Defence by: Pat Galea | No Comments »
In previous posts I have talked about ‘the cloud’, what terms such as IaaS mean, some history and where we’re going. For this post I’m going to look at some of the cloud platforms out there, and discuss issues that organisations should consider when deciding to move onto ‘the cloud’ using an ‘Infrastructure as a Service’ (Iaas) offering.
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Tags: cloud computing, IaaS, open source
in: Uncategorized by: Dominic Tristram | No Comments »
So, Facebook’s initial public offering didn’t result in those investors who managed to buy in making large profits from the increase in the share price that they had hoped for. Facebook got what it wanted – cash to clear their debts, invest and acquire competitors – their executives improved their fortunes, but the initial investors lost out. And it has to be remembered that 25% of those investors were the public. Were they, and the larger investors, just too greedy? Were they misled by Facebook? Whatever the reasons, it looks as if they won’t get their money back in the short term, and it’s by no means a certainty they ever will.
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Tags: Big Data, facebook, IPO, social media
in: Uncategorized by: James Thomas | No Comments »
The UK has intermittent electricity demand and needs to balance it with intermittent electricity supply in order to achieve low carbon economy targets.
Surprise, surprise, balancing the two is becoming more difficult. This is the simple justification for incorporating energy storage in the electricity transmission and distribution networks.
But, if electricity storage on the networks is [technically] necessary, how can it be financed? Easy! First, work out who the customers for energy storage are. Sadly, many storage technology manufacturers may have lost the plot! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: consumers, demand, electricity, energy, energy suppliers, Finance, network operators, renewables, storage, supply, wind
in: Telecoms & Media by: 'Nic Newey | 2 Comments »
Right across the retail banking sector, battles are raging between organisations and their ageing computer systems. While these systems are essential to any financial organisation’s business-as-usual processes, they’re increasingly becoming a liability that prevents banks from innovating and taking advantage of opportunities or countering threats as they arise.
In times of austerity and tightening regulation, it’s more important than ever that banks are able to move quickly to capitalise on changes in the marketplace. This will enable them to win new customers and, importantly, get more revenue out of their existing clientele, maximising what are increasingly narrow margins. To do this successfully, banks need the following:
- A better, more holistic understanding of their customers’ activity and interactions with the bank’s services
- To provide a unified and consistent experience for customers (and internal users), enabling them to access bank services whenever, and through whichever channel they choose
- The ability to develop and launch new products and services to market quickly, including whole new channels
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Banking, Channel Integration, Finance, Multi Channel Framework, Online Banking
in: Banking & Finance by: Jon Durant | No Comments »
Consider the following: I walk into my favourite coffee shop, the Barrista briefly looks at the POS terminal and then says “Hello Jon, your usual latte?”, I reply “yes” and 60 seconds later walk out with my coffee, having paid without touching any cash or taking my wallet out of my pocket or bag.
Do you think it sounds a bit far-fetched, or requires some sort of futuristic Star Trek style technology? Well the answer is “no”, it’s a scenario that is played out daily in America thanks to the innovation of Square in location based payments. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: location based payments, location based services, m-payment, Mobile, mobile payments, payments
in: Banking & Finance by: Jon Durant | 1 Comment »
As a seasoned Internet Banking consumer, and owner of several current accounts from different High Street providers, I was comparing and contrasting the different customer experience on offer from these different providers with my colleague Steve Seymour from IPL’s Enterprise Technology Centre.
There is no doubt that that the “bad guys” are getting smarter. One of my friends recently found out, to his cost (or more correctly the cost of his Bank), that online security requires much more than simply keeping your PC up-to date with Windows updates and having the latest anti-virus software. In his case logging into his bank’s internet banking site via a saved favourite link was his downfall. Unbeknown to him, this had been altered to point to a look-a-like bank home page that siphoned off his credentials. With these, it was straightforward to log in to his bona fide account, make a faster payment transfer before logging him in to the regular bank site as if nothing had happened. Luckily, his suspicions were aroused because of the relatively long delay between the log-in page and the “my account” page for his provider. His bank’s security is very poor, (but surprisingly it’s one of the main providers), fortunately most banks employ at least simple techniques to prevent a customer’s complete credentials being siphoned in this way. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Internet Banking, Internet Banking Security, Internet security, Mobile Banking, security
in: Banking & Finance by: Jason Woodfield | No Comments »
So web 2.0 is here to stay, despite the recent embarrassing antics of Facebook. There are lots of ways it can be used to interact with your customers, but what about the most valuable asset of most knowledge driven companies – your employees? I don’t mean scouring facebook for their drunken photos and giving them a ticking off on Monday morning – everyone’s entitled to let their hair down, and I can’t think of a faster way to make your top talent leave. What I have in mind is an internal, private social network where – like linkedin users or conventional bloggers – your employees actually want to share their knowledge. This kind of system is usually called Enterprise 2.0.
Most of the new generation of enterprise grade collaboration software comes with built in support for things like internal blogs and wikis; and let your employees create their own profile pages with lists of skills and interests, follow the blogs of other staff members, and build a network of colleagues across the enterprise. However, tools like Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 and IBM’s Lotus suite don’t come cheap, so let’s have a look at some of the possible benefits… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 Enterprise Social Networking
in: Business Consulting by: Beth McNally | 1 Comment »
April has seen the launch of SQL Server 2012, the latest version of the powerful RDBMS. It has many new features that enhance performance, TCO, manageability and availability. However, SQL Server 2012, along with SharePoint 2010, also provides another step forward in addressing the concerns of Information Management, the practice of treating an organisation’s information and data as a corporate asset. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: DQS, information management, MDS, Power View, SQL Server 2012
in: Business Consulting by: Richard Back | No Comments »
The Cabinet Office has just closed a consultation on open standards for government projects. The questions asked are worth a read as it shows an encouraging level of enthusiasm for tackling a long-standing problem in government IT – vendor lock-in.
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Tags: government, information management, Internet Banking, Legacy systems, Public sector procurement
in: Government by: Dominic Tristram | No Comments »
