There you are, watching the TV (again), when along comes the next installment of the BT ad.

This time the Bloke and his Woman are having an argument. On some kind of instant messaging service because he's away on business. This being the source of the spat. His being away, that is, not his being on IM.

Anyway, the punchline comes when the non BT broadband service he is using tanks, just in the middle of a particularly sensitive moment in the procedings. While the Bloke howls and thumps the modem, the Woman paces pensively around her garden.

And you think 'The phone. Pick up the phone. Use the phone. For GODS' SAKE, will you get on the PHONE.'

Because contrary to what you might think, the Bloke is not checking in from Outer Mongolia, but from Deepest Cornwall.

Of course he doesn't, and it finally occurred to you that the problem here is not the laziness of the advertising execs responsible, but the fact that they are of a generation who quite genuinely cannot conceive of a life without digital cameras and who without self consciousness dump their girlfriends by text, or, in this case, Internet.

Never before have you felt so old.

My bet: Ribbit is gaining momentum among a range of established companies who need Ribbit’s platform to deliver integrated voice capabilities into their products, giving Ribbit big company potential; expect an IPO in several years time.

I was wrong. There's no IPO in Ribbit's future.  Just 6 months after the company rolled out the Amphibian platform at DEMO 08, the startup has been acquired by British Telecom.  The company is among the fastest from DEMO launch to acquisitions ever.

Don Thorson game me the heads up late last week that something was in the offing, and today the company, along with BT, made the official announcement.

Ribbit architected the platform for what the company called "the first Silicon Valley Phone Company." A high ambition to be sure, and one that has now been legitimized by BT.  The open platform enables third-party developers to deliver VoIP applications that integrate communications services into a range of use cases.

While the $105M price tag may seem modest by some standards, it is a measure of the velocity with which Ribbit - and this emerging market are moving.  The company only emerged from R&D stealth about 8 months ago, and announced the applications platform at DEMO 08 in February.  That the buyer is a telco affirms the shift to IP-based communications and reinforces the vision of Ribbit's founders that a new-generation of integrated voice services lies just ahead.

The acquisition is also good news for companies like PanTerra Networks that have been pushing similar architectures to enterprise customers.  An endorsement-by-acquisition of the sea-change in telephony can only support their work.

The voice platform of the future was purchased today for $105 million by BT (British Telecom).

JP Rangaswami, managing director of service design at BT, said: "Silicon Valley is emerging as a hotbed of telecommunications innovation. With Ribbit, not only do we extend our presence in the Valley, but we also gain a groundbreaking platform, a growing community of developers and a world-class team that share a common vision. Buying Ribbit lets us accelerate that vision."

If you haven't checked out Ribbit's voice platform now is the time. You can take any web-based application and add voice and telephony features --

• listen to your vmail in your Facebook account or whatever social network
• use a flash phone on your desktop (air iphone) to make a mobile call
• receive mobile phone calls via Salesforce
• take voice memos and convert them automatically to text
• and many more potential applications

We've been streaming live from the Ribbit offices in Mountain View via Ustream.tv. Here is a video interview with Chuck Freedman, developer platform lead and Ryan Stewart, Adobe RIA evangelist and Flash expert:

[ustream gODu4BUEKewyx8QzUbbMwrF2pLttiKm7.usv]

-Randy Ksar
Note: I've been consulting for Ribbit for the past four months doing social media and lead generation.

1. Tata Consultancy Services
Founded in 1968, TCS is one of India's largest corporate houses. It is also India's largest IT employer with staff strength of 111,000 employees. The company began as a division of the Tata Group, called the Tata Computer Centre. Its main business was to offer computer services to other group companies. Soon the company was spun off as Tata Consultancy Services after it realized the huge potential of the booming IT services. The company posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 1,290.61 crore (Rs 12.90 billion) for the first quarter ended June 30, 2008, an increase of 7.3 per cent compared to the year-ago period. Its annual sales worldwide stands at $5.7 billion for the fiscal year ending March 2008. During the year 2007-08. TCS' consolidated revenues grew by 22 per cent to Rs 22,863 crore ($5.7 billion). S. Ramadorai is the chief executive officer and managing director of TCS. TCS is IDC-Dataquest IT best employer in IT services in 2007. TCS also topped Dataquest DQTop 20 list of IT service providers in 2007.

