CONNECTIONS PLUS SEPT_OCT 2014

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014

Y T I

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LE I B U

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spotlight on a changing mobile world

O ISS

The Millennials:

Pushing IT in new directions

Also Inside:

Mobile’s Next Frontier

A+ For Educators

Smart Cities

Formerly

Magazine

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CONTENTS 22

Fe a t u r e s

22 21st Century Classrooms Innovation is everywhere

30 Smart Cities More than a digital revolution

30 Departments Editor’s Note Mobile Movements

4 6

New & Noteworthy

34

The Back Page

38

member of:

I n the N ext Issue

>> Look Ahead 2015 audited by:

www.connectionsplus.ca

The M2M Invasion.

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E D I TO R ’S N OT E

creating “the workplace of the future by consolidating our Toronto operations in one innovative space that will inspire collaboration, teamwork and learning.”

On Sept. 9, The Conference Board of Canada released a report entitled Workplace Preferences of Millennials and Gen X: Attracting the 2020 Workforce. It reveals that “there are similarities as well as differences between these two generations of workers and offers suggestions on how organizations could improve their ability to attract and retain both groups. The report notes that workplace cultures shaped by “exiting” Baby Boomers may not be satisfying the he cover story in this, the first Mobility Issue of Connec- needs of either Millennials or Generation X. Other findings in the report include: tions+, focuses on just how much influence the Millennial • Millennials are more confident of achieving their career generation will soon have on every facet of organizational strucgoals than Gen Xers, but also expect faster promotions and ture and in particular the IT department. switch jobs twice as often.

That influence starts in the office, but certainly will not end • Managers need to become more transparent about career there. Be it in e-health, in the smart community or in the classpaths and requirements, provide more opportunities for deroom, even in the cloud, they are changing all the rules. velopment, increase mobility through lateral moves and job In the piece, Tim Branham, CIO of Fujitsu America Inc., says rotations, recognize achievement and provide greater acthat the net impact is a fundamental questioning of the way cess to leaders. things were done in the past: “Millennials have had a very pro• GenX is only about two-thirds the size of the Boomer generafound impact on IT and in a very positive way,” he says. “This tion and by 2020, Millennials will represent the largest cohort younger generation is constantly pushing the use of more conTo $4,250 Cash Back! of working Canadians. sumer-based user experiences and forcing Up age old ideas and “With the oldest Millennials turning 35 and Gen X turning 50,” says paradigms to be broken.”

The up and coming generation of workers, he adds, want Ruth Wright, director of human resources research with the board, their work experience to look and feel more and more like their “they already have substantial work experience and many are climbing the leadership ranks.” social, personal and consumer experience.

The board noted in a release that organizations need to separate Consulting firm Deloitte, for example, is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Bay Adelaide Centre East. Currently facts from stereotypes to capitalize on future workers.

C+ Don’t throw away your old testers. Trade them in for cash when you upgrade to a Fluke Networks Versiv™ under construction, as the anchor tenant, DSX-5000 Deloitte managing CableAnalyzer™. Buy between August 25, 2014 and December 31, 2014 and Fluke Networks will partner and chief executive Frank Vettese says is each qualifying cable tester you trade in, and an additional $250 when you purchase a pay the youcompany $2,000 for

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+ the mag azine for ict professionals

Editor Paul Barker 416-510-6752 pbarker@connectionsplus.ca Senior Publisher Maureen Levy 416-510-5111 mlevy@connectionsplus.ca Art Director Mary Peligra Production Manager Kim Collins Creative Advertising Services Mike Chimienti Circulation Manager Barbara Adelt 416-442-5600 ext. 3546 badelt@bizinfogroup.ca Print Production Manager Phyllis Wright Advertising Sales Maureen Levy 416-510-5111 mlevy@connectionsplus.ca www.connectionsplus.ca

Vice President Alex Papanou

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Want to double your money? Trade-in your fiber modules with your qualifying tester and you can earn w w w. c o n n e c t i o n s p l u s . c a Volume 1, Issue $4,000. If you buy a DSX-5000Qi, DSX-5000QOi, or DSX-5000NTB and trade in your fiber5modules with your September/October 2014 DTX-1800, or other qualifying tester, we’ll give you $4,000 cash back. The only requirement is that you must Formerly Magazine purchase a kit with a quad fiber module, and trade in two sets of fiber modules.

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Step 1:

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We acknowledge financialAugust support 25, 2014 and Head Office Purchase an eligible DSX-5000 CableAnalyzer™ tester the between of the Government of Canada through BIG Magazines LP, a div. of Glacier December 31, 2014. the Canada Periodical Fund of the

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BIG Holdings Company Ltd. Department of Canadian Heritage.

Fl Head office: 80 Valleybrook Drive, PrintToronto, out the claim ON rebate Canada M3B 2S9 form online at www.flukenetworks.com/copper-on M Tel: 416-442-5600 Fax:416-510-5134 Editorial Advisory Board Subscriptions P Toll Free: 1-800-268-7742 ext. 3546 (CAN.) Canada, 1 year $44.95 + taxes (HST Keith Fortune, CET, Ship 1-800-387-0273 your eligible trade-in units and form to Fluke Networks by January 31, 2015. #890939689).

United States U.S. $46.95.

Western Regional Manager, ext. 3546 (U.S.) JD Foreign U.S. $73.95. Single copy in Canada Electron Metal AIG Inc. $8, in USA $10 US, elsewhere $10 US. ID Editorial purpose Fluke Networks pays you back up to $2,000 for your old tester, $4,000 with fiber modules, Henry Franc, RCDD/OSP Connections+ targets 60,000+ individuPrinted in Canada All rights reserved.

The A Senior Account Manager, and an additional $250 if you purchase acontents GOLD of support contract. this publication may not be als who purchase, design, specify, install, Professional Support at Belden reproduced either in part or in full without W and test structured cabling, netEligible products tomaintain trade in: Eligible p the consent of the copyright owner(s).

Brantz Myers, B.Sc Math working and telecom products as well A Fluke/Fluke Networks DSP-4000, DTX-1800, DTX-1200, DTX-LT, DTX-ELT DSX-5000 and Computing Science ISSN: 2292-2202 (Print) as facilities management specialists and ISSN: 2292-2210 (Online) Director of Healthcare Business Developsenior executives who are responsible for Microtest/Fluke Networks OMNIScanner, OMNIScanner 2 DSX-5000 Ter ment - Cisco Systems Canada Co. overseeing the implementation and instalPostal information Offe Psiber WireXpert lation of these initiatives.

DSX-5000 Return undeliverable mail to Circulation Peter Sharp, RCDD, AMIEE is su Dept., Connections Plus, 80 Valleybrook Senior Telecommunications • JDSU Consultant 40G Certifier DSX-5000 offe Drive, Toronto, ON Canada M3B 2S9.

Giffels Associates Limited/IBI Group Connections+ is published by Business Canada Post Canadian Publication Mail dat IDEAL LanTEK, LanTEK II DSX-CFP-Q Agreement No.40069240.

Information Group, a division of BIG Magacom Alex Smith, President • Connectivitywerx Agilent WireScope Pro, 350 DSX-OFPzines WireScope L.P., a leading Canadian information From time to time we make our subscription list available to select comare panies and organizations whose product or service may interest you. If company with interests in daily and comits you do not wish your contact information to be made available, please Rob Stevenson, RCDD/NTS Specialist Wavetek LT8600 contact us via one of the following methods. Phone: 1-800-668-2374 Fax: munity newspapers and business-to-busidow Communications Division Manager 416-442-2200 E-Mail: jhunter@businessinformationgroup.ca Mail to: • Guild Electric Ltd. Any other Copper Cabling ness information services. tester with a frequency Privacy Officer,2014 80 Valleybrook Drive,of Toronto, ON Canada M3Bor 2S94 greater Jan/Feb Connections+ Certification range 250MHz Con President Bruce Creighton

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Canada

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Step 4:

Terms and Conditions:

Offer good in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico only. The Fluke Networks’ qualifying tools must be purchased between August 25, 201 is subject to change at any time. Fluke Networks reserves the right to substitute a tool of equal or greater value. This promotion may not be u offer from Fluke Networks or its distribution partners, including Lifetime Buyback. Rebate checks will be shipped 8-10 weeks after receipt of t

Start Saving Money Today Up To $4,250 Cash Back!

Trade in your old copper certification tester for a DSX-5000 and get it right the first time!

Don’t throw away your old testers. Trade them in for cash when you upgrade to a Fluke Networks Versiv™ DSX-5000 CableAnalyzer™. Buy between August 25, 2014 and December 31, 2014 and Fluke Networks will payFluke you $2,000 for each qualifying tester you trade in, and an additional Networks willcable pay you $2,000 for each$250 when you purchase a Distributed GOLD support contract.

qualifying cable tester you trade in, and an Want to double your money? Trade-in your fiber modules with your qualifying tester and you can earn additional $250 when you purchase a GOLD $4,000. If you buy a DSX-5000Qi, DSX-5000QOi, or DSX-5000NTB and trade in your fiber modules with your support (until December DTX-1800, or othercontract. qualifying tester, we’ll give you $4,000 cash 31, back. 2014) The only requirement is that you must

by:

fication tester for a first time!

purchase a kit with a quad fiber module, and trade in two sets of fiber modules.

Networks Versiv™ uke Networks will hen you purchase a

Step 1:

1.800.GRAYBAR Purchase an eligible DSX-5000 CableAnalyzer™ tester between August 25, 2014 and www.graybarcanada.com December 31, 2014.

Step 2:

Print out the rebate claim form online at www.flukenetworks.com/copper-on

d you can earn r modules with your ment is that you must

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Want to double your money? Trade-in your fiber you can earn $4,000. If you buy a DSX-5000Qi, DSX-5000QOi, or Eligible products to trade in: Eligible products to purchase: DSX-5000NTB and trade in your fiber modules with Fluke/Fluke Networks DSP-4000, DTX-1800, DTX-1200, DTX-LT, DTX-ELT DSX-5000, DSX-5000/GLD your DTX-1800, or other qualifying tester, we’ll give you Microtest/Fluke Networks OMNIScanner, OMNIScanner 2 DSX-5000QI, DSX-5000QI/GLD $4,000 cash back. The only requirement is that you Psiber WireXpert DSX-5000QOI, DSX-5000QOI/GLD must purchase a kit with a quad fiber module, and trade JDSU 40G Certifier DSX-5000NTB, DSX-5000NTB/GLD in two sets of fiber modules.

