As customers, partners and colleagues return home, dispersing across the globe I reflect on a busy week at Mobile World Congress. This is the biggest event in the global calendar for the mobile industry and one of the highlights for me was Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission’s Digital Agenda, speaking this week to announce a Mobile Action Plan for Europe. The UK has just completed its 4G spectrum license sale and discussions are already underway about 5G across Europe...

Ask any citizen of a country that has been through a currency change and my guess is that the initial fear, scepticism and doubt was, in time,  replaced with an acceptance that the change was ultimately beneficial when considering the bigger picture.  Of course some will retain an emotional attachment to the ways of old but often progress and emotion are not easy bed fellows.

It is not a secret that mobile operators are accelerating their plans for LTE (4G) deployments. Every time a new city is connected to LTE, service providers appear in the news and this seems to translate ‘great’ marketing and awareness on this new development. 

If there’s one thing that transforms my city every year it is Mobile World Congress. For one week, MWC is at the very top of the agenda for all press, politicians, hotels, restaurants, taxis and unfortunately even pickpockets! And of course, 1,500 exhibitors and over 67,000 visitors from 205 countries have a positive impact to the city.

I’m glad to write about the IIR Carrier Ethernet awards reception I attended yesterday in Barcelona along with Penny Still representing Juniper Networks. It was a pleasant evening with many of our industry peers. 

With so much of the new network being software-based and software-defined, integration and development have become key skills our customers look to Juniper to provide: design, development, configuration and deployment are essential phases of many of our projects.  To that end we have put in place a Professional Services consulting practice dedicated to management and platforms integration.  Whether integrating into an OSS/BSS platform for end to end provisioning, using the Junos SDK to reach deep into the heart of the network to extract maximum value, or developing sophisticated fault correlation tools to identify when multiple alerts are in fact the result of a single issue, these experts provide the glue to bring it all together.

So today saw the launch of Juniper Networks’ Trusted Mobility Index research and findings. We held an exclusive breakfast meeting with selected journalists to hear the findings of this research in London this morning.

Penny Still introduced the session and set the scene and agenda. She highlighted that the research combined theories and best practices about Trusted Mobility and gave a short summary on how the research was conducted with over 4,000 respondents interviewed in US, UK, Germany, Japan and China.

Today’s speakers at the event included;

• Nushin Hernandez, Analyst, IT Security Analysis and Mobile Security Analysis Services, Canalys
• Paul Gainham, Senior Director, Marketing, EMEA, Juniper Networks
• John Smith, ICT Network Manager, Settle College
• Oliver Crofton, Ethical Hacker, Vigilante Bespoke

There is a mildly humorous saying amongst the acting fraternity that you should never work with children or animals, the inference being that they are likely to do unpredictable things at the most inappropriate times.  In marketing that saying translates to never ask end users opinions on anything because they either tell you things you don’t want to hear or come back with comments you were not expecting.

Not strictly true of course and said a little tongue in cheek but as we looked through the results of the Juniper Networks Trusted Mobility Index report, there were some real surprises.

In this blog post, I'm looking at the global trends in mobile data and the need for new approaches to operator services that can help increase the mobile data margins and help operators play a more decisive and enabling role in the mobile ecosystem. 

‘Congestion ahead take alternative route via xxx’

For those regular commuters using the UK road network an all too familiar and depressing sign that many have become resigned to as more and more traffic fights for comparatively less and less road capacity, particularly at peak hour.  The only salvation at this time of need comes from either a good old fashioned road atlas or satellite navigation, either of which may give you the opportunity to take avoiding action based on an understanding of where you are trying to get to and the possible alternative routes on offer.

Ok so not the most enlightening start to a blog but it does serve as a good if obvious analogy for how organisations should begin to think about planning for handling Internet congestion during the period of the London Olympics (27^th July – 9^th September if you count the Paralympic Games).

It’s February, it’s Barcelona so it’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) time. At MWC Juniper will be highlighting the “Three Innovation Imperatives for Network Innovation and the Next Wave of Mobile Growth”.

The New Network Technical Forum 2011 in Barcelona is almost upon us (25/26^th October).

As the lead marketer at an event that targets the technical leaders from our key EMEA customers and partners, I feel like the guy that was invited to a fancy dress party only to turn up and find everyone soberly dressed whilst I am left looking for the safety pins to hold my toga together.....

I believe intelligent ICT empowers the individual. That's why I welcome the recent statements that the Department of Health has made regarding medical apps and online consultations. In this blog, Neil Pound looks at where this might lead and suggests some conditions for success.