2. Infosys Technologies Ltd
Infosys Technologies Ltd was started in 1981 by seven people with $250. Today, the company boasts of revenues of over $ 4 billion and 94,379 employees. Under the leadership of N R Narayana Murthy, the company has become a global brand. The company is now headed by Kris Gopalakrishnan. The income for the quarter ended June 30 2008 was Rs 4,854 crore (Rs 48.54 billion). The net profit stood at Rs 1,302 crore (Rs 13.02 billion). Forbes magazine named Infosys in its list of Global High Performers. Waters magazine rated Infosys as the Best Outsourcing Partner. The Banker magazine conferred two Banker Technology Awards on Infosys to acclaim its work in wholesale and capital markets in two categories - Payments and Treasury Services, and Off shoring and Outsourcing. The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) ranked Infosys at No. 3 in its '2008 Global Outsourcing 100'.

3. Wipro
What started off as a hydrogenated cooking fat company, Wipro is today is a $5 billion revenue generating IT, BPO and R&D services organization with presence in over 50 countries. Premji started Wipro with the 'idea of building an organization which was deeply committed to values, in the firm belief that success in business would be its inevitable, eventual outcome'. The company has over 72,000 employees. Wipro's revenues grew by 33 per cent to Rs 19,957 crore (Rs 200 billion) for the year ended March 31, 2008. The net profit grew by 12 per cent to Rs. 3,283 crore (Rs. 32.83 billion). The revenues of the combined IT businesses were $4.3 billion with 43 per cent YoY growth. Wipro was the only Indian company to be ranked among the top 10 global outsourcing providers in IAOP's 2006 Global Outsourcing 100 listing. Wipro has also won the International Institute for Software Testing's Software Testing Best Practice Award.

4. Satyam Computer Services
Established in 1987 by Ramalinga Raju, Satyam has staff strength of 51,000 employees. In 2008, the company's revenues crossed the $ 2-billion mark. 'A simple, yet extensive management model to create value, which promotes entrepreneurship, a focus on the customer, and the constant pursuit of excellence,' is the company's mantra for success. In FY2008, its revenues saw a growth of 30.7 per cent to Rs 8,473.49 crore (Rs 84.73 billion) compared to fiscal 2007. The net profit stood at Rs 1,687.89 crore (Rs 16.87 billion), a growth of 20.2 per cent over fiscal 2007. Satyam is among the youngest IT service companies to reach $1 billion in annual revenues. It is ranked No. 1 in the ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) BEST Award, 2007.

5. HCL Technologies
HCL is a leading global technology player with annual revenues of $4.9 billion. The HCL Enterprise comprises two companies listed in India, HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. Founded in 1976, HCL is one of 'India's original IT garage start ups'. The HCL team comprises 53,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, operating across 18 countries. At a time when India had a total of 250 computers, Shiv Nadar led a young team which passionately believed in the growth of the IT industry. Three decades later, he succeeded in creating a $ 4.9 billion global enterprise. The company has reported consolidated revenue of Rs 3017.5 crore (Rs 30.17 billion) during the quarter ended March 31, 2008. The profit after tax stood at Rs. 81.5 crore (Rs 815 million).

6. Tech Mahindra
Tech Mahindra was incorporated as a joint venture between Mahindra & Mahindra and BT plc in 1986 under the name of 'Mahindra-British Telecom'. Later, the name was changed to 'Tech Mahindra', in order to reflect the diversification and growth of the client base and service offerings. The company was incorporated in 1986. Tech Mahindra is a global systems integrator and business transformation consulting firm focused on the communications industry. At the helm of the fast expanding organization is Vineet Nayyar. In a career spanning over 40 years, he has worked with the government, international multilateral agencies and the corporate sector. Tech Mahindra's net profit rose 8.57 per cent to Rs 196.4 crore (Rs 1.96 billion) on 6.09 per cent growth in net sale to Rs 911.6 crore (Rs 9.11 billion) in Q3 December 2007 over Q2 September 2007.