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25, 2014 and

per-on

y 31, 2015. with fiber modules,

Ship your eligible trade-in units and form to Fluke Networks by January 31, 2015.

Fluke Networks pays you back up to $2,000 for your old tester, $4,000 with fiber modules, modules with your qualifying tester and and an additional $250 if you purchase a GOLD support contract.

IDEAL LanTEK, LanTEK II

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Wavetek LT8600 Eligible products to purchase: Any other Copper Cabling Certification tester with a frequency range of 250MHz or greater DSX-5000, DSX-5000/GLD

For more information and a list of eligible products, please is subject to change at any time.

Fluke Networks reserves the right to substitute a Canada tool of equal or greater representative value. This promotion may not be used or combined with any other promotional contact your local Graybar or visit our DSX-5000NTB, DSX-5000NTB/GLD offer from Fluke Networks or its distribution partners, including Lifetime Buyback. Rebate checks will be shipped 8-10 weeks after receipt of the dated invoice and trade-in product. A dated invoice with a completed rebate form be included in the submission to be eligible for the rebate. It is the responsibility of the customer and not the DSR or distributor to website atmust www.graybarcanada.com/copperoncashin DSX-CFP-Q-ADD-R DSX-5000QI, Terms DSX-5000QI/GLD and Conditions:

Offer good DSX-5000QOI/GLD in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico only. The Fluke Networks’ qualifying tools must be purchased between August 25, 2014 and December 31, 2014. This promotion DSX-5000QOI,

complete the rebate claim form. All submissions are subject to verification and audit. Submissions received after January 31, 2015 are void and will not be processed. Any taxes/fees

DSX-OFP-Q-ADD are the responsibility of the receiver. This offer is not available to Fluke Networks’ distributors, Fluke and Fluke Networks’ sales staff, or Fluke Networks’ service centers. Fluke Networks, its distributors or its service centers are not responsible for late, lost or misdirected submissions. Visit www.flukenetworks.com/copper-on for a full list of qualifying products and to download your rebate submission form.

greater Contact your local Fluke Networks Distribution Sales Representative or Authorized Distributor with questions, or call 1-800-283-5853.

hased between August 25, 2014 and December 31, 2014. This promotion This promotion may not be used or combined with any other promotional d 8-10 weeks after receipt of the dated invoice and trade-in product. A

©2014 Fluke Corporation. 8/2014 6003520

Mo b i l e Mo v e m e n t s

Rogers Centre is among the 29 major league ball parks that have installed Apple iBeacons, a new class of low-powered and low-cost transmitters.

MLBAM hitting grand slams From iBeacons to a player tracking application, mobile is front and centre.

The future is now at MLB Advanced Media, the Internet and interactive division of Major League Baseball.

Better known as MLBAM, it was founded 14 years ago when Commissioner Bud Selig and the 30 club owners formed an entity that today operates all of the league’s Web, mobile and interactive rights.

Joe Inzerillo, the organization’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, outlined some of the many advances that have occurred since its official launch in 2001 at a recent press briefing organized by Cisco Systems Inc. in Toronto. Cisco’s involvement first came about in part as a result of a streaming offering from Inlet Technologies called Spinnaker, a company that it ended up buying.

According to an Inlet document written prior to the buyout, though the sports industry represents a massive market opportunity for streaming “live game content on the Web, some leagues have approached online distribution tentatively.

“MLBAM; however, chose to pursue a much more aggressive strategy based on the belief that enhancing its fans’ online experience would increase viewership, ratings and revenue throughout the industry. And this strategy has worked.”

Now known as the Cisco Media Processor, the 2011 purchase of Inlet for US$95 million has, not surprisingly, lead to more and more Cisco gear being installed at the organization’s data centres located around the U.S. As an example, today, MLBAM has centred its entire data centre build around the Cisco Unified Computing System architecture.

MLBAM has come a long way in a relative short time.

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From the first live stream in 2002 on one device – a PC – that attracted 30,000 viewers to the expansion to two devices – the PC and Mac – four years later, the numbers have continued to escalate enormously to the point, MLB.com is now available on more than 400 devices.

As of this year, MLB.TV is now the number one sports streaming service, and on the application side, MLBAM’s At Bat is, Inzerillo says, is the number one grossing sports application ever.

The fact the organization’s revenues have soared to upwards of US$800 million annually at a time when the world of mobile has changed every professional sport in existence, is no coincidence.

According to a release from Major League Baseball, for the first time ever, in August the majority (51%) of its monthly live streams were accessed via connected and mobile devices, which it described as first among live sports video products on the Internet.

At the same time that mobile activity increases, Inzerillo and his team are working on a multitude of projects. Some like Apple’s iBeacon initiative have already gone live at 29 of the 30 major league baseball stadiums, while something called MBLAM Player Tracking Technology, which he describes as the first reliable measurement of every player on every play, has made its debut, but today in only three ball parks. It is all part of the mobile revolution that in the sports world, never stalls and only morphs.

The insatiable demand of the sports fan makes that so. Take Apple’s iBeacon as an example. Had the relationship with major league baseball not been enhanced by the At Bat application for iPhone, which has been downloaded by millions, it might never had made its way into one baseball stadium, let alone 29.

But there it is and a device that Apple calls a new class of lowwww.connectionsplus.ca

M o bile Movemen ts

The photo in the top right depicts an application called MLBAM Player Tracking Technology, while above is a photo of MLB.com’s Transmission Operation Center and (lower right) the MLB Replay Operations Center.

powered, low-cost transmitters that can notify nearby iOS 7 devices of their presence,” is suddenly a big part of MLBAM’s mobility strategy moving forward. “iBeacon’s allow us to provide a sense of context and proximity to the fan,” Inzerillo says. “When you walk up to the gate and there is a beacon there we can do things like pull up your digital ticket so you do not have to fumble finding it on your phone it will just pop up.

It allows Wayfinding and points of interest.

“Context is everything in the case of mobile. There is a lot of information there and if you use it in the right way people are amazed by some of the stuff you can pull off.”

Inzerillo and his team are also working on something he calls the Ballpark Connectivity Plan.

“We started with the premise that for the younger fan connectivity might be more important than bathrooms when you actually get to the ball park. The state of connectivity across all of professional sports was abysmal. Some better than others, but we have taken a really aggressive stance on trying to get all the carriers in Canada and U.S. on a neutral host Distributed Antenna System.”

He describes DAS as effectively the cellular version of data that allows someone to use their phone and send and receive texts.

In addition, high-density Wi-Fi provides “functionality for folks that either don’t have a carrier plan or a device that does not have carrier connectivity.

“At this point in time, we have done six ball parks, 14 more are under construction and should have 24 by opening day of next year.

We have been getting a lot of traffic. The results are fantastic. We transferred monster amounts of data at the All Star Game this year, which was the first time we had all four carriers and a Wi-Fi network.

If you aggregate that all together we did almost 3 TB of worth of transferring of data during the game.” www.connectionsplus.ca

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Mo b i l e Mo v e m e n t s

Canadian

Telecom Summit 2014 Who’s who of Canada’s ICT industry discuss, debate range of topics

In a luncheon speech, Janet Kennedy, president of Microsoft Canada, focused in on the rise of cloud activity and mobility across the country.

If there is one conference in Canada that can truly deliver the goods when it comes to tracking mobility trends and the changing ICT industry, it is the Canadian Telecom Summit.

Now in its 13th year, co-founders Michael Sone, head of NBI/Michael Sone Associates, market research and consulting firm and Mark Goldberg, founder of the telecommunications consultancy Mark H. Goldberg & Associates, attract a who’s who of the industry to the Toronto Congress Centre each June.

The event works because Sone and Goldberg are not simply event organizers, but industry observers in their own right who from

By Paul Barker

the onset have delivered what they describe as “provoking presentations from the prime movers of the industry.”

This year’s theme: Future-proofing Our Place in a Digital World.

“With no part of the organization immune to the shifting sands of economic puts and takes, doing more with less has never been as relevant,” the two wrote in the show guide. “While the ICT markets have undoubtedly been affected, our sector has a crucial role to play, not only to foster business and consumer efficiencies at the micro-level, but also drive Canada to a leadership position in a global digital economy.

“As always, technological innovation presents us with social and cultural implications that need to be considered. With questions surrounding the liberalization of foreign investment in Canadian service providers, with the recent results of the 700 MHz spectrum auction, with digitization of all facets of the economy being more pervasive and with shifts in the nature of service and device competition, the next 12-18 months promise to maintain the heightened level of activity that has come too characterize the industry.”

Speakers included Guy Laurence, president and CEO of Rogers Communications, Mark Henderson president of Ericson Canada, Nitin Kawale, president of Cisco Canada, Janet Kennedy, president of Microsoft Canada, Tony Ciciretto, president and CEO of Cogeco Data Services and Peer 1 Hosting, and Bernard Lord, president and CEO of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association.

In a luncheon speech, Kennedy said there is a “transformation”

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currently going on across Canada as more and more organizations of all sizes adopt cloud technology.

She also discussed Microsoft’s plans to open a new training and development centre and the economic impact it will have. A recent study conducted by Ernst & Young LLP estimated that the company’s $90 million investment in the Microsoft Canada Excellence Centre will result in more than $181.4 million annually in direct, indirect and induced economic growth.

Hiring began this summer and the first full-time employees will focus on software and services engineering, program and solutions management in Microsoft’s Application and Services Group.

Ciciretto, meanwhile zeroed in on the changing enterprise.

“Today, in 2014, the enterprise is looking at a borderless world of seamless communications and collaboration – there are big bets on unified communications and cloud-based services,” he said. “IT and telecom are converging, creating new opportunities (and challenges) for telcos and IT providers alike.

“Location is no longer a constraint for hiring and motivating the best and brightest people. A hardware centric world has been swept aside by this rising tide of integrated communications platforms, all dependent on software.”

Collaboration and communication, he added, are exploding: “Our people are dispersed globally, as they work as efficiently and as effectively in Shanghai or Boston or London as if they were right down the hall from us. Whether on-premise or hosted in the cloud or somewhere in between, the life of the enterprise has irrevocably changed.

