IT/ Computer & Telecom Update

August, 2009

IT/COMPUTER

SPECIAL SECTIONS
Wall Street Journal Technology-Innovation Awards September 14

EDITORIAL FEATURES
• Computer – September editorial feature: Multicore
• Computerworld – August 10 editorial features: Technology Feature: Unified
Communications; Security Manager’s Journal, Career Watch; August 17
editorial features: Security Manager’s Journal, Career Watch; August 24
editorial features: Security Manager’s Journal, Career Watch; September 7
editorial features: Technology Feature: Business Intelligence, Security
Manager’s Journal, Career Watch
• Dr. Dobb’s Report – August 31 editorial feature: Web Development
• Information Week – August 17 editorial feature: Strategic Security: Virtual
Lockdown; August 31 editorial feature: Incident Response Diaries: Don’t Let
This Happen to You; September 7 editorial feature: Strategic Security: Data
Leak Prevention; September 14 editorial feature: Information Week 500
• Network World – August 17 editorial feature: New Data Center:
Virtualization’s Next Step; August 24 editorial feature: Special Focus: VoIP;
August 31/September 7 editorial feature: Careers: Make Yourself Layoff-Proof
• PC Magazine – October editorial feature: Ultimate Mobile Guide

LAYOFFS
Contec, LLC
Schenectady, NY
Contec Holdings Ltd., a cable-box repair company in Schenectady, laid off 132
workers today in response to weakening demand from cable companies. The
reduction amounts to 60 percent of the company's work force. Contec will retain 85
engineers, corporate executives and support staff at its Schenectady headquarters.
Approximate Affected Workforce: 101-500 The Business Review

Intuit, Inc.
Mountain View, CA
Reno, NV
About 25 workers in Reno are among those being laid off by Intuit Inc. Officials for
the software company based in Mountainview, Calif., say the employees in Intuit's
small business division in Reno are among 120 layoffs nationwide the company
announced earlier this month. Corporate spokeswoman Holly Perez says the jobs
have become redundant as a result of Intuit's acquisition of PayCycle, a leading
online payroll company serving small businesses, accountants and financial
institutions.
Approximate Affected Workforce: 101-500 The Associated Press
TRENDS
IT Job Market Improving, Gradually
By Deborah Gage, Information Week, July 14, 2009

Federal, state, and local governments are all expected to increase spending on
technology over the next five years, creating jobs across a wide range of industries
and government agencies, according to a series of new reports.

The short-term outlook is not as bright, though. Although a small number of

corporate chief information officers expect to be hiring this quarter, according to one
study, many are wrestling with flat or falling IT budgets and trying to cut costs.

Driven by the Obama administration's interest in healthcare, cybersecurity, and

better interagency communication, the Federal government is expected to boost
spending on information technology to $90.3 billion, up 3.5 percent by 2014.

State and local governments, meanwhile, are expected to boost spending by 3.9
percent to $60.1 billion by 2014.

Chief areas of interest for the federal government are healthcare, cybersecurity,
energy and government transparency, according to Input, a consultant in Arlington,
Virginia, that issued the reports.

Cloud computing initiatives in particular stand to grow as U.S. government agencies

are forging ahead with plans to adopt cloud services or build their own.

States too are interested in healthcare, but are also looking at technology for
education, public safety, social services and transportation, Input said.

Most corporate chief information officers -- 85 percent -- don't plan to hire this
quarter and 6 percent said they will cut back, according to a survey developed by
Robert Half Technology, a recruiter in Menlo Park, California, for 1,400 CIOs at
companies of at least 100 employees.

Eight percent of the CIOs told Robert Half they are hiring, however, and nearly three
quarters are looking for people who know network administration. Other skills in
demand are Windows server administration and desktop support. Jobs are most
likely to be found in transportation, communications and utilities, followed by
professional services and finance, insurance, and real estate.

A second survey of 202 North American IT managers by Computer Economics found

that nearly half plan to cut jobs this year and around a quarter are hiring.

