ALKHOBAR, 23 December 2003 — My regular readers know that recently I was in Paris where I dropped in on Alcatel. During my two-day visit to this telecommunications infrastructure provider I watched nearly a dozen presentations and one of the most interesting was about outsourcing.
The word outsourcing can have different meanings depending on the situation. In general, outsourcing is when one company pays another company to provide services which the first company might otherwise have employed its own staff to perform. In outsourcing, a company acquires a product or service without producing it themselves. Outsourcing includes a fixed-limit contractual arrangement covering transfer of the business processes. It may also include a transfer of assets and human resources. The client company focuses on defining the results to obtain, leaving to the outsourcer the responsibility of delivering those results.
Alcatel is pushing outsourcing as a strategic move for the global telecommunications industry. According to Peter Johnson, Alcatel’s director of Outsourcing Business Development, increasingly telecoms are facing difficulties in that they must enhance service, maintain market position, satisfy customers and regulators and all the while reduce costs and improve cash flow. Many telecoms are finding that they lack the expertise, funding and scale to accomplish all these goals. So here comes Alcatel to the rescue. Alcatel can handle all aspects of a telecom from network engineering and planning, to network operations and network maintenance. They can take over, manage, operate and engineer a network as though they were the operator and then sell the capacity back to the telecom provider. They can also take over the associated work force plus contract to provide measurable service level agreements.
Sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but it’s not. For example last year Alcatel took charge of network engineering and planning from Telecom New Zealand. Now, they have been contracted to assume control of Telecom New Zealand’s network operations. Alcatel will completely renew Telecom New Zealand’s network in less than half the time and at half the cost that the telecom initially planned to spend.
The potential for such outsourcing is stunning. Just imagine if Saudi Telecom Company (STC) outsourced all its planning, management, operations and services to Alcatel. As we all know, especially now that it is a publicly held company, STC’s core interest is profit. The actual running of the telecom is secondary. Alcatel claims that outsourcing often brings substantial savings in the cost of operations and service.
Thus, all that senior managers in STC would have to do is contract service level agreements with Alcatel to provide decent customer service and connectivity to all STC subscribers. The entire STC work force could be transferred to Alcatel. That work force would receive training and skill enhancement that would improve individual functionality. Network assets could be transferred and Alcatel would upgrade them in order to enhance connectivity and increase usage. Alcatel would only get paid if they adhered to the service level agreements. If they did not, a penalty would be assessed, bringing in some measure of accountability.
Alcatel’s increased efficiency and effective implementation would bring a reduction in cost.
STC would make more money. The subscribers would be satisfied. And Alcatel would whistle all the way to the bank. I really don’t see any downside to the outsourcing idea. If only someone would consider it, for the first time STC subscribers might all be able to phone home happily ever after.
While we’re here griping, let’s discuss the junk everyone loves to hate -- spam. Local IT vendors have put out figures claiming that the amount of unsolicited commercial e-mail being received by businesses in the Middle East has increased by 100 percent in the past four months. Additionally it is now estimated that spam costs companies in excess of $1 per person, per day, for each employee that has Internet/e-mail access. This is a generalized figure, which rises for companies with large pools of employees or significant numbers of administration-focused employees.
With organizations in the Middle East swamped by the flood of unsolicited mail, three of the region’s solution providers -- Borderware Technologies, Sun Microsystems and Tech Access -- have started a new anti-spam campaign. As well as raising awareness of the business issues associated with unwanted e-mail overload, the campaign will enable companies to test solutions that safeguard e-mail systems at Tech Access‚ Solution Center in Dubai, which is a Sun Authorized iForce Ready Center.
“Until now, spam has not been as much of a problem in the Middle East as it has in Europe and the United States, because spammers didn’t see the Middle East as a target market. However, in recent months, the level of spam has increased significantly, perhaps fueled by the rising population of people going online in the Middle East,” said Dean Bell, regional director, Borderware.
“The situation is only getting worse, as the wider dissemination of e-mail addresses creates a ‘snowball’ effect, accelerating the spam problem. Part of the impetus behind our shared campaign is to help companies in the region understand how they can safeguard their e-mail systems from unwanted messaging,” added Martyn Molnar, solutions architect, Tech Access.
Reducing the impact of spam is a key target of the ongoing security solutions program developed by Sun and Borderware, and supported by Tech Access. During the anti-spam campaign solutions experts will be available to discuss the range of solutions on the market and the benefits of implementing a complete integrated solution.
One of the key messages of the anti-spam campaign is to avoid making a distinction between spam and viruses — both are unwanted deliveries that reduce the effectiveness of companies‚ communication systems. It is important that networks are safeguarded from both. Because spam e-mails are creatively designed to look like something that people would want to read, and sometimes appear to be from a friend or colleague, they are readily opened by employees. This creates the risk of opening the system to viruses.
“Once the message is opened, it is too late. That is why companies require a specific mail firewall that can filter out the harmful material, using much more than content filtering technologies,” Bell commented. “Decision-makers have to look at this issue the same way as they would view a burglar breaking into their home or company. You have to stop the burglar at the perimeter of your property — this is the view we take with spam and related viruses. Operating in this way means that there is now a choice, you do not need to wait until the infected e-mails are on your internal network before being addressed -- they can be checked, filtered, quarantined or returned at the gateway itself.”
I must admit that I have a policy of pressing the delete key on any e-mail that bears even a whiff of spam. Friends with more time on their hands, keep me informed though on the latest trends in annoying mail solicitations. The latest nasty one comes from F&C Management Limited, Exchange House, Primrose Street, London. It reads:
“I am Dr. Mark Thompson. I am representing a small group of Civil Servants, as an investment consultant. They are interested in investing a certain amount of funds in your country. The civil service regulations here prohibit them from involvement in Private Business Practice, hence this letter, soliciting your assistance as our foreign partner. If this proposal suits you, please respond immediately, via my e-mail address: [email protected].”
This is a very sick twist on the African scam of a few years ago. I can only advise people to avoid such “investment offers.” Perhaps 1-2 percent of the individuals who receive these mails respond to them and less than that number are actually sucked into these scams, but that’s enough for these criminals to make millions of dollars annually.
We conclude today’s column by letting you in on a brief overview of Intel’s Middle East marketing roadshow called, “Experience a PC at Home Like Never Before,” which will be traveling to shopping malls around the region. The show opened at Dubai’s Deira City Center and eventually in January it will wend its way to Alrashid Mall in Alkhobar. The roadshow will portray the new digital lifestyle for families in the region.
Visitors to Intel’s Digital Home will have an opportunity to get a hands on grasp of the benefits of state-of-the-art desktop and notebook computers and will witness the wonders of the unwired computing lifestyle. To enhance this understanding, a “family” of actors has been recruited, and short scenes will be played out, exemplifying real life benefits of the digital home. In addition to this, the display will host a gamer’s dream: the first PC in the region featuring Intel’s recently announced Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology Extreme Edition.
Intel has partnered up with Toshiba, IBM, HP, Dell, Sony, and Fujitsu-Siemens, FIC and Emachines to furnish the digital home with top performing machines based on the Intel Pentium 4 Processor with Hyper Threading Technology and on the Intel Centrino mobile technology.
“We are confident that this display will give families an idea about the wide variety of applications that the home PC can offer while they sip an evening tea with loved ones,” said Tanguy de la Horie, Intel’s marketing manager for the Middle East Turkey and Africa region. “By coming into contact with the cutting-edge qualities of the Intel Centrino Mobile Technology and the Intel Pentium 4 Processor with Hyper-Threading technology, visitors will be able to see the significance of a digitally advanced lifestyle and how important it may become for today’s households.”