7. Patni Computer Systems
Patni Computer Systems Ltd one of the leading global providers of information technology services and business solutions. The company has clients across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific locations. The company has serviced more than 400 Fortune 1000 companies, for over two decades. Patni Computer Systems Limited was incorporated on 10 February 1978 under the Companies Act, 1956. On 18 September 2003, the Company converted itself from a private limited company into a public limited company. The company headed founded by Narendra K Patni by has a staff strength of over 14,000 professionals. The revenues for the quarter ended March 2008 stood at $ 176.4 million (Rs. 7,061.2 million) up 13.1% YoY from $ 156.0 million (Rs. 6,724.1 million). The net income for the quarter at US$ 18.1 million (Rs. 724.6 million) down 35.0 per cent YoY from $ 27.8 million (Rs. 1,200.3 million).Frost & Sullivan ranked Patni 1st among 'Top 5 Engineering Service Providers'.

8. i-flex Solutions
Iflex started as a division of Citicorp (now Citigroup), wholly owned subsidiary called Citicorp Overseas Software Ltd. (COSL) in 1991.Later, a separate company Citicorp Information Technologies Industries Ltd. (CITIL) was formed and Rajesh Hukku was appointed as its head. CITIL started off with the universal banking product, MicroBanker which became very successful. In the mid-90s, CITIL developed Flexcube at its Bangalore development centre. After the launch of Flexcube, all of CITIL's transactional banking products were brought under a common brand umbrella. CITIL changed its name to i-flex solutions to reflect its growing independence from Citicorp and to strengthen its Flexcube brand. In 2006, i-flex became a majority-owned subsidiary of Oracle Corporation i-flex posted a top line growth of 8 per cent QoQ with revenue for the quarter ended March 31, 2008 at Rs 672 crore (Rs 6.72 billion) as compared to Rs 601 crore (Rs 6.01 billion) for the corresponding quarter during the previous year representing a 12 per cent YoY growth. The net income for quarter stood at Rs 185 crore (Rs 1.85 billion) representing 73 per cent growth QoQ. The revenue for the full year ended March 31, 2008 stood at Rs 2,380 crore (Rs 23.80 billion), up 15 per cent as compared to the previous year.

9. MphasiS
MphasiS Limited was formed in June 2000 after the merger of the US-based IT consulting company MphasiS Corporation(founded in 1998)and the Indian IT services company BFL Software Limited (founded in  1993) . Jeya Kumar is CEO of MphasiS,which has staff strength of 27,000 people. For the year ended 31 March 2008, the MphasiS group recorded revenues of Rs 2,423 crore (Rs 24.23 billion), a growth of Rs 662 crore, which is 38 per cent over the previous year. The net profit increased by 42 per cent from Rs 180 crore (Rs 1.8 billion) to Rs 255 crore (Rs 2.55 billion) during the year ended 31 March 2008. MphasiS was named among amongst the Top 100 Companies in Global Outsourcing.

10. L&T InfoTech
L&T InfoTech is a global IT services and solutions provider. It is a subsidiary company of is Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (L&T), an engineering, manufacturing and construction conglomerate, with global operations. A M Naik is the chairman of the company. Originally founded as L&T Information Technology Ltd (LTITL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Ltd (L&T), the company changed its name to L&T InfoTech on 1st April, 1997. In 2004, it tied up with Fidelity Information Services, a division of Fidelity National Financial to provide banking solutions for the Indian banking industry. In 2007-08, L&T had recorded revenues of Rs 29,600 crore (Rs 296 billion).

Eigentlich hat mich "Xing" auf das Thema gebracht. Es ist nämlich so, dass eine Schulkameradin von mir (Abschlußklasse 1987!!!) dort drin ist mit der Stellenbeschreibung "Brockhaus online". Also, denk ich mir da, das ist doch ein Widerspruch in sich. Entweder Brockhaus, oder online.

Nun steht im Regal rechts hinter mir die 12bändige Ausgabe (erstanden von meiner aufopferungsvollen Mutter zwischen 1978 und 1985), in die ich - ich gestehe - seit Minimum 15 Jahren nicht mehr reingeschaut habe.

Aber irgendwie ist es schon sehr traurig. Also, dass die Firma Brockhaus vor kurzem beschlossen hat, den Laden zuzusperren und nur noch online präsent zu sein. Ungefähr so wie die Nachricht damals, dass British Telecom die roten Telefonhäuschen abschafft. Also: Etwas, das man nicht wirklich braucht, verschwindet von der Erdoberfläche. Wie der Dodo auf Mauritius.

