OC CIO Minutes October 14, 2010

1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
October 14, 2010 meeting

Present: Jim Sutter, Cameron Cosgrove, Hicham Semaan, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Jennifer Curlee, Tina Haines, Dave Phillips

REMINDER: The next OC CIO meeting will be at the new RJTCompuquest office, 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA 92612.

The following have volunteered to introduce topics through April 2011:

11/11/10 IT Dashboards Subbu Murthy
12/9/10 Lack of Standards in mobile computing Cameron Cosgrove
1/13/10 Business Intelligence update Sean Brown
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht

We welcomed Cameron Cosgrove, First American, and Keith Golden, Econolite, to their first meetings. Each briefly described their responsibilities – Cameron is the CTO and VP in charge of the infrastructure at First American, and Keith just recently took over as CIO at Econolite, a traffic management company founded in 1933.

Topic: Next Generation WANs

Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, predicted that the future would be WiMax and LTE, driven by demographics (the Internet generation), the multitude of Internet devices, and the demand created by apps and content. WiMax (World Interoperability for Microwave Access) is not new; it is based on IEEE 802.16, and provides a wireless alternative to Cable or DSL for the last mile without digging. WAN – MAN provides mobile support for a city wireless network, which includes telephone, TV and the Internet. Jim’s slides show a diagram and actual pictures of what it looks like. The potential applications include providing portable mobile broadband connectivity across cities and countries, supporting data, VoIP and IPTV services (triple play). It can be used to provide Internet connectivity as part of a business continuity plan, and a network to facilitate machine-to-machine communications such as Smart Metering. LTE stands for Long Term Evolution – surprise! Upgrading from 3G to 4G mobile communications technology – essentially a mobile broadband system. High peak upload and download rates, and sub 5 ms latency for small IP packages. Mobile TV can become a competitor for TV broadcast. Worldwide support for mobile users depends on the deployment of 1G, 2G and 3G technologies, using 3GPP standards. The natural path from 3GPP (GSM and HSPA) seems to be LTE. Jim listed all the organizations that have worked on this evolution. We will run out of fixed IP addresses next summer (IPv4). IPv6 will fix the problem but is not compatible with IPv4, so ISPs will continue to provide the translation. Jim included several slides on IPv6 details – the take home is to make sure you buy IPv6 compatible HD/SW. There is a significant difference in the latency of LTE over WiMax. Jim’s slide 26 is a good illustration of how all this fits together, and he adds some industry forecasts. What this means to CIOs is more reach, richer applications, more capable branch offices, potential cost reductions and more demand!

We asked those present to tell us about their experience with WiMax ad LTE.

Cameron said that he has no experience with either, as they have not started to use WiMax or LTE. They will make 4G cards available, but he does not think that this will add much to cell phone usage. He does negotiate with vendors for I year bulk rates as they have a high volume – Verizon is their primary vendor.

Hicham thanked Jim for his presentation on a very timely topic for him. He needs guidance, as they always have to add more T1 lines to support their 6 offices, and their class attendees, 55% of whom connect remotely from home. What is a good solution for him? Sean agreed to put him in touch with a good WAN consultant.

Jeff H. said that this is all for connecting more bandwidth at the desk of the mobile workforce. Who knows, but LTE might be too slow in a few years time. Sprint is their primary carrier, and the have WiMax available. As they are an early adopter of WiMax, they may hit the wall before LTE.

Sean also thanked Jim for an excellent presentation. Sean has a friend who works for Hyundai, and they are big into using microwave towers. He also suggested that for our Christmas meeting on 12/9/10, we should have a more extensive breakfast, and wanted to know who was interested in that idea.

Jeff R. also thought that this was a very timely topic for him. He is relatively new in his current position and the WAN contract is coming up for renewal. They have 200 employees in the US and 400 in China. They primarily use Sprint, and some ATT for international travel, despite poor ATT reception locally.

Jennifer just returned from a conference in Orlando. They are in 6 separate locations all within line-of-sight of each other, and they use everything, including T1s. They are trying to simplify their world. They use Verizon, T-Mobile and recently stopped using Sprint.

Jim, thank you for a great presentation, and for displaying command over the technology. Jim's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .

See you on November 11, 2010 at 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA 92612.