“Corporate cultures, by necessity, are changing as a result. Command and control as a management style no longer works when your people are all operating in semi-autonomous space. This presents its own unique take on the changing nature of trust – we have to trust our people to do the right thing. And perhaps more importantly, they need to trust us.”

In his speech, Lord talked about how much change has occurred in the telecommunications industry in the past five years.

“During this time we have seen smartphone penetration grow from less than 30% to more than 70%. We have seen the largest spectrum auction in Canadian history and we have experienced an explosion of social media use to give Canada the highest penetration of social media users in the world.

“Already in just five years during my time at CWTA, we have witnessed a virtual revolution in the way wireless services are delivered and consumed.

“Five years ago, we had no LTE. Today, Canada’s expansive LTE networks rank among the best on the planet.”

Mobile data usage, he added, is forecast to rise by a “stunning” 900% within the next five years: “Not a doubling or tripling of data use, but nine times more data use above today’s levels. I don’t know of any other sector in Canada that will face this growth or this new demand.”

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Mo b i l e Mo v e m e n t s

Mobile’s Next Frontier Today’s generation of consumers are hyper connected and are looking for faster, convenient and efficient ways to make their retail purchases

By Alon Kronenberg

The mobility revolution is entering a new stage.

More than enabling two-way communication and access to social networking sites, mobile devices are increasingly playing a key role as it relates to commerce and the shopping experience.

Consumers are increasingly demanding and expecting access to retail experiences that reflect accurate and relevant responses, in real-time. To meet these expectations, businesses must focus on delivering the types of consistent, valuable and personalized mobile interactions that are at the heart of a first-rate customer experience.

And it seems Canada is leading this new mobile frontier. According to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), smartphone ownership has increased to 57% in Canada, well above the global average of 42%. Among these users, 18% of Canadians have accessed their mobile device to pay for products or services (CIRA Factbook 2014).

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With a huge impact on consumers, mobility is transforming the way the retail industry operates.

Organizations are applying insights across a growing set of mobile and social data, which are crucial to help meet the need for convenience, speed and service across digital and in-store channels.

Mobile technologies, social networks, cloud computing and big data are changing how consumers interact with the retail business. Just think about how and when you use a smartphone: you may browse products, review comments and scan prices while riding public transit, sitting in an office, waiting in line or even while walking past that very same store location.

Shoppers are becoming more empowered and want their purchases to suit their personal needs within their specific, individual timeframes. Mobile technologies are crucial in making this possible as they can be used to position real-time contextwww.connectionsplus.ca

M o bile Movemen ts

aware applications for improved, personalized user experiences.

Increasingly vital for the success of retailers are next-generation ecommerce, omni-channel order management, and cross-channel campaign management.

Not only does it become critical for businesses to generate an accurate and up-to-date view of customer-relevant information, but also that it is easily and seamlessly accessible across multiple touch points.

To ensure these technological applications are met, supply chain visibility, product information management, and near-real time inventory location services all require stout and security-rich IT infrastructures combined with innovative technologies, like cloud and analytics.

To successfully compete, retailers must be able to provide customers with unique shopping experiences that are relevant, contextual and real-time based.

Mobile applications can also be used to better support and increase retail workforce productivity, improving customer service while supporting merchandising and supply chain initiatives.

Employee-facing mobile applications offer two inter-related benefits: employees are better engaged through mobile and in turn, employees engage better with their customers. For example, a mobile device used by store employees to access store inventory, product details and customer history in real-time, offers the benefit of informing the employee while empowering them to have more relevant conversations when approaching a potential client.

As customers are increasingly empowered with product knowledge ahead of even walking into the store, it is crucial for employees to be equally empowered to provide added value services.

Furthermore, never before seen functionalities for payment, including mobile-to-mobile account credits and debits and new digital currencies, are making their way through the retail experience.

Today’s generation of consumers are hyper connected and are looking for faster, convenient and efficient ways to make their retail purchases. This is initiating new opportunities that are dramatically reshaping the industry.

As we have seen earlier, mobile devices can be used as a source of commerce, such as in online shopping; but beyond this, smartphones can act as a mobile wallet to replace cash and credit. By scanning a barcode or tapping their mobile device, consumers can simply and quickly make purchases.

They can also use their device to pay for items even before entering a store. For instance, think about what goes into buying a sandwich at a local deli restaurant. Typically, a person will need to travel to the retail store, stand in line, place and pay for an order at the register, and then wait for someone to assemble and wrap the sandwich.

This experience requires multiple interactions with several people in a noisy fast-paced environment prone to mistakes. But with new mobile applications, a sandwich can be ordered, customized and paid for ahead of time. Upon entering the store, you tap your device and pick up your goods right then and there.

Mobility is also transforming the airline industry, creating new opportunities for a seamless travel experience. Customer self-service solution options, such as mobile check-in and mobile boarding passes, have become widely adopted. www.connectionsplus.ca

Now, airlines are deploying new features that further address passenger demands and streamline business operations. From providing in-flight entertainment through passenger-owned devices -- thus reducing weight costs -- to enabling passport scanning via smartphones, leading airlines are aiming to offer convenience, choice and efficiency for travelers while also attaining cost efficiency, effectiveness and differentiation for themselves.

Whether it is by improving workforce productivity and consumer engagement or creating innovative efficiencies for payment and travel, mobile technologies will play a critical role in the future of retail.

New market segments and innovative methods of conducting business are emerging, fundamentally changing how retailers operate, communicate and create revenue.

As patterns of behaviour continue to change and expectations for new services and offerings evolve, a retail infrastructure that broadens the shopping experience to mobile will be required in order to create value in each customer interaction.

Alon Kronenberg leads IBM Canada Ltd.’s mobile applications practice. He oversees a team that specializes in creating new ways for enterprises to engage with their customers through the use of mobile technologies.

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• High Density, High Performance, Pre-Terminated Copper & Fiber Cabling • Cabinets, Racks, Cable Management, Power & Cooling Solutions • Case Studies, White Papers & More

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Mo b i l e Mo v e m e n t s

SFU’s Dali Wireless & its patented RF system Simon Fraser University startup spurned both Samsung and Huawei in order to go it alone

By Paul Barker

The photos above and top left on the next page were taken at Dali Wireless’ lab in Burnaby, B.C. The company was first launched eight years ago.

This past September was a very good month for Dali Wireless, an eight-year-old Simon Fraser University startup that develops digitalover-fiber wireless distribution systems based around the concept of radio frequency (RF) signal processing.

Not only did the firm unveil its Network Management System 2.0 at Super Mobility Week, an offering designed to bring SDN technology to the antenna through Radio Access Network (RAN) virtualization, it also received an award on the same day as the launch.

UBM Tech, a company that organized the Tower & Small Cell Summit, a conference that was part of the Super Mobility Week in Las Vegas, announced Dali’s High Density System had been named as the winner of one of the event’s top awards.

A panel of judges stated that the resulting “Elastic RAN” combined with the capability to support multi-standards enables mobile broadband capacity and coverage to be moved wherever and whenever needed.

They added that it will ultimately “drive down the total cost of ownership for operators, system integrators, enterprises and neutral hosts.”

While the company’s corporate office is in Menlo Park, Calif. and it labels itself as a Silicon Valley company, the technical brains reside in Burnaby, B.C. Key among them is Shawn Stapleton, cofounder and chief technical officer.

“This is a homegrown business, but we needed VC funding and 12

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all the money is coming from California,” he says. “I wear the white hat. Albert wears the black hat. He goes out and begs for money.”

Albert is Albert Lee, Dali’s chief executive officer, who approached Stapleton, a professor in the school of engineering science at SFU – at about the same time two industry behemoths – Samsung Electronics and Huawei – also came calling.

“Samsung and Huawei came knocking on our door interested in our technology,” he recalls. “In parallel with that, Albert was working in Silicon Valley and trying to do what we already had. We decided to merge the two groups together.

“I had reached the point where I needed to move to the next step – either raise the money from a VC or start working with one of the bigger players. I was at a crossroads and when this opportunity came along I jumped at it.”

What Stapleton “had” was a patented radio frequency system he says transcends the features typically associated with distributed antenna systems or DAS as a result of a combination of digital signal processing, RF, microwave design and integration and networking technology.

According to a Dali white paper, the practice of providing wireless coverage in venues is almost as old as the mobile industry itself.

“Earlier, the goal was to provision venues with sufficient voice capacity, however there has been a shift in recent years that has www.connectionsplus.ca

M o bile Movemen ts

Shawn Stapleton, the firm’s chief technology officer has patented a radio frequency system associated with distributed antenna systems.

“By 2018, mobile data traffic volume is expected to surpass 15,000 petabytes per month.”

stimulated innovations for in-venue communications. The catalyst for this shift is the explosive demand for mobile data services, which grew by 70% in 2013 to reach 2,000 petabytes per month.

“By 2018, mobile data traffic volume is expected to surpass 15,000 petabytes per month.”

For perspective, Dali estimates that 1 petabyte of average MP3-encoded song would require 2,000 years to play, assuming the download speed is 1 Mbps.

“The operators are faced with this explosion of mobile data traffic yet at the same time they have a lot of problems getting the real estate to install 4G technology. It is also extremely expensive,” says Stapleton.

“Upwards of 90% of mobile data traffic is generated indoors. The problem has migrated to hotels, stadiums, hospitals, universities, malls and various enterprises. Building owners want to get these high data rates indoors and people are expecting them in order to get the rich media content streamed over a smartphone. What venue owners do not want to see are antennas.”

The Dali white paper points out that the transformation of RF www.connectionsplus.ca

distribution from an analog, point-to-point architecture to a digital, multipoint-to-multipoint topology enables “dynamic allocation of capacity to where and when it is needed.

“For example, it is possible to know in advance when a large venue such as stadiums and convention centres would see high traffic and to target more capacity to that venue and at that time from a central pool of base stations.

“Consider a stadium and its parking lot.

Before the game starts, traffic through the parking lot builds up gradually. Spectators move into the stadium through large alleys and hallways to take their seats. Mobile traffic would be higher in such areas before the game starts than inside the stadium.