Aber irgendwie denkt man dabei doch: Er war schon putzig, der Dodo. Sie war schon pittoresk, die rote Telefonzelle.

Ich hoffe bloß, dass nicht irgendwann jemand sagt: Man konnte schon toll Fische drin einwickeln - in die Zeitung....

You may be in denial if you think a Deniable File System (DFS) will fully secure your data.  So says Byte and Switch today, based on a study by British Telecom's Bruce Schneier and a team of researchers from the University of Washington.  They were able to expose DFS-hidden data with Microsoft Vista, Word, and Google desktop.  

Fully ecrypted hard drives are not affected

Don't worry -  this chink in data security does not apply to drives using Full Disk Encryption (FDE) .

BT hopes this will help it stave off competition from rivals who have started to use their new backbones and the latest technology to eat into its broadband business. Cable operator Virgin, for example, plans to use DOCSIS 3.0 to compete with BT. The incumbent has been reticent about upscaling its infrastructure over concerns that it would spend billions and then be forced to share with upstarts, the way it does now. By comparison, the new plan is closely tied to regulatory concessions and includes some sort of investment protection from Ofcom, the British regulator.

The Guardian writes:

Under the current regulatory regime, BT must allow rival service providers to use its network on the same terms as its own retail arm. There would be a huge outcry if that "equivalence" was lost, following the battles between BT, its rivals and the regulators at the start of this decade when Broadband Britain was just an ambition.

Nevertheless, BT's announcement is full of more holes than a wheel of Swiss cheese. Lets look at the deal from a distance: 10 million homes for $3 billion. In comparison, Verizon is spending about $22 billion to fiber up some 18 million homes. That's a cost improvement of 9x, which means BT's plan just doesn't make sense, even if you take into account that somehow it will get massive sops from Chinese equipment maker Huawei.

BT plans to sell 100-meg connections to homes it will connect with fiber (FTTP) using mostly G-PON technologies. Other homes, which will be connected to special cabinets on the curb (which are, in turn, connected to the Internet using fiber), will get a top speed of 40 Mbps. So in a sense, the plan is a blend of broadband strategies being used by Verizon (all fiber) and AT&T (combination of fiber and copper.)

Having followed this business for some time, I know that neither of their strategies are cheap. Verizon spends close to $1,400 per connected home (assuming that everyone is going to sign up for the service). AT&T's numbers are also higher than $300 per home.

According to my sources, it costs just north of $500 to get the network ready to offer households super broadband, or what is generically known in the industry as homes passed. This doesn't include laying fiber to the home, its associated labor costs and the on-the-premise gear. All that costs between $750 and $1,000. The on-the-premise ONTs cost between $150 and $200 alone.

Given that the network is scheduled to be rolled out in 2012, let's assume that by then, prices decline by half -- but the numbers still don't add up. It could be that this $300-per-home-for-fiber is on top of the previously announced spending on BT's broadband buildout as part of the 21CN. But even taking that into account, I'm not ready to buy BT's splashy announcement. I would like to know from BT the exact breakdown of the cost structure of their network.

BT's new CEO, Ian Livingston, whom I had a chance to meet back in 2006, is a sales maven, given his background with a high-street retailer and an upstart ISP. Some say he's so good he could sell ice to Eskimos. Of course.

Update: My good pal, Dave Burstein, who writes the influential newsletter DSL Prime, wrote in to point out why the news is spin. "There is nothing in the announcement that wasn't discussed by Christopher Bland with Andrew Parker a year ago," he wrote. Dave tracks the industry closely, so I'm not surprised he found the "spin" in the news. He also pointed out that by 2012, less than 1 million will be on fiber, and mostly new fiber.

And Andrew Odlyzko, the authority on broadband and networks, in an email to me noted that the incremental 100 million pounds in capital expenditure increase for this promised network upgrade is a mere 3 percent, and even that is contingent on regulatory relief from Ofcom.

Q: Is this investment dependent on Ofcom creating a new regulatory framework?

A: Yes. The right regulatory environment is vital for anyone seeking to invest. The funds required are extremely large and companies need confidence that risk-taking can be appropriately rewarded.

