One of the biggest drivers of bandwidth on the network today is multimedia. While the consumer market often moves first to take advantage of new technologies in this space, there are key learnings that we can take away as we think about enterprise strategy. Web media guru Liz Shannon Miller recently asked her GigaOm audience “Is Facebook the way to go for new web originals?” My vote is yes, as the Facebook API allows content creators to know more about who their audience is than they have ever been able to before. In fact, the power of video entertainment will help those who never understood “this Facebook thing” to have their “eureka” moment. More...

For the past decade, enterprises have wanted to see more hybrid phones, those that do both cellular and WiFi. While we have been able to demonstrate this approach ad nauseam in the labs, the challenge has been in providing enterprise-class feature/functionality using the technology. My Sprint EVO does both 3G/4G cellular and WiFi, but while I have had Skype client on this phone for a while, I haven’t used it. Let me remedy that… More...

Happy World IPv6 Day!

Today, Sprint and other technology companies are joining in the first day set aside for what the Internet Society describes as a 24-hour “test flight” for IPv6. It’s one more small step toward the inevitable worldwide deployment of the next generation of the Internet protocol, since the current protocol, IPv4, is dangerously close to address exhaustion. More...

Only half-kidding, I recently told a capitalist in Canada how IPv4 addresses will be a good investment in the next year. Maybe Canada's Bill St. Arnaud was listening in on that conversation at a coffee shop in Toronto. He now says that IPv4 addresses could soon be valued at $200 each. That isn't unrealistic. Some cable companies already charge $25 a month for a static IP, meaning the "asset" is already worth more than $200 in some "remote" markets. More...

With the number of available Internet addresses nearing depletion under the current IPv4 environment, enterprises need to begin planning for migration to the more robust IPv6 protocol. Because migration can take 18 to 36 months for companies of any size, an immediate start is highly recommended. More...

Cioinsights.com recently revealed its findings in its Emerging Technologies study from interviewing more than 180 IT executives on currently deployed and emerging technologies.  Some results will raise eyebrows and others will validate technologies that at times are considered overly hyped. Most interesting is how much can change in one year. Read on for insights into the direction these IT executives are taking their organizations. More...

When you know the hurricane is coming, you head inland. When you know there’s a blizzard in the forecast, you stock up on candles, batteries, and non-perishable food. The Boy Scouts have it right when they say “Be Prepared.” More...

We can all look back a dozen years now and chuckle at the way we fretted over Y2K, with our silly fears about how everything that involved a computer might grind to a halt on January 1, 2000, sending us back several decades, technologically speaking. In the end, Y2K turned out to be a bit of a non-event. Planes stayed in the air. The lights stayed on. No one rioted. But that success belies the truth … The reason things went so smoothly is not because Y2K was a non-event, but because a lot of people spent a lot of money doing what needed to be done to be sure networks, devices, utilities, transportation, and everything else was ready for the change. More...