I just don’t see how it can ever be anything other than opt in.

Firstly, why should staff pay for a device they wouldn’t otherwise need if their employer wasn’t telling them their role requires it? Any decent employer will supply their staff with the equipment that will allow them to best utilise their work hours in pursuit of the objectives they are paid to achieve. I believe that any company forcing staff members to provide their own hardware for use at work is putting their own brand at risk, as the act smells of financial weakness and tight fisted management.  In this scenario, any savings in hardware for the company may well be offset by losses in productivity.

How could an employer reasonably enforce phone, tablet or PC standards in a compulsory BYOD environment? And if an employer was relaxed about the standard of devices brought in to work by staff, surely that puts their effectiveness in question and is counter productive?

There have also been a number of concerns raised for a long time about security in a BYOD workplace, and how to keep workplace networks secure when ownership of the devices connected to the network is so diverse. My concern here is the ethical question of how an employer can hope to enforce user policies on hardware they don’t own?

We have an opt in policy at DTS, a few staff really like their Mac’s and run with those, but it’s certainly not expected, and the clear understanding is that they will need to conform to the same polices as staff with company supplied phone/laptops during work hours.

Brendan Ritchie

Recently we provisioned a WAN for a company that has over 500 staff spread across its offices in Sydney and Wellington. They needed to be able to run HD video and IP voice between sites, and the design needed to be scalable and highly available.

This is what we went with:

The key is to find a solution that fits well within best practice deployment, client expectations and budgeted costs. In the case study above, we had a client with substantial ICT knowledge within their team so they had a fair idea as to the design they were after, our job was to put the parts together and present a number of options with different speeds and price points so they could choose the solution that best met their needs.

Some key benefits to the DTS model:

• We can provide one invoice for all locations in a single currency (NZD or AUD) if desired
• Have help desks located in both countries, staffed by techs with strong local knowledge
• Single point account management for all locations
• End to end visibility and vendor simplification, no more blame game with different vendors blaming each other when faults occur

Hopefully that brief explanation helps shed some light on what we do here at DTS to facilitate trans-Tasman business operations.

If you have any questions, we are always happy to talk.

Brendan Ritchie

Upload speeds are becoming ever more important as video conferencing, IP telephony and cloud based applications are embraced at an exponentially greater rate and working from home becomes more common (unless you work for Yahoo). The result is that satellite offices and home users now require the ability to push content out to other sites at a faster rate, and the required speeds will only increase as new applications are developed and refined.

Australian business users on existing high cost/low speed legacy symmetrical connections will likely move to NBN connections in high numbers given the low costs and higher top end speeds. But given they are deployed using GPON technology and are asymmetrical, the details around traffic classes and upload speeds will be crucial if the ICT community is to have any clarity on the overall effectiveness of the coalitions plan, and the effect that a migration by SME’s to NBN plans would have on business function.

Graph: Percentage of symmetrical versus asymmetrical circuits on the DTS network in Australia and New Zealand.

The Ultra-Fast Broadband initiative in New Zealand had a clear focus on the business, health and education sectors, and has ensured that part of its product suite includes low cost, high speed, symmetrical and fully allocated CIR options alongside very well priced asymmetrical connections that are largely EIR. The suggested NBN model put forward by the coalition has a lot of work needed before it becomes a blueprint for future business success.

The key is that we don’t want to move clients from xDSL technology to an equivalent, we need improvement from the outset and scalability, and right now I don’t believe the coalition has provided us with enough information to definitively state that their version of the NBN will deliver.

To see our comparison of the NZ UFB and Australian NBN initiatives click here.

Brendan Ritchie

When I first started with DTS 6+ years ago, data was a core earner, one which we based a large proportion of our business model on, but it is increasingly irrelevant in terms of being a driver of future growth. Usage will continue to rocket upwards, but per unit price decreases driven by wholesale cost reductions and competitive market pressures will continue at an equivalent or greater rate, negating growth in client numbers to some extent.

Diversification is what is needed for future growth. As seen in our new data centre and growth in voice and managed hardware sales, future growth will come from selling more services that are logical additions to the core traditional ISP offerings of circuit + data.

The other clear result from the last financial year to is DTS’s continued fast paced growth. We met or exceeded all key budgeted goals which leaves me to say a big thank you to our customers, channel partners and staff for making that possible. With a big team effort we have grown revenue 20% on last year, built our first data centre, met voice revenue budget, deployed several large WAN’s with between 50-200 sites, and moved to a 10Gbps core network.

Thanks again to all those that have contributed to our success over the last 12 months.

Brendan Ritchie

We are very pleased to announce that our new Data centre is now open!

Located on level 4 of CBD Towers in Main Street Upper Hutt, our facility has already attracted clients such as Hutt City Council, Upper Hutt City Council, Resolve Technology, BDO and others.

For pictures of the build and final product, you can visit our gallery here.

Our Data Centre has the following features:

• 24/7 swipe card access for full rack holders, 24/7 accompanied access for those with gear in a community rack
• Dual diverse FTTF fibre access
• 24/7 service monitoring and reporting
• 10/100/1000Mbps ports available
• Generator and N+1 redundant UPS backup power included (cutover tested monthly)
• Redundant Cisco and Juniper switching and routing
• Peering at CHIX, WIX, HIX and APE
• Smart hands service available
• Cabinets are 1.2m deep and .8m wide (1.2m by 19″ mounting depth)

If you would like to come in and inspect the new facility, please give us a call on 0508 387 669 and we will be happy to organise a time to do a walk through with you.