“As the game starts, traffic shoots up from within the stadium around major events during the course of the game. When the game finishes, traffic increases in the parking lot and decreases in the stadium. While traditional systems would need to allocate peak capacity from wireless base stations to both the parking lot and the stadium in a static way, the RF router only requires capacity to meet the aggregated demand of the entire venue.”

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Canadians expect a more connected world in 2025 but do have concerns about security and privacy families could fall victim to hackers, while almost half (46%) believe their families will be affected by cyberbullies in 2025.

People have just started to understand that their personal data is not some ethereal thing, said Brian Johnson, Intel futurist. “They have not quite figured out what is appropriate for others to know about that data. For instance, we don’t blurt out our credit card information when we walk into a room. Why would we want our data to do that online?”

Wearables: Seventy-seven per cent of consumers think smart watches will be a common device in 11 years. Sixty per cent anticipate connected kitchen appliances will be a household item, while only 39% think a PC desktop will be common in 2025.

McAfee Canada, part of Intel Security, recently released findings from its first Safeguarding the Future of Digital Canada in 2025 study, which examines the thoughts and attitudes of more than 500 Canadian consumers concerning technology trends. The study looks at how technology relates to people’s homes, workplace, cars, mobile devices and online security.

Canadian consumers believe that technology will significantly change their lifestyle by 2025. For example, 51% of Canadians believe their houses will be able to speak to them, 70% anticipate using solar panels as their main source of energy and 56%predict there will be cars that navigate completely on autopilot.

While new innovations will make consumers’ lives more connected than ever, Canadians may feel hesitant in sharing personal information or adapting to these technologies in fear of their privacy being jeopardized.

Sixty-six per cent of Canadians expressed concern over the expected state of cyber security in 2025.

Canadians know that as technology advances, more of their everyday devices will be connected to the Internet, said Brenda Moretto, Canadian consumer manager at McAfee.

“While they believe this will simplify some aspects of their lives, they’re also concerned about how their security and privacy will be protected,” she said. “We are hoping this study will raise awareness of these concerns and ensure privacy is taken into consideration in future innovations.”

The report was compiled to provide a view into technology trends and what society can expect over the next decade. Highlights from the study give insight on how Canadians will view cybersecurity, how their homes will be connected and how they will work.

Cybersecurity: The study revealed consumers are not confident that their cybersecurity will be protected in the coming years. This is not surprising given the near-daily reports about retail and financial institutions being hacked. Seventy-seven per cent of Canadians are concerned their 14

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Tech at the Workplace: In the next decade, Canadian consumers anticipate seeing significant changes in their offices or places of employment. While one in three (31%) working consumers think they will be working from a home office, 60% envision artificial intelligence and robotics assisting with their job tasks. Fifty-nine per cent believe they will be able to access work data through facial or voice recognition. While greater precautions will be taken to ensure sensitive work information remains secure, robotics in the workplace may result in companies being more susceptible to cyber-related crimes.

Connected Homes: Canadian consumers expect to have technology that makes the home experience easier. More than 60% think their refrigerator will automatically add food to a running grocery list if the product is running low. More than 50% of people plan to have been to a house that speaks or reads to them. The majority of consumers believe home security will be connected to their mobile device in 11 years.

Other key findings revealed that: • Thirty-nine per cent of people think Canadians will get around by a hybrid vehicle or a self-driving car (20%) in 2025.

• Nearly one quarter (24%) of consumers believe they will be able to pay for items using their fingerprint while 24% anticipate they will use their mobile device. Twenty-three per cent of respondents plan to still pay by credit or debit card.

• Sixty-four per cent of consumers believe a wearable device will send health vitals directly to their physician, saving a visit to the doctor’s office. Nearly one in three (29%) people think there will be an online digital health check with sensors running over their bodies to relay signs of illness.

• By 2025, 34% of Canadian consumers expect to unlock their mobile device by a thumbprint, while 32% believe eye scans will be used. Almost all respondents (89%) plan to put more effort into protecting their digital assets in the future after taking the survey. www.connectionsplus.ca

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MO B I LI TY

Testing and the Thanks to connected devices, a manager sitting at a computer in the office can now view measurements uploaded to the cloud from a job site.

B y Ly nn Gr e iner tructured cable testing and troubleshooting has stayed much the same for many years. The instruments may be better, but the process is the same: you hop in the truck, drive out to the site, measure, record, come back to the office and write it all up. You may or may not know the history of what you are testing, and if you need help, chances are someone has to hop into his truck and come to you.

That is now changing. Mobile and the cloud have poked their noses into the testing world, and have the potential to turn it on its ear.

With the addition of connectivity and cloud (Internet-based) storage, traditional testing gets a major leg-up. Measurements still happen much as before (though that may soon change too), but they can be instantly shared with colleagues, or stored online.

Rather than dragging a co-worker out to a site to look at a problem, a tech can simply initiate a live video call on a smartphone and show it to him, as well as sharing measurements directly from a test device. Techs can also quickly check the test history of a piece of equipment, and see if anomalies have developed, and managers

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‘Our customers often tell us

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one of their pain points is the inability to easily access historical maintenance records’

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can monitor work in progress.

“It is a combination of several different parts that come together in a way that solves problems that individually they cannot,” says Stan Hawthorne, global business manager and director of workforce efficiency and cloud enablement at JDS Uniphase (JDSU).

“The cloud, of course, mobile applications on mobile devices, physical instrumentation where necessary for network access and the physics of the network, and also software agents that may be transient; they may exist on the customer premise or in particular parts of the network permanently or in transient mode. The role of software-based instrumentation is something that we also see an evolution of in our business.”

Even the old guard vendors are getting into the act. Fluke Networks, for example, has introduced Fluke Connect, a set of 20 test tools that use smartphones and the cloud to augment their builtin functionality. Thanks to connected devices, a manager sitting at a computer in the office can view measurements uploaded to the cloud from a job site, consult with the tech, and authorize appropriate actions without budging from the building.

In addition, says Bruno Giguère, advisor, CTO Office, at Quebec City-based telecom test and assurance vendor EXFO, companies can manage their pools of test equipment through the cloud, tracking each device’s location and updating its capabilities. That gives managers the confidence that results from device to device are consistent.

Fluke Connect business unit manager Melissa Hammerle adds that cloud connectivity makes the tech’s life easier in a number of ways as well. He or she does not have to write down measurements, just save them to the cloud by pushing a button within the application. A tester can view the maintenance history of the equipment being tested, and make better decisions for present and future maintenance.

“For example, the tester may see that a specific motor continually has problems with a particular bearing,” she says. “He can start his troubleshooting with that bearing, instead of spending time inspecting a wider variety of potential problems. Another example would be if a tech is not sure how to fix a custom machine. He could easily see who had completed prior maintenance on it and call him for advice.”

Of course, when you are testing cables in the third sub-basement of an office tower, connectivity is not something you can count on. That is why all vendors, even cloud-centric WOWClowd based in Omaha, Neb, offer an offline mode.

When cloud connectivity is restored, WOWClowd’s application automatically uploads the results.

However, notes company CEO Steve Kanne, to get maximum benefit from WOWClowd’s system, the tech should have downloaded the project to his mobile device before descending into the bowels of the earth. A project, in WOWClowd-speak, is a set of parameters that defines exactly what is to be done for a given job, with a checklist to ensure nothing is missed, and setup for all of the deliverables.

It is created in the cloud, and shared to a mobile app on the www.connectionsplus.ca

tech’s iOS or Android smartphone, so each tech has the same information. The phones control the test instruments via Bluetooth Low Energy connections, and talk to the cloud at the same time over cellular.

Techs can also attach notes, photos and videos to the results. It means some work upfront, but, says Kanne, that means when testing is complete, deliverables are all set to go.

“It changes the process of how you do your job,” he says. “I am not just talking about cable installers, I am talking about network engineers and project managers.”

Kanne points out he has seen statistics that indicate for every 1,000 cable tests, there is upward of 47 hours of tech time spent managing the test results, including trips back to the site to verify iffy results and pick up missing measurements.

“All of that is typically done at the end of a project. (Our) goal is to eliminate the work at the backend.”

As soon as you move to the Internet; however, security considerations rear their head. WOWClowd relies on password protection and encryption to secure customer data, as does Fluke.

EXFO takes a slightly different tack, offering its customers several options. “As part of our centralized test offering that is located inside the service provider’s network but running on dedicated EXFO hardware, we have mobile apps that can run on Androidbased smartphone,” Giguère says.

“The test data is as secure as the other data running on that network. In a cloud-based environment, each service provider has their test application and data linked to that application. In the case where a service provider wants to control their test application, the cloud-application would reside inside their network infrastructure, which removes potential security concerns.: In the future, the vendors see many of the test apps themselves residing in the cloud, accessed through the tech’s smartphone, and any remaining dedicated test equipment becoming radio enabled.

Hammerle believes that this will, in the end, save companies money, even after subscription fees for the cloud services are taken into account (she assumes hardware replacement will occur as part of the regular tool refresh cycle), by providing reliable maintenance records.

“Our customers often tell us one of their pain points is the inability to easily access historical maintenance records,” she says. “They want to compare what they are seeing today with the baseline to understand if there is a problem. Fluke Connect (via Equipment Log records and Fluke Cloud storage) solves this problem by making the recording, organizing, and storing of measurement data painless and practically fool proof.”

“Moving forward, testing leveraging the cloud will be the norm while doing service activation testing or to troubleshoot basic network issues,” Giguère says. “Portable and standalone equipment will only be used for more advanced testing.”

The result will be better testing at lower cost.

C+ Lynn Greiner is a freelance writer based in Newmarket, Ont. She can be reached at lynn@itwriter.com.

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‘If companies want to attract and retain

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the right talent, they

The Millennial Factor

need to have remotework policies.’

They force the good IT departments to constantly think-forward towards new concepts.

By C ar mi L e vy

s Millennials increasingly join the workforce, their influence on how technology is selected, implemented, managed and used continues to grow, as well. Companies that recognize and adapt to their unique contributions and needs stand to gain competitive advantage, while those that fail to shift gears could be left behind.