The IT job market does appear to be doing better than the job market as a whole.
According to the Labor Department's most recent monthly employment report, for
May, jobs were still being cut faster than they were being created.
TELECOM

EDITORIAL FEATURES
• RCR Wireless News – September 7 editorial features: Retail Holiday Special
Report; Wireless Technologies; Towers; Mobile Entertainment; Mobile
Marketing/ Advertising; September 16-17 editorial feature: Official Print Show
Daily – 4G World
• Electronic Design – September 10 editorial features: Wireless Everywhere; RF
Power Amplifiers; m60 GHz Hi-Speed Wireless; Software; MIMO Test;
September 24 editorial features: Military Electronics; FPGA Tools;
Communications; Dataconverters; October 1 editorial features: King Size
Special Issue: Ideas for Design
• Microwaves & RF – September issue editorial features: Military Electronics;
Power Transistors; Power Dividers & Combiners; Testing for 4G
• Telecommunications – September editorial feature: Global Convergence
Strategies
• Wireless Design & Development – September editorial features: Signal
Processing; RF Components and Subsystems; Sensors; Filters; WiFi vs.
WiMAX; Designing for Medical Applications
• Wireless Week – September editorial features: Mobile Marketing &
Advertising; Security; Network Quality Concerns

LAYOFFS
Verizon Communications, Inc.
New York, NY
Phone company Verizon says it will cut 8,000 jobs from among employees and
contractors before the end of the year to keep costs in line as the recession saps
demand from businesses for telecommunications services. Executives said the cuts
will come from the wireline side of the business.
Approximate Affected Workforce: over 1000 Associated Press

Affiliated Computer Services

Dallas, TX
Prince George, BC
About 300 workers at a Prince George, BC, call centre will be working their last shift
on Tuesday after a Dallas-based company decided to close its largest Canadian
operation. The workers were told in April that the company had lost its main client
for the once-thriving operation, which used to handle three million calls a year at its
central Interior location. Since then, Affiliated Computer Services had been seeking a
replacement client, but without success. On Monday the company's Prince George
general manager, Gurg Sarohia, confirmed that the vast majority of ACS's workforce
would work their last day on July 14.
Approximate Affected Workforce: 101-500 CBC News

Teleperformance USA
Salt Lake City, UT
Akron, OH
Call center operator Teleperformance USA will lay off 250 employees in Akron on
Aug. 31, reducing staff by half because an unidentified client is streamlining
operations.
Approximate Affected Workforce: 101-500 Plain Dealer

Tellabs, Inc.
Naperville, IL
In a restructuring announced Monday, Naperville-based communications-equipment
manufacturer Tellabs Inc. disclosed it will lay off about 150 more employees. In
October, the company announced it would cut 280 jobs, or about 8 percent of its
workforce, as sales sagged in a tough economy. That trend appears to have
continued.
Approximate Affected Workforce: 101-500 Chicago Tribune

TRENDS
Sitting on Cloud Nine
By Martin Creaner, Telecommunications, July 6, 2009

Over the past year or so, cloud computing has become all the rage. Everyone is
talking about it as the next great hope for the IT industry in general and
communications in particular. But I have to wonder if those who see cloud computing
as a sort of miracle worker really know what it is. If you ask 10 people to supply a
definition of cloud computing, you’ll likely get 10 divergent responses.

But first things first — cloud computing is not a technology play — in fact I would be
hard-pressed to identify a single piece of new technology that is fundamental to
cloud. And unlike Twitter or Facebook, it's not a social-psychology phenomenon in
any real sense — there is no “man-in-the-street” movement that is driving the
uptake or need for cloud computing. It is one of those rare beasts — a practical,
common sense driven initiative.

Putting it simply, cloud computing makes much more efficient use of resources. In
the early stages, these resources are essentially processing power and storage, but
increasingly the focus of cloud will converge on efficient use of software resources
from a bewildering array of sources. The concept of a user being able to gain access
to, and pay for, these resources on a per-use basis makes great economic sense for
everyone from the lone mobile game developer in his garage, to the uber-large scale
financial institution. It also happens to be industry changing. Unless someone spots a
fatal flaw with the concept, over the next 10 years we will move from a
predominantly distributed computing and storage world to a centralized computing
and storage world.

What makes cloud so very interesting is that every one of the global vertical
industries (telecom, financial, retail, etc.) has to have two conversations about the
cloud — first, how do we become a cloud user to enable more efficient operations;
second, how do we leverage our existing platform assets to become a cloud
provider?
It’s about the bottom line

The best way to understand the force behind cloud computing and make it accessible
to the masses is to talk about it in purely financial terms. Let’s say you’re a
developer in a large communications company, and you want to launch a new
project. You’d probably have to sit down and write out a purchase requisition to buy
the new hardware and software. That will go through the approval cycle, and once
it’s been signed off, you’re probably looking at a six- to 12-week order timeframe. So
all told you’ve been delayed about three to four months before your project can
really get off the ground.

