Category: Telecoms

Feb 22 2008

Lurking in the shadows

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, Internet, People issues, SaaS, Telecoms, Vendors
22 February 2008

Shadow IT is a term used to refer to those people performing IT functions within an organisation but who are not actually part of the official IT department. It can take many forms – from innocent reliance on advice from the unofficial Excel expert at the next desk, through use of work-arounds to bypass corporate systems, to the …

aaS, AEC, blogs, broadband, churn, collaboration, Construction, document management, email, feature bloat, intranet, IT department, SaaS, Shadow IT, Software-as-a-Service, wikis

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/lurking-in-the/

Feb 13 2008

SaaS – the killer app for CAD?

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Business/Financial, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, Internet, People issues, SaaS, Telecoms, Vendors
13 February 2008

Evan Yares’ CAD blog alerted me to a great article by Brian Seitz among the COFES blogs. Brian asks: Is SaaS the Killer App for the CAD Industry?, suggesting that: “the business model most major CAD vendors operate under – market share and maintenance annuities – is showing its age. It will not be long before an innovative …

24/7, 4Projects, AEC, AutoCAD, Autodesk, BIM, BIW, Brian Seitz, CAD, CADaaS, COFES, customisation, data ownership, DWF, escrow, Evan Yares, Integrated Project Delivery, interoperability, Killer App, MicroStation, NCCTP, PDF, project extranets, ProjectDraw, SaaS, security, Software-as-a-Service, system reliability
6 comments

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/saas-the-kill/

Feb 06 2008

Undersea hassles

By Paul Wilkinson in Blogs, Internet, SaaS, Telecoms
6 February 2008

Apart from what I call the Mihoogle (Microsoft/Yahoo/Google) situation (see previous post), software and internet issues also hit the mainstream media headlines last week following damage to undersea cables linking large parts of the internet. As BIW has expanded internationally, such problems have also affected our business: until Indian-based ISPs could reroute traffic around the Egypt …

BIW, Dubai, Google, Microsoft, Mihoogle, Nicholas Carr, undersea cables, Vadodara, Yahoo

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/undersea-hassle/

Jan 02 2008

Reviewing 2007

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Business/Financial, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, Internet, Marketing, SaaS, Telecoms, Vendors
2 January 2008

Last year, I made five ‘Extranet Evolution’ 2007 predictions. Were they correct? 1. Growing acceptance and use of web-based collaboration tools within the UK construction industry It was something of a no-brainer. The continued revenue growth trends of the leading UK-based vendors shows there is a strong appetite for the applications. I was also encouraged by the …

4Projects, BIM, BIW, collaboration, Constructing Excellence, Construction, CTSpace, mobile, MPS, NCCTP, Predictions, SaaS
1 comment

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/01/reviewing-2007/

Jun 28 2007

FIATECH and COMIT to collaborate, but don’t forget the others…

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, Internet, Telecoms, Vendors
28 June 2007

At a Harvard University conference in Boston last year, I briefly met Ric Jackson of FIATECH and talked about the NCCTP’s efforts to develop a data exchange standard that would allow data to be transferred between different construction collaboration (‘extranet’) platforms. From a Cadalyst article, I see FIATECH has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with UK-based group …

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2007/06/fiatech-and-com/

Apr 24 2007

Wi-fi? Why worry?

By Paul Wilkinson in Future, Internet, Telecoms
24 April 2007

Watching the local BBC television news bulletin last night, there was a brief story about the new City of London Wi-fi network, but the reporter couldn’t help but link it to a weekend news report about health concerns associated with wi-fi networks. Fortunately, such fears have been put into context in another BBC article, Wi-fi? Why …

1 comment

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2007/04/wifi_why_worry/

Feb 26 2007

CAD collaboration

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Blogs, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, Internet, Telecoms, Vendors
26 February 2007

Earlier this month, I mentioned New Zealand-based David Harrisons’ Stress-Free blog. In a more recent, long post entitled CAD Collaboration, he discusses the challenge of collaborating around CAD models. He gives a good outline of how teams have used technology to share CAD information to date, including the use of what he calls “external document management”. …

4Projects, Adept, AEC, Asite, Autodesk, Bentley ProjectWise, BIW, blog, Buzzsaw, CAD, collaboration, Constructing Excellence, Construction, David Harrison, Eskudos, IFC, National Platform for the Built Environment, Project Divercity, Stress-free, VDEFT
1 comment

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2007/02/cad_collaborati/

Feb 22 2