According to the Young Professionals at Work report from Ericsson ConsumerLab, Millennials – anyone born between 1982 and 2000 – are a force to be reckoned with. They number upwards of 8.8 million in Canada and in the U.S. that number totals 88 million, far more than the 55 million in Generation X. Unlike older demographic groups like Baby Boomers, Millennials have never lived without the pervasive influence of technology. They have used PCs their entire lives, and all of their school and early career years have been shaped by increasingly sophisticated mobile technology. They have also grown up on social media, which has influenced the way they communicate,

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e-

COVER STORY

connect, and collaborate. To a certain extent, they no longer even view technology as something special or unique.

“When you talk to this generation, they do not even think about technology,” says Ann-Charlotte Kornblad, a senior advisor at Ericsson ConsumerLab. “They are extremely skilled at using technology, but they do not talk about technology. Instead, they talk about what they can do with it. They have a completely different attitude towards technology.”

That attitude is already forcing IT to change the way it operates.

Tim Branham, chief information office of Fujitsu America, Inc., says the net impact is a fundamental questioning of the way things were done in the past.

“Millennials have had a very profound impact on IT and in a very positive way,” he adds. “This younger generation is constantly pushing the use of more consumer-based user experiences and forcing age old ideals and paradigms to be broken.”

Branham says today and tomorrow’s IT executives will need to balance speed, flexibility, ease of use, and business-responsible platforms, and designing their technology framework around the often different needs of Millennials will be critical to pulling that off.

“Millennials see challenging the norm as a necessity and a defining characteristic of their role in the workplace,” he says. “The up and coming generation of workers wants their work experience to look and feel more and more like their social, personal and consumer experience. By challenging the status quo, it forces good IT departments to constantly think-forward towards new concepts in business automation and to be more attentive to the needs of our business.”

This new approach is already driving a shift in perceptions around privacy. Blurring boundaries between personal and professional computing resources is forcing the traditional rules that governed inoffice behaviour to evolve. Kornblad says this attitude change could spell the end for command-and-control IT rules that for so long dictated how end-users could and could not use their technology.

“One thing that was so prevalent among the Millennials was that they took their private things into work,” said Kornblad. “Members of older generations might say that they can read Facebook at lunchtime, and they see that as a benefit. Members of the Millennial Generation, on the other hand, feel that this is a right, and they will check

Facebook continuously during the day. This could be a bit difficult for the older generation to understand, because it does not mean that the Millennials are being less productive. It is just their way of being.”

That new way of being also means different expectations around work-life balance. According to Suzanne Robert, Instructional/Social/Experience Designer with IBM Interactive Experience, the very concept of work-life balance is being replaced by worklife integration.

“There is no balance anymore,” Robert says. “Work and life are completely integrated.

You might be responding to emails at midnight before you go to bed. And the next morning at 9 o’clock you might be at yoga.”

Robert says greater trust between generations lies at the core of this new work paradigm, and allows companies to deploy resources in a more agile manner.

“It is almost like the trust exists to begin with, and you can break it,” she said. “Whereas before you had to earn the trust in the first place to be able to have that sort of flexibility.”

New and different work rules: This new way of work and trust means often radically different work styles, which IT and business leaders must both understand and internalize.

“It is interesting, even as an executive in an organization, to watch how they work,” said Steve Van Binsbergen, senior director, solutions marketing with Rogers Communications Inc. “They have got higher expectations than previous generations, which makes them eager to learn and grow. They have got broad social networks and comfort with the Internet and all kinds of technology, which gives them better access to information than many others.”

The bring-your-own-device trend has largely been spearheaded

by Millennials, who were among the first to widely adopt smartphones as essential daily tools both at work and at home. The accelerating pace of BYOD does not come without its own risks, though, and Millennials’ attitudes toward their personal devices are already influencing how IT chooses to manage them within the workplace.

“People become dependent on personal phones because they do so many things and, as a result, they have a very strong attachment to them,” says Kornblad. “And because of this attachment, of course they’ll want to bring them to work.”

‘Blurring boundaries between personal and professional computing resources is forcing the traditional rules that governed in-office behaviour to evolve.’

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‘Unlike older demographic groups She says this opens up a range of issues specifically for younger workers.

“When we talk to the Millennials about this, they realize as soon as they get connected, the company knows what they’re doing in their private lives, as well,” Kornblad said in a phone-based interview from Stockholm. “It’s not obvious that everyone likes that because it is very important for this generation to keep their personal and working lives separate. So there are a lot of issues that need to be solved.

Maybe in future we can have a phone that separates the users’ personal and private lives.”

Time-driven expectations are also in for a bit of a re-think thanks to the influence of Millennials. Karl Ronn, managing director of Innovation Portfolio Partners, says the younger generation’s different approach to time might cause friction in some instances.

“The challenge comes from their agility with new media reporting to a boss who still is primarily thinking like a BlackBerry world,” said Ronn, who also wrote The Reciprocity Advantage: A New Way to Partner for Innovation and Growth. “They are literally out of sync. ‘I’ll get back to you tomorrow’ feels like ‘I’ll get back to you next week.’ This will frustrate both groups.”

Benefits can’t be ignored: Despite the risks, Van Binsbergen says the upside of adapting technologies and processes to suit the needs of Millennials is too big to ignore.

“The data shows that people want to work remotely, more so for Millennials than other groups,” he says. “If companies want to attract and retain the right talent, they need to have remote-work policies.

We have actually taken it a step further – implement those policies and change the technology to adapt to those policies.

The bottom line can benefit, as well, he adds.

“We have proven that companies can save about $1,000 per employee per year by moving to modern collaborative tools,” he says.

“Real estate costs a lot of money, so every employee working remotely saves the company money there, too. It is a sort of perfect synergy of how people want to work, and the associated cost savings, that makes it a win-win scenario. It is actually shocking that there are still some companies that won’t embrace that.”

Research released by Rogers and Harris Decima reaffirms Millennials’ somewhat eye-opening attitude toward increased workplace flexibility, with 50% of younger respondents saying they would give up something including salary and vacation days, in exchange for permission to work remotely. In contrast, only 28% of older workers said they would give something up for greater workplace flexibility.

“A lot of the older generation are obviously conceptually tethered to their workplace,” says Van Binsbergen. “They go to work, they plug into wires. The Millennials are so hyperconnected wirelessly. They know all the wireless hotspots, and they just live in this flowing world of connectivity. They are very much driving the workplace to want to work remotely.”

Fast-expanding demand for specialized technology skills within 20

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[

like Baby Boomers, Millennials have never lived without the pervasive influence of technology.’

traditional IT shops and across the broader org chart promises to tighten the supply-demand curve for tech savvy talent. Nicole Summers, associate partner and Western Canada lead for IBM Interactive Experience, says organizations that adapt stand to benefit.

“I do think it is becoming a competitive advantage,” says Summers. “As we start to see more competition for talent, I think the companies that are going to adapt more quickly and enable their people to have better work-life integration are the ones that are going to win the war for talent.”

Observe and learn: Summers says companies will also want to watch Millennials more closely to better understand their behaviours.

Whereas more traditional, hierarchy-based workplaces might have frowned upon non-conventional, employee-driven solutions, today’s IT leaders must be prepared to keep an open mind.

“If you are seeing that your employees are trying to bring their own devices to work and trying to find a back door to your email system so they can make their life a little more integrated, do not ignore the signs,” says Summers. “If you promote how integrated you are, and the technology that you use, and how you help people balance their lives a lot more easily, I think you win that war.”

For all the talk about the impact of Millennials on the IT landscape, IBM’s Robert says they have been a generational force for long enough that perhaps they are no longer as unique as they once were.

“What we used to talk about as Millennial behaviour we now see as being more like behaviour across all generations,” Robert said. “A number of years ago, it was Millennials this, and Millennials that. It has sort of shifted away because they have affected the technology that we use. And we are all affecting each other to the point that it is almost more common across all generations in the workforce. We all want all our information anytime, anywhere -- it is no longer limited to Millennials.”

C+ Carmi Levy (@carmilevy) is a London, Ont.-based independent technology analyst and journalist.

www.connectionsplus.ca

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E D U CATI O N

st

21Century Classrooms Educators earning an A+ for technology innovation

By Denise Deveau

or urban communities, taking education to the next level is feasible if you have the budget and the IT resources. For remote communities, where broadband is non-existent or orders of magnitude higher in cost, the stakes can be much higher.

Cisco and a number of partners are hoping to change that. One major initiative is Cisco’s Connected North virtual education program, which was officially launched in Iqaluit, Nunavut in April 2014.

At the heart of the system is a high-definition, two-way video communication and collaboration technology that connects Grades 7, 8 and 9 students at Iqaluit’s Aqsarniit Ilinniarvik Middle School in real-time to teachers, experts and other students across Canada.

The videoconferencing sessions are run over SSI Micro’s Qiniq satellite network. According to Jeff Philipp, CEO of SSi Group in Yellowknife, the company started building its first residential broadband service in Nunavut in 2007. Moving into education and healthcare; however, is a much bigger challenge.

Service delivery relies very much on satellite capacity in space, the bulk of which is provided by Telesat satellites, he explains. “The problem is there is a limited amount and

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it is going quickly as Internet demands grow. There is simply not enough for education or healthcare in addition to residential.”

Currently there is 300 MB of capacity for servicing the northern network. “The reality is we need three times as much capacity as we have today. That doesn’t’ exist in space today.” Another major hurdle is cost. While the average of cost of delivering 1 MB of data in Canada is $10, that number jumps to $10,000 in northern communities.

High-speed satellite broadband connectivity is also providing the horsepower in a newly launched remote training centre initiative in the Northern Ontario community of Neskantaga (about a oneand-a-half hour flight north from Thunder Bay).

The multi-purpose facility directly connects to e-learning tools and programs for safety training courses, trade and technical certifications, and secondary school education.

Bill Clarke, Aecon’s vice president of aboriginal affairs, Toronto, says it took a year to put together the team that included Cisco Canada, Bell Canada and Galaxy Satellite, among others. The building is a fully kitted panelized structure that was designed to fit into a cargo door of a small aircraft. The setup up includes a four-foot, plug-and-play satellite dish that provides 1 MB upload and download speeds. Connectivity costs run about $2,000 a month.