By contrast, in the world of cloud computing, you’d log on to something like the
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and purchase capacity for a few cents or
dollars an hour. Instead of spending $30,000 or more on hardware and software —
to say nothing of being delayed by weeks or even months — you can be up and
running instantly and with a completed solution for a few hundred dollars in
infrastructure cost. This is the propaganda anyway from the cloud suppliers, and it is
a reasonably credible argument.

From the point of view of an IT department within a large service provider, this is a
stunningly brilliant idea. It gives them the flexibility they need and takes away the
pain of maintaining the infrastructure. Instead, the entire infrastructure resides with
a third party who is getting huge economies of scale.

Amazon has very publicly run with this concept, and undoubtedly we’ll see many
other giant players such as Google, Cisco, IBM, Juniper and Sun making a big splash
in this world. With their access to hardware and/or data centers, they won’t have any
trouble scaling this type of environment and offering it at an attractive price. This is
the concept known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

But the cloud vision also embraces Platform as a Service (PaaS), and the long
established Software as a Service (SaaS). In these two scenarios, we have
companies offering either a comprehensive solution stack as a service — referred to
as PaaS; or online use of discrete software applications on a per-use basis —
referred to as SaaS.

So a model like this makes a lot of sense, but there’s always a downside, isn’t there?
I’d say one of the biggest concerns people have with cloud computing is security. I’m
not questioning the cloud providers’ ability to shore up their infrastructure and
platforms; rather whether potential customers genuinely trust them enough to put
their mission-critical data in there where they may or may not be able to touch it
when they most need it.

It’s an irrational fear ... but a fear nonetheless. To counter this, I expect a lot of
companies are eyeing opportunities for security overlays on top of the public cloud.
There’s also a movement toward private clouds, where a big corporation might build
its own cloud where hundreds or thousands of employees can plug into it. This would
certainly alleviate any fears of losing control of your data or processes.
Clouds: the great communications savior?

Communications companies in particular are questioning how they shift their own
business models to allow them to emerge as one of the winners in the new cloud
world. They are looking at everything from opening up their own data centers to
hosting other third parties, to (more realistically I believe) opening up their own
“crown jewel” applications and offering them in a Platform as a Service fashion.

For example, a service provider might expose their billing system as a third-party
service in the cloud. Customers would be able to pay a fee on a per-transaction or
other revenue sharing basis and plug into the billing system. Other opportunities
surround their service delivery systems, their location systems and so on.

This goes back to the idea of a “two-sided” business model that TM Forum has been
talking about for the past year, where traditional communications companies morph
from only delivering services to end users downstream to also opening up their core
capabilities and offering them to upstream customers. In this case, the services
would be offered through the cloud.

Now whether any service provider is doing this today is another matter entirely. It’s
certainly something they are talking about, but it’s not a trivial task to take your
formerly internal systems and reconfigure them so they are suitable for consumption
by the outside world. Risk and scalability are the two key watchwords here. On one
hand, they could make the significant investment to open up their typically closed
internal systems only to find that there is no market for such a platform. On the
other hand, they could find the service is a resounding success and realize that they
just can’t handle the global scale that cloud services imply.

At TM Forum, we’re in a great position to help providers who want to reach for the
cloud. Our Service Delivery Framework feeds very strongly into enabling providers to
manage their environments so they can open up their interfaces and expose their
services in a cloud setting. We’ve also got our IPsphere program, which is all about
creating federated services from multiple providers in a cloud. Our Information
Framework (SID) and our SOA-based Solution Frameworks (NGOSS) architecture is
the underpinning for the expansion of communications companies into the cloud.
This and many more of our cloud initiatives (and those of our member companies)
will be showcased at our Management World Americas event in Orlando this
December.

We may still be a ways from pervasive cloud computing, but I’m confident that the
cost savings, time-to-market and other advantages of this kind of infrastructure will
get communication companies to see cloud computing as a mainstream challenge
and opportunity for their enterprise. So if you’re not discussing this within your
company, now is the time to start!