For pricing information please visit http://dts.net.nz/hosting/co-location/

Kind regards,

The DTS Team

We have been informed that this change needs to happen immediately and unfortunately have had very less forewarning.

Risk: Low

Potential Services Affected DTS Internet Circuits

Reason for Work: Software updates on core network

Impact Expected:  Brief switching breaks within work window.

Work Start Date: 22/03/2013 0000 (12:00AM)

Work End Date: 22/03/2013 0600 (06:00AM)

Contact Email: support@dts.net.nz

Contact Phone: 0508 DTS NOW

At the close of this outage window we expect all services to resume as normal. If you find that any of your services are still affected after the close of the outage window please contact DTS support on 0508 DTS NOW or 04 918 0160.

We have been informed that this change needs to happen immediately and unfortunately have had very less forewarning.

Risk: High

Potential Services Affected DTS Internet Circuits

Reason for Work: Emergency change to configuration on Network

Impact Expected:  2-6x 2 minutes outage within work window.

Work Start Date: 15/03/2013 0000 (12:00AM)

Work End Date: 15/03/2013 0600 (06:00AM)

Contact Email: support@dts.net.nz

Contact Phone: 0508 DTS NOW

At the close of this outage window we expect all services to resume as normal. If you find that any of your services are still affected after the close of the outage window please contact DTS support on 0508 DTS NOW or 04 918 0160.

The clear facts are that Orcon has been up for sale for some time now, but no buyer has been forthcoming, at least not with an acceptable offer, until the last few weeks. The identity of the buyer is not known for sure at this stage, but fairly well grounded market speculation is that a director of Vivid Networks, Warren Hurst, is heading up the sale.

I am led to believe that Orcon is not profitable in it’s own right, and having failed to sell off this unproductive asset, Kordia chose to merge the two companies in order to reduce costs and secure some economies of scale. Having undertaken the merging of the Kordia/Orcon brands, an offer was put forward, and given that Kordia’s net debt has increased $9.4 million from December 2011 to a current total of $75.3 million, a one off cash influx to the tune of $40 million is crucially important. Add to that the analogue shut down that looms ever closer (set for the end of 2013) which will leave a big hole in Kordia’s recurring revenue, and you have the sale of Orcon as a top priority.

While Orcon and Kordia have merged in recent weeks, it seems that former Orcon staff are now set to be de-merged, so that process, which included several redundancies, looks to have been an unfortunate misadventure.  So, it is the mixture of an under performing asset, looming reductions in Kordia’s earnings and a high level of debt that has lead to the (probable) sale of one of New Zealand’s top 4 ISP’s.

Anything in here I have got wrong? Let me know.

Brendan

If you have a fibre connection, backup is easy -  install a VDSL or ADSL2+ connection. They are low cost, and allow for fairly good speeds when needed. DTS can also configure BGP (or one of a number of other options) to provide automatic fail over between services.

But if your primary circuit is VDSL or ADSL2+ due to a lack of fibre availability, what are your options? With more and more business applications moving to the cloud and IP Telephony gaining in momentum, businesses can’t afford to be down for long, and the Chorus support process can be a slow moving beast.

There is little point in running another copper service to the same exchange as you still have a single common point of failure. Wireless is an option, but it would need to be unlicensed to come in at a realistic price point, and would still likely cost more than the primary copper link.

With the emergence of 4G, and even with some existing 3G speeds (carrier and location dependent), we are seeing a useful redundant technology come into play. Most of our clients have at least one 3G or 4G device, and a docking station in a small to medium sized office environment can provide a useful short term solution for all staff to use while work on the primary circuit is undertaken.

I can’t see 4G being a primary option for SMB’s due to its lack of a CIR component and comparatively high data charges, but given the low cost of a docking station and the fact most people already have a mobile device of one sort or another, they certainly make for a useful DR tool.

Positives:

• Content providers such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Akamai, etc all peer out of Sydney, so providing cheap point to point connectivity to this wealth of data is of huge benefit. If the price per Mbps is significantly lower than that currently available over southern cross, ISP’s may well look to leave aside local caching options, which in turn brings more content closer to shore.
• Without being able to confirm this, the building of this second cable “may” remove some barriers around dual country access as required by some of the content providers listed above and make it more likely that NZ will have those networks move on to our shores in the years to come, providing they aren’t put of by Telecom’s partial ownership in both cables, and that domestic demand warrants the expense.

Negatives:

• Both through the fact that Telecom will own a large share of the Southern Cross Cable and the proposed Tasman Global Access, and because the Southern Cross Cable will still be the only backup option for ISP’s, Telecom will have a massive say in wholesale bandwidth pricing. And in reality, I can’t see Telecom being keen to undermine their SCC revenue.
• There will not be a third player in this market for the forseeable future, Telecom has essentially agreed to pay one third of the $70 million price tag to capture the trans-Tasman cable market. With a current design capacity of 30 terabits per second, demand will not get near supply for many years to come. Is this less about creating competition, as Pacific Fibre sought to do, and more to do with ensuring no new entrants can build a successful business case to enter the market?
• Whether it is based in reality or not, this cable doesn’t help get NZ away from the image of simply being an extension of the Australian ICT landscape.

Brendan Ritchie