Clarke says now that the concept is proven, other communities www.connectionsplus.ca

EDUCATI ON

At the heart of the system is a high-definition, two-way video communication and collaboration technology that connects Grades 7, 8 and 9 students at Iqaluit’s Aqsarniit Ilinniarvik Middle School in real-time to teachers, experts and other students across Canada.

are very interested. “Our vision is to have this project evolve into a national program across the northern part of Canada. Because smaller communities do not have a lot of facilities to accommodate training, it is better to have a complete package rather than retrofitting another structure.”

Building the classroom for the 21st century means having the horsepower and agility to be innovative. “Today education has to allow both faculty and students to be innovative in their teaching and learning,” says Rob Peregoodoff, director, learning services for the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Sauder School of Business in Vancouver.

But what does that innovation look like in this day and age?

It could be videoconferencing classroom content in remote communities; finding ways to engage students on multiple devices anytime, anywhere; or bringing international connections to a student’s doorstep.

The one common denominator is that infrastructures have to be faster, more agile, and more powerful and resilient than ever. The insatiable demands of videoconferencing and mobility alone are putting an onus on IT departments to not only build backbones that can meet the pace of change (1 GB Ethernet is a must), but also manage it all effectively without interfering with content delivery.

Sauder was fortunate in that it had an opportunity to build an all new infrastructure in 2009. “We decided that rather than simply upgrading what we have, let’s build the network to be an incubator of creativity and robust enough for many different [teaching] models,” Peregoodoff says.

Sauder was the second prototype for UBC’s new architecture.

The Faculty of Medicine was the first to adopt a distributed techwww.connectionsplus.ca

nology-enabled learning network to expand training to students in Kelowna, Prince George and Victoria.

“They essentially set up a high-touch videoconferencing facility for 100 people, then built a similar infrastructure in ours,” Peregoodoff says. Achieving that level of videoconferencing capabilities requires 1 gigabit drop points to ensure good IP communications.

There are a total of 2300 data ports in the entire Sauder Point Grey Campus buildings.

Today the students and faculty mainly use Skype and webinar technologies to connect with international schools and business professionals. “In order to have videoconferencing you have to have a partner on the other end with a comparable structure. Not all business schools do,” Peregoodoff explains.

Connectivity in whatever form is essential to the future of education, he contends. “The notion of global communication collaboration is absolutely critical. Teaching in our world absolutely has to be wireless, which is why we are planning for student BYOD full stop.

Every student has one, most have two and some have three devices connecting in lecture theatres.”

The latest Sauder innovation is enabling students to write exams over wireless using their own devices. Since the first round, Sauder has conducted a final exam with 800 students. This fall it will be staging 1600 concurrent exams over a dedicated, segmented wireless network (the university also has a campus wide public Wi-Fi network). “We did a presentation in Las Vegas and a lot of schools said their infrastructures simply couldn’t do it,” Peregoodoff says.

“They were not confident they had the wireless bandwidth.”

Given the capacity requirements, virtualization was a must. The Network Management Centre at UBC provides virtual network and September/October 2014

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‘High-speed satellite broadband connectivity is also providing the horsepower in a newly launched remote training centre initiative in the Northern Ontario community of Neskantaga.’

[

firewall services to departments and colleges including Sauder, says Sean Wang, network architect, Network Management Centre at UBC. “Virtual network technology allows us to rollout high performance and secured network services quickly based on clients’ requirements rather than having to go through the process of purchasing, installing and configuring hardware. We can easily size the network based on demand. We also use a network management tool to delegate some routing network duties to the client for the self-service.”

Peel District School Board is taking a serious look at supporting a number of new technology-driven educational initiatives, from piloting videoconferencing apps with students in hospitals or at home to a comprehensive mobile program.

A network overhaul in early 2012 ended up doubling the capacity of any other school board in the country, says Mark Keating, chief information officer. “We could stream the Olympics when others could not.”

On top of that it built a BYOD program. At the end of this past school year it had 65,000 BYOD devices on the network that augmented about 25,000 existing wired and mobile devices used in schools. Today the Board is able to support a robust, 21st century kindergarten to Grade 12 curriculum that includes a mixture of Android, Windows 8 and iOS, Keating says.

Fiber to every school is 1 gigabit, he adds. “Then we have 10 gigabit to the Internet which is incredibly fast. At peak usage, we consume about 6.5 gigabits.”

A good deal of focus is on device management and redundancy.

“When you have that many users you cannot have outages. You have to have a really stable environment that is easy to use, we 24

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try to build in resiliency and redundancy in everything we do.”

This year it is looking into a mobile device management solution to manage wireless devices in exactly the same fashion as wired, including the ability to push down or remove apps on devices on an as needed basis as curriculum needs change.

BYOD represents one of the biggest hurdles for educators because they have to be comfortable with every platform, says Franke Martinez, evangelist, SOTI Centre of Excellence for Education in San Francisco. “They need to know how to enable IT systems to support new learners and a digital one-on-one learning environment. How do you bring blended mobility models into schools and make that seamless, while making sure the information is available wherever kids are?”

Management requirements have changed considerably since the days of PCs and desktops in schools. Whereas wired devices were pretty much Microsoft or Apple, Android’s entry is bringing entry level pricing on hardware. “That is a big shift that is happening right in front of us,” Martinez says. “There is no silver bullet out there. Everything must work with everything because you never know what students are going to carry with them.”

The number of ‘gigabit schools’ is growing at an exponential rate. “It is not enough to have Wi-Fi in one or two classrooms.

Schools must have gigabit Ethernet coming in to power Wi-Fi in schools and throughout districts. A lot of what has been deployed in the last two years is not enough to handle all Wi-Fi needs. You also need carriers with LTE and 3G networks for anytime access to content.”

Management is much more than simply managing one operating system or type of device. In the new digital frontier it needs to extend to any device, anywhere including desktops, laptops and mobile devices, Martinez explains.

“The standard for IT management have been extended. The most forward thinking educators and IT administrators are architecting entire end-to-end management solutions in which they can touch every device and load Wi-Fi access codes, passwords and SSID, as well as distribute content. It is the same capabilities that are already in the corporate world.”

Ultimately education today is about creating a 24/7 learning environment, Keating believes. “With the right architecture, you can do amazing things.”

C+ Denise Deveau is a Toronto-based freelance writer. She can be reached at denise@denised.com.

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eH E ALTH

EHRs & The Digital Loop Electronic health record keeping in Canada could one day reach its full potential, but first GPs need to ditch the fax machine and jump on the mobile health bandwagon.

B y Dav e We b b

fter months of ignoring a nagging shoulder pain issue, I visited a clinic for an examination. A half-dozen x-rays later, I was referred to a rheumatologist. After completing a thorough survey – much of the information readily available from my general practitioner’s file – she ordered another dozen-plus x-rays so she could take a look for herself.

“Why didn’t my GP just send you the electronic files?” I asked.

She looked a little sheepish. “We are not quite there yet,” she replied.

“That just does not make sense,” says Hamilton-area GP Barb Teal. Accessibility to a patient’s electronic health record (EHR) is a foundation of mobile health care.

As many as 15% of examinations are unnecessary, says Mark Nenadovic, group director of emerging technologies with Canada Health Infoway, the pan-jurisdictional organization charged with transforming health care in Canada. And given that upwards of 22% of the public purse is spent on health care – a number that is going to increase with an aging population – using technology to wring such inefficiencies out of the system is only going to become more crucial.

A

‘You take 1,000 physicians and save them an hour a day, that is a lot of money.’

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www.connectionsplus.ca

eHEA LTH

Patient self-management from the Ontario Telemedicine Network allows individuals to be actively engaged in their own care plans.

According to Laurie Poole, vice president of telemedicine solutions for the OTN, the technology for patients has to be very simple if they are going to use it at home.

It is not that the technology is not up to the task, says Dave Keegstra, chief technology officer for network equipment vendor Ericsson Canada.

“There has not been a standardization of what they are,” he says.

Various health care authorities have their own standards for what constitutes an EHR and how it is formatted. “You almost need a central organization” to standardize and store the records, a void that telecom and network operators such as Telus Corp. are positioning themselves to fill, Keegstra says.

Carrier Grade: The technological backbone for mobile health care exists. Cisco Systems Inc. has productized what it calls a medical grade network. More generically, Keegstra refers to a carriergrade network, meaning five-nines uptime – 99.999% availability, or about four minutes of downtime a year.

In a hospital environment, Keegstra admits, calling the overall system performance five-nines is generous. It is not that the backbone cannot handle it, more that in-building app coverage can be a weak point for systems that are traditionally built for outdoor use such as 3G wireless networks. “In-building coverage has been accidental” in the past, Keegstra says.

The solution is handing off between the 3G signal and an integrated Wi-Fi network. Developing standards such as Hotspot 2.0 and 3GPPP are built to enable this heterogenous network, or “Het-Net.” Much of the focus of this standard development is on authentication and security. Information as sensitive as health records and realtime patient data demand that security take precedence. “You do not always need a seamless hand-off,” Keegstra says. “You always need security.” www.connectionsplus.ca

Mobile Applications: “Security was one of the fundamental drivers of our technology approach,” says Dr. Greg Geiger, internist and chief information officer at the Ottawa Hospital. The facility is comprised of five campuses, covering urgent care, cardiology, cancer car, palliative care and more. It is an example of how if you get the backbone right and standardize patient records, there are many efficiencies to be wrung out of the hospital experience.

The Ottawa Hospital had already aggregated records and information from a number of disciplines such as cardiology, radiology, blood work and cancer care and made that accessible through a PCbased network before the November 2010 pilot of a custom mobile application to deliver bedside accessibility to patient records.

Now, the hospital’s Wi-Fi network covers 610,000 square metres of clinical and public access. The hospital has deployed 3,500 tablets to make patient records available at bedside, and allow doctors to order medication without having to go to a nursing station. According to surveys, the hospital’s 1,000 doctors save an hour each a day because of the mobile applications.

“You take 1,000 physicians and save them an hour a day, that is a lot of money,” says Geiger.

Access to the network is geofenced – beyond the hospital perimeter, connectivity switches from Wi-Fi to 3G connectivity, and security parameters transition as well.

Because of the way budgets are broken out for the hospital, it is hard for Geiger to nail down the actual cost of the network. While the 3,500 tablets have a distinct price tag, upgrades to the Wi-Fi network were incremental, and the price tag is somewhere between $5 million and $10 million.

