Comms Suitville in the City

Another day, another conference. But this one isn't quite the same as buzzy Venturefest.

Philip Graf - new deputy chair of Ofcom is chairing this session.

This is the Communications Managers Association annual conference 2006.

There were 2 blatant sales pitches to start with, one from RIM about how secure the Blackberry is. One from HP. Then we had the Public Sector guy from HP - who talked about a case study of the network implemented at York University. A bit more interesting - but pretty much a sales pitch. I took notes of these - but don't include them here.

Better was an interesting look from IDC and this is worth a quick scan:

Duncan Brown IDC

Changing Business Needs and Better Security

Networks are business critical

Don’t say ‘dah’ - this is not as obvious as it seems - but we never talk about standalone computers. We just assume that the network will be where we are whenever we need it.
Rate of growth is exponential - and what we’ll be connecting to the networks won’t be what we recognise today as ‘computers’.
Converge trends are across the networks - we are living with it and it will grow. Convergence is more of a journey than a destination.

Mobility is (increasingly) business critical

61% of banks have a mobile solution deployed. Education sector have mobile solutions (about 50% of them today).

Security is business critical

Information/IT systems security is the most important issue rated by CEO/CFOs against all other technology issues. Users don’t care really what brings the system down. Security and business continuity are increasingly two views of the same thing.

But there’s a funding gap. Mobility data strategies are in advance of mobile security. Lots of money going into fixed security - much less going into mobile. There is still a perception that mobile solutions are inherently less secure.

Changes in security over the next 3 years

Expect to see an ‘Age of Reason’ taking an integrated and more holistic view of security management. But everything is getting too complex for organisations to manage - security may increasingly be outsourced. Managed solutions will increasingly come along. We will move towards a very proactive embedded, predictive security solutions. Market for these growing at 20% (vs overall market growth of 5% for UK IT)

But who will deliver these solutions?

Moves in the industry

Network equipment vendors will buy up the specialist security providers - expect to see these acquisitions. Initially security vendors will consolidate both for scale and access to technology. Once they get bigger they’ll get bought by the big network vendors.

Keeping the value of this investment in the view of the CEO/CFO

He suggests Iin response to a question] that regular reporting to the Board about the level of attacks and other nasty stuff repelled by these ‘invisible’ systems. Needs to be part of the risk management process. Security market has ‘missed a trick’ by not attaching itself to the compliance drive.

Q - where are the SMEs in this?

Network equipment providers see SMEs as very important - but price points can be too high. COLT has developed solutions specifically for the SME market. SMEs tend to buy through the channel (possible for the channel to add value here).