Image courtesy of BT plc.

It wouldn't surprise me if BT (or some European telecom) acquired Ribbit (or any other platform) to expand across the borders and find a way to stay relevant. We had pointed out that a consortium of incumbent carriers were developing their competitor to Skype. Ribbit-type platform could be used to develop apps for the incumbent supra-net.

Ribbit has so far raised $13 million from Allegis Capital, KPG Ventures and Alsop Louie Ventures. The company has attracted about 4000 developers to its platform, though it is hard to tell if it is making any revenues from its platform. Over past few weeks, I had heard about Ribbit being in "play" and talking to likely buyers, but there is nothing concrete to add.

U saradnji sa udruženjem britanskih muzičkih izdavača i autora, British Phonographic Industry (BPI), British Telecom je krenuo u borbu protiv nelegalnog deljenja muzike i drugih sadržaja putem Interneta. BPI koristi usluge kompanija koje za njih prikuplja "forenzičke dokaze" protiv korisnika koji navodno nelegalno dele datoteke, uključujući IP adrese, imena datoteka i vremenske oznake.

U BPI-ovom upozorenju koje se šalje zajedno s BT-ovim pismom savetuje se korisnicima da uklone sve programe za direktno deljenje sadržaja putem Interneta, kao što su Limewirea, DirectConnecta (DC++), eDonkey/eMulea i Soulseeka, sa svih računara povezanih na BT-ovu uslugu pristupa Internetu.

(izvor: Bug)

It is true that Hungary's growth rate is well below that of some of its neighbours, but Mr Garamhegyi argued that this masks a reality in which the state sector has been shrinking (including a reduction in the number of teachers, as school enrolments have declined), whereas the private sector has been blossoming. Certainly there has been some encouraging inward investment, the biggest catch so far being a giant project by Daimler Benz. Moreover, despite its small size, Hungary attracts 15 per cent of all new Research and Development jobs in Europe, second only to the United Kingdom.

As everywhere, Hungary has been hit by rising energy and food prices and there are certainly significant macro-economic problems at the moment. Things are not helped by the strength of the Hungarian currency, the forint. Given its high level against the euro, there is little prospect of Budapest opting to join the eurozone soon.

The seminar was arranged by International Financial Services London

I couldn't be bothered to wait ten days to call back.  Being addicted to the net as I am I knew that something had to be done.  I phone up yet again and this time I got a guy called Raj on the line.  I feel it fit to name and shame this imbecile as his manner on the phone was so apologetic it was bordering patronising.  He then told me that he was going to test my phone line connection and would ring me back in 'no more than fifteen minutes.'  After putting the phone down and waiting half an hour I thought to myself that there was no way that the cocky sod would phone back so I got on the phone again.

This time I got an agreeable fellow whom was nice and told me that usuallly when employees can't carry out the test for some reason or other they don't call the customer back.  He must have found some problem with it or it was coming up to his lunch break or shift's end.  Although this fellow couldn't help me directly he did place a fault report with wholesale and a few days later an engineer came down and tried to help me out.  He noticed that his personal router worked but mine didn't and he assumed there was something wrong with my hub.  Then he found out that something else was wrong when he noticed that my old router didn't work either.  He went away saying that he couldn't find out that was wrong.

Then it clicks in my tiny brain.  The cable going from the DSL filter and the hub was faulty.  I replaced that and it magically worked.  I feel a bit guilty actually as I haven't actually told BT that I've fixed the fault myself.

I've called this blog entry quite interesting and that's because last night I went to the London Studios on the South Bank to sit in the audience and watch QI, chaired by Stephen Fry.  The guests were Alan Davies, Jimmy Carr, Rich Hall and another comedian whose name escapes me but who was rather good.  I liked the performance but without the three and a half hour wait in the changable weather outside.  There's no point putting up an umbrella when you're part of a cramped queue.  The amount of people that nearly had their pupils punctured by umbrella spokes was amazing. 

I must say I do enjoy it when I see other people's umbrellas turn inside-out as mine used to always do that as a child and I used to be so embaressed because everybody would watch and I knew they'd be thinking something along the lines of.... "I'm so glad that isn't me!"  We don't have a word for it but the Germans call it shadenfreude.