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eH E ALTH

Connecting To The Community: When it comes to connecting with the Ottawa medical community, though, Geiger runs into some issues. Once his reports are finished, they are auto-faxed to the patients’ general physicians.

Unfortunately, there are only a minority of GPs who are on the EHR bandwagon. “They really don’t like this model at all,” Geiger says.

But the more frequent complaint from GPs is that the auto-fax header costs GPs too much in toner. The medical industry, Geiger says, is one of the last to believe that fax is a reliable method to communicate, and his frustration is palpable.

“The 1980s called. They want their fax machines back.”

Teal’s Hamilton practice, which she shares with two other GPs, is an object lesson in the benefits of bringing members of the care team outside the hospital into the digital loop. An application called Clinic Connect allows her log-in-anywhere access to her patients’ information from hospitals and clinics in two Hamilton-area Local Health Integration Networks.

“There have been great leaps and bounds in this area with Clinic Connect,” Teal says. “It has made a huge difference to how I manage my practice.”

For example, if a patient makes an office visit for another reason, Clinic Connect will tell Teal that he or she recently had a colonoscopy at a local hospital. Since she can access the results through Clinic Connect earlier than she could waiting for them to be sent to her office. She is also notified if a patient makes an emergency room visit or is admitted to hospital and when they leave, she has access to discharge summaries and medication lists to troubleshoot in followup visits.

Self-Care: Mobile technology’s biggest role, though, could be in the patient’s home. Integrated technology and secure messaging to the care team can reduce unnecessary visits to urgent care units, and save the system money, says Charlotte Hovet, physician executive and clinical information specialist with Dell Corp’s global health care consulting practice.

“It starts with the patient becoming their own primary care provider,” says Hovet, who has spent 35 years in health care, the last eight devoted to informatics. “Health care mobile solutions are transforming the way care is delivered, resulting in improved clinical workflows and patient care outcomes.”

An aging population brings an increase on chronic conditions and more interactions with the health care system, says Nenadovic.

Patient self-management aims to actively engage patients in their care plans. And that engagement begins at home.

But to engage patients, especially older ones, the technology cannot be overwhelming.

“The technology for patients has to be very simple if they are going to use it at home,” says Laurie Poole, vice president of telemedicine solutions for the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN).

Phase 1 of OTN’s in-home program delivered tablets and medical peripherals – blood pressure monitors, scales and blood oxygen monitors that integrate with the tablet – to 800 patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and heart failure. Since 2007, the program has grown to include 3,000 patients 28

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in Ontario.

In a primary care facility, nurses monitor the output of the tablets.

They are alerted by the system if vital signs are out of whack, and can call the patient to troubleshoot, for example, if blood pressure spikes because of excessive salt intake from a trip to a buffet.

COPD and heart failure patients have particularly high incidence with the health care system because symptoms like difficulty breathing cause anxiety, which leads to more calls to emergency medical services.

Poole says a technician once arrived at a patient’s home to find all of the furniture pushed up against the walls; he called paramedics so often, it was easier that way.

The impact of the program has been significant. OTN-connected patients visit a hospital 70% fewer times than before, and the emergency room 60% fewer times, Poole estimates.

“We are keeping people in their homes longer,” she says, and their length of stay is shorter when they are admitted to a hospital. C+ Dave Webb is a Toronto-based freelance writer. He can be reached at dave@dweebmedia.ca.

Mobile, nurses and a ‘living lab’ Celebration Health is the “living lab” of an eight-hospital health care group in Orlando, Fla., where technology trials and innovations are tested before rolling out to other facilities, says director of performance improvement Ashley Simmons. The174-bed facility will add another 64 by next summer. With double-digit patient growth and the hiring of a number of general nurses, Celebration had a unique take on mobile technology: It could be used to collect and analyze its nurses’ traffic patterns on their hourly rounds.

The hospital was aware that there was a difference in activity between day- and night-shift, but could not quantify it. Celebration installed about 50 exciters throughout a 31-bed wing and issued individual tags to the roughly 100 staff -- 50 on days, 50 on nights -- to collect real-time locating system (RTLS) data.

“What does it mean when they say, ‘We are busy’?” Simmons asked. By analyzing traffic patterns, she found the difference in patient activity was only about 5% from shift to shift. But the analysis of the data from “spaghetti data,” which mapped the nurses’ patterns, the hospital managed a number of efficiencies, the biggest being assigning routes based on geography rather than the patient’s acuity.

Nurses can pull up their own spaghetti data during shift (it is otherwise secure, except for analytics use), and more experienced RNs can coach newer general nurses. The analytics also persuaded the hospital to consider change the start times of shifts based on the amount of activity.

The result: Better satisfaction for nurses, and better visibility for patients.

www.connectionsplus.ca

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S TR E E T S M A RT

Smart Cities are a step ahead The convergence of technology, connectivity and data is the critical next phase of the digital age. By Ian Har vey

ou either love big cities or you hate them.

Sure, all that noise, pollution, traffic, congestion and the high costs of living is a pain, but then there are more jobs, more schools, more hospitals and more services.

It is why cities account for 75% of energy consumption, 50% of the world’s population and 80% of carbon emissions as populations shift from rural areas to urban centres.

As Arun Bikshesvaran, chief marketing officer Erics-

Y

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son North America, notes this migration also means cities are straining to keep building and managing infrastructure while dealing with disparate demands. Populations are skewed with younger populations who have different service needs than the elderly, for example, stretching resources.

There has to be a better way and there is; smarter is better and that means leveraging the power of ICT. Smart Cities, or what Ericsson calls the Networked Society, is a collaboration around infrastructure, transwww.connectionsplus.ca

STREET SMA RT

”

Montreal is about to launch a “smart” snow plow system which uses fleet tracking technology on 200 snow plows and dump trucks fitted with GPS sensors.

port, commerce and urban management, all connected, just as we have connected our PCs, phones and other devices to the Internet. More importantly it is a concept where data is not proprietary, it is shared, at least at the governmental level.

This convergence of technology, connectivity and data is the critical next phase of the digital age and is advent of what is called the Internet of Things or IoT. It is an umbrella term in which a myriad of devices are connected to the Internet and their location noted, Machine to Machine (M2M) in which software reacts to a given set of circumstances without human intervention and Big Data and the Cloud, which has the ability to capture, store and examine neverending streams of data and execute decisions in real time or anticipate events based on that analysis.

The road ahead is challenging but the potential palpable, says Warren Tomlin, partner, Global Business Services at IBM Corp. noting perhaps the most frustrating and yet exciting aspect is that it is all feasible now. Both the technology and the data already exist.

“What we – the IBMs of the world – need to do is stitch it all together,” he says.

Today’s cars, for example, are full of sensors capturing gigabytes of data. In a Smart City some of that data could be streamed constantly in aggregate, that is, with the personal information stripped out.

It could be used for analysis and experimentation to learn the relationship between traffic patterns and accidents for example, to alert in dash GPS to suggest alternate, less travelled routes in the case of back ups or to warn of hazards ahead.

Connective traffic lights, even streetlights could be synchronized to changing traffic patterns, saving energy and time turning on only when someone approaches. Police meanwhile could check the data to see lights turned on when to track suspects leaving a crime, a form of electronic bread crumbs.

There is still work yet to be done, though, Tomlin warns.

“We have to decide also what is relevant because we don’t need all the data so we have to know the outcome of what we want,” he says.

For cities and businesses there are clear advantages. Smart parking systems in San Francisco alert motorists to nearby spots they may have otherwise bypassed on a main street shopping district, perhaps dissuading them from going to mall instead.

Even a coffee shop can establish a smart relationship with www.connectionsplus.ca

customers’ mobiles, knowing when they usually want coffee, how they want it and with what snack they like, even pushing discount offers to them to increase their frequency of patronage when they are in the area via a technology called Location Based Service (LBS).

Eric Simmons, general manager of machine to machine (M2M) at Rogers Communications Inc. says the company has been in the space for about 11 years and is seeing practical applications.

“With RioCan (Canada biggest shopping centre landlord) for example, we provide guest WiFi and traffic analysis to enable them to know who is going into what store,” he says.

The test program is part of Roger’s strategy in LBS which notes where a mobile user is, what time it is and then extrapolates what they might be interested in. If it is morning, they might want a deal on coffee and a bagel. At lunch, a different combination from a nearby restaurant or in the evening, tickets for a show or an eCoupon for a discount if used in a specified time frame.

With RioCan it is about getting shoppers to explore other parts of the mall to ensure those tenants get traffic too using a range of strategies, including push offers and marketing.

This overall trend is both organic – happening by itself – yet also structured, notes Rick Huijbregts, vice president of industry transformation with Cisco Systems Canada Inc. “It is the things we do not expect,” he said. “The taxi industry is being redefined by applications like Uber which are killing the traditional taxi model and opening up new routes to revenue to those who were not able to afford to play and can now participate. It is incredibly disruptive but it creates incredible opportunity and people should go into it with eyes wide open.”

Bikshesvaran also holds up Uber as the perfect example of connectivity being a game changer.

“What it boils down to is value,” he says. “If there is value people will pay attention.”

What Networked Communities or Smart Cities can do is better match demand to supply, he adds, pointing to Uber’s dispatch model which can be applied to many other businesses, from fast food delivery to online ordered grocery pick up. “It is a fulfillment service that matches supply to demand using ICT.” Matching supply to demand can also influence behaviours, Bikshesvaran says. For example, he points out that an Ericsson-sponsored business school competition last year was won by an Argentinean school which tackled the problem of subsidized electricity in Buenos Aires.

”

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S TR E E T S M A RT

”

Smart parking systems in San Francisco alert motorists to nearby spots they may have otherwise bypassed on a main street shopping district, perhaps dissuading them from going to the mall instead.

”

“The government was subsidizing electricity but it was unsustainable,” he says. “Consumers had no idea how much they consumed or how much electricity really cost.”

Simply phasing out the subsidy would be politically dangerous so the solution suggested was to scale back demand using smart metering and two way communication with users on their consumption and pricing.

“The plan showed they could get pay back in 30 months,” he says, adding a local telecom company is investing in making the scheme a reality.

The backbone of all this connectivity, says Huijbregts, is broadband and that is one of the hurdles. All that data has to get where it is most useful: municipalities need ways to transmit data from sensors on light standards, sewer pipes, water mains and the power grid and then analyze them in real time to spot trends like traffic jams, power outages or flooding.

“We have to think of broadband as being as important as the electrical grid,” he says.

Indeed there is growing demand for ubiquitous connectivity: GenY sees work as a thing, not a place, preferring to work close to home or at home, negating the need for a car and taking the pressure of roads and transit. They are also less likely to worry about privacy and offer their own mobile and behavioural pattern data to the Cloud.

“That is getting to be less of an issue,” he says. “People are willing to give up information if they perceive a value.”

It is that same value proposition which will drive Smart Cities, both from a government administration perspective and from an enterprise view because it has the ability to reduce costs and, in the case of business, drive traffic.

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Simmons says Montreal, for example, is about to launch a “smart” snow plow system which uses fleet tracking technology on 200 snow plows and dump trucks fitted with GPS sensors. The $6.7 million program will track which streets are getting plowed first, what dump trucks are picking up snow and where they are taking it.

“They will eventually be able to tell people what streets are getting plowed next so they can move their cars,” said Simmons. The overall goal is more cost efficient and timely snow removal.

Parking meters can similarly be wirelessly connected, he added, and programmed remotely to offer market pricing with cheaper short terms rates for lunchtime to allow access to street level businesses or higher prices for evening events to encourage transit use.

This is more than a digital revolution. It is a societal evolution but it is not happening overnight. Investment is needed, political concerns accommodated, protocols must be established, boundaries set and transparencies agreed to; but it is happening and Canada is already behind.

In a Ericsson 2013 ranking of 31 connected cities based on impact to economy, environment and social impact, the only North American cities noted were New York (number 8) and Mexico City (number 23).

Stockholm, London and Singapore took the first three spots.

“It is happening in phases,” says Bikshesvaran. “It is happening in about 100 cities where the momentum is strong enough that it is irreversible. With the benchmarks we have, we will start to see how the quality of life changes. It is also a good thing that it is happening all over the world. It is mushrooming and these are showcases for the rest of the world.”

C+ Ian Harvey is a Toronto-based freelance writer and can be reached at iharvey@rogers.com.

www.connectionsplus.ca

HOW WILL YOU SPEND YOUR LAST 10 YEARS? The average Canadian will spend their last ten years in sickness.

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New & Noteworthy

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The 9600 from satellite vendor GlobalStar is a data offering that allows a customer to pair their existing satellite phone and smartphone to send and receive email over the company’s network.

The data hotspot is designed to work with the following Globalstar products: GSP-1700 and GSP 1600 mobile satellite phones as well as the GSP-2900 fixed phone system.

It has a suggested retail price of $149. www.globalstar.com

The Zuna Drive Case is a protective phone case that also doubles as a car mounting accessory to ensure safe, hands-free phone use while driving. A clip hook allows for easy attachment to any horizontal AC or heating vent of a vehicle. Available for iPhone 6, iPhone 5/5s and soon for the Samsung Galaxy 5, the unit secures the phone in place for navigation without a bulky cell phone mounting appliance. www.zuna.com

The Idol 2 S is the newest addition to the IDOL smartphone line from Alcatel OneTouch. Available at Bell and Virgin stores, features include high-speed LTE performance, HD IPS 1280 x 720 16M colour display, 1.2 GHz quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 8MP autofocus rear camera with LED flash and 4x digital zoom as well as a 1.3MP HD front camera. www.alcatelonetouch.com/ca-e

The T4KA3 8-megapixel (MP) sensor from Toshiba America Electronic Components targets midrange smartphones, tablets and action cameras with 720p resolution, enabling HD video capture at a rate of 240 equivalent frames per second (fps). The T4KA3 operates at 15% lower power and is significantly smaller in area than Toshiba’s prior 8MP sensor, making it one of the world’s smallest chips at this pixel count. www.toshiba.com/taec

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www.connectionsplus.ca

New & Noteworthy

5

7

8 6

5. MICROSOFT

6. MOTOROLA

7. HANDHELD GROUP

8. HUAWEI MOBILE

The Lumia 635 from Microsoft Devices Group provides a Windows Phone 8.1 experience at an affordable price, the company says.

Windows Phone 8.1 allows typing by swiping with Word Flow. All chats, social updates and settings can be seen with just one swipe in the new Action Centre. The Lumia 635 also comes with a black matte replaceable shell so you can easily swap shell. www.microsoft.com.en-ca

The Moto 360 from Motorola Canada is a modern timepiece powered by Android Wear.

Comfortable, familiar, and crafted with the finest materials, Moto 360 keeps you up to date without taking you away from the moment, the company says. A user can glance at their wrist to see updates or speak to get the information they need. It carries a suggested retail price of $279. www.motorola.ca

Handheld Group have announced an upgrade of their Nautiz X4 rugged handheld, which was launched earlier this year.

A multipurpose compact handheld computer built for the mobile worker, now also runs Android 4. The Nautiz X4 is optimized for efficient field data collection. It has been designed and developed specifically for mobile workers in tough environments in industries such as warehousing, logistics, transportation, utilities, field service, security and public safety. www.handheldgroup.com

Huawei recently launched the Ascend Mate7 at Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (IFA) 2014, featuring a large screen with FHD display for enhanced entertainment viewing, a slimmer 7.9mm body for increased comfort, an octa-core chipset for superior performance, and a longer-lasting 4100 mAh battery. With new single-touch fingerprint technology and EMUI 3.0, Ascend Mate7 dials up the mobile experience to make it easier for users to live life to the fullest, the company says. www.huaweimobileshop.com

www.connectionsplus.ca

September/October 2014

Connections+

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Connections+ 2015 MEDIA KIT The magazine for ICT professionals, Connections+ readership targets individuals who purchase, design, specify, install, maintain and test structured cabling, networking and telecom products as well as facilities management specialists and senior IT executives who are responsible for overseeing the implementation and installation of these initiatives.

For more information contact Maureen Levy – 416-510-5111 or mlevy@connectionsplus.ca

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TH E B ACK PAG E

The Next Wave of

Mobility

By Peter Linder

obile communications have transformed peoples’ lives during the last 25 years. We have seen the transformation pace accelerate with smartphones as catalysts over the last seven years. But the upcoming years will be the most exiting ones to date. Here is a perspective on what we can expect and the role the network will play at the heart of the transformation.

The new inflection point is driven by the intersection of mobility, cloud and the digital transformation of industries. The growth in new types of devices, all with a wide-area radio interface or a local area radio connected through a smartphone, is accelerating.

We are about to enter the wave of the evolution where networks, devices and applications not only change peoples’ lives but is becoming the enablers for transformation of the society.

In the epicenter of the transformation is the transformation of the user experience. Versatile digital application possibilities and universal smartphone penetration open up new avenues for businesses to transform the experience delivered to customers.

Always connected smartphones allow businesses to take their customer understandings to new levels, and to do it for each individual rather than specific customer segments. The experience is transformed both with devices the user interacts directly with, as well as sensors generating data for a variety of applications.

The network to connect all devices and all applications face the largest transformation conundrum since telephony became digital.

The new demand on the networks is not only to provide coverage and capacity for a basic data service but to provide application coverage for a broad spectrum of applications. The foundation for the user experience of the future is a network that can provide urban and rural coverage and capacity for all application scenarios.

These coverage and capacity improvements are achieved by combining vital mobility enablers. The mobile macro grid is densified in urban areas and the 4G footprint is expanded into rural areas. Small cells are introduced in the outdoor environment, to support users outdoor and to serve constrained indoor areas.

Small cells are introduced indoors to enable a full mobilization of the workforce when working in an

M

38

Connections+

September/October 2014

office. Residential homes are equipped by advanced WiFi solutions serving both the users in the home and the community within reach on the outside.

Mobile radio technologies are evolving quickly in both the capability and capacity dimension. The integration of mobile and WiFi radio capabilities with a common business model is an important catalyst for the next market wave.

User expectations for voice services are set by circuit switched voice and the mobile network capabilities for VoLTE are optimized end-to-end to deliver the same characteristics when delivered over IP. The mobile business communication services move from local network to advanced applications running over the mobile network.

The fourth driver for change is the ramp up of traffic generated from sensors. The realization of these capabilities requires changes in network topologies and architectures as well broad scale introduction of virtualization and software defined networking paradigms.

The reason why this is the biggest change ever for the network is related to network re-use and changes in business models.

All previous mobility enablers have been built isolated from each other, i.e. no/low coupling between 2G/3G/4G/WiFi capabilities in the past. In the future the mobility access will be highly integrated cross technologies and spectrum bands to secure the best use of available resources.

Legacy business models for mobile data have been based on bytes consumed or free for WiFi. Going forward we will see a higher degree of specialization of business models to serve the unique needs of each participating industry in the ecosystem.

Most user values in the future will have low or negative correlation with the number of bytes consumed and innovations in this area could be as revolutionary as the technology introduction itself.

These and other advances are part of a Networked Society in which both mobility and cloud play pivotal roles in changing the way society, businesses and consumers not only function, but will ultimately look like.

C+ Peter Linder is Solution Principal in North America and a Networked Society evangelist for Ericsson.

www.connectionsplus.ca

The last group to

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CaTECH. • Networking • Data Centres • Infrastructure Solutions • Business Telephony • Converged Media & AV • Security • Electrical

Is your business evolving?

In today’s fast-paced technological evolution, it’s easy to get swept away when deciding on your communication needs. At CaTECH, we believe preserving your company’s future begins with innovative, end-to-end solutions that can adapt to a changing environment. It starts with state-of-the-art structured cabling, reliable network products, unparalleled workmanship and exceptional service that will see your business through the High Tech Age and ensure your connectivity, now and in the future.

Let CaTECH keep your company evolving!

1 800 267 1919 • www.catech-systems.com

CONNECTING THE PLANET

In the Networked Society, connectivity will be the starting point for new ways of innovating, collaborating and socializing. It’s about creating freedom, empowerment and opportunity, transforming industries and society while helping find solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing our planet. ericsson.com

Ericsson is a trade-mark of Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Ericsson Canada Inc. is a licensed user.

Your Guide in the Networked Society