Three days previously I had been called up by the producers of the show and they were offerring me tickets for another performance because they had well over-booked seats.  You see, if you don't get seated then you get priority tickets that admit you in front of the all the other people with normal tickets for the next showing.  There was about 200 priority tickets - demand was so high.  I couldn't change the date because it was the only day that fit when my friends and I had the same day off work.  It's not easy to get that when you work at the same place.

Anyway, I'm being critisized by my partner for being unsociable by being on this thing so I'm going to have to talk now.  Maybe I'm being a little harsh on him.  It is his birthday today you know!

Order Design Management Case Studies from Amazon for $49.56

This indeed is the real thing: both companies have confirmed their talks and perhaps their seriousness. HP-EDS pairing will go down as one of the more significant developments of 2008, and its impact will be felt for years to come.

"I see it as an attempt by HP to really go head-to-head with IBM in a much more meaningful way, especially in technology services and IT outsourcing," Dana Stiffler, research director at AMR Research told Computerworld. I think there is more to this deal than just old-fashioned outsourcing, and competing with IBM.

Typically, such a major deal means two things: Either the buyer has some issues with his current business, or he wants to make a big bet on the future. In case of HP CEO Mark Hurd, it might be a bit of both. There is only so much market share HP can carve out when it comes to printers and computers. More importantly, HP seems to be realizing that the future is about on-demand infrastructure. EDS brings to the table about 100 data centers around the planet.

Not everyone agrees with HP’s decision to buy EDS and get big fast. Forrester analyst Paul Roehrig is in that camp. Vinnie “Deal Architect” Mirchandani is someone I immensely respect and he brings up a very valid point when he writes:

But EDS is not Accenture or PwC (which IBM acquired) or TCS or Infosys. Its major strength is still in infrastructure outsourcing (though it has been growing its application and BPO capabilities nicely). HP's outsourcing is similarly more skewed towards infrastructure. So, it is a scale play. But the timing is risky because infrastructure outsourcing is being challenged by data center consolidations, a secular decline in processing, storage and network charges and emergence of utility and cloud computing models.

However, I am taking a slightly more optimistic view of this deal, pointing out that this is HP's bet on those very same trends -- utility and cloud computing. HP might have finally realized that the future is about offering hardware as a service. Lets look at some of the recent developments

• HP bought EYP Mission Critical Facilities. John McCain, senior vice president and general manager, HP Services, at the time of the deal remarked: "Acquiring EYP Mission Critical Facilities boosts HP’s ability to help customers transform their data centers and build dynamic computing environments from the ground up." (via Rich Miller.)
• HP bought Opsware, a data center automation software company started by Marc Andreessen, for $1.6 billion in July 2007.
• In March 2008, HP announced its data center-as-a-service initiative, targeting large companies.
• Yesterday, The Times of London reported that HP is close to buying 24 data centers currently owned by British Telecom in Europe for about $3 billion. The Times report says BT will provide Internet bandwidth, networks and remote access to HP, an area where the Silicon Valley-based giant isn't that strong.

If you plot the EDS bid against these four recent developments, it is not that difficult to postulate that HP is building its own cloud focused on large global companies. Going further, I would channel something Vinnie says in his post.

HP's hardware business has seen significant success in a number of emerging economies -- running that infrastructure as a service does offer some unique opportunities.

I think this is a good point: Even though it's growing fast, BRIC Bloc remains reticent to spend big dollars on infrastructure. Offering infrastructure-as-a-service to Indian telecoms or Chinese automakers of Brazilian biofuel companies is a much easier proposition then making them spend millions of dollars on blade servers, storage systems and networking devices.

Update#2: My favorite writer/thinker/troublemaker Nick Carr disagrees with me thesis about HP & the Cloud. He believes that this is a backward looking move:

an acquisition aimed at boosting profitability through consolidation and cost reduction in a mature business. The transition to the cloud will, for big companies, be a slow one, and there will continue to be much money made in running client-server infrastructures for many years.

Nick might be right, but in reality as he argues in his book, Big Switch (have you read it yet?), the world is going the way of the cloud, and even a company as stodgy as HP realizes that it has to transition to the future.

Update #3 Our colleagues over at OStatic, all of whom are open-source experts, have taken a deeper look at the deal as well. Go here for the full analysis.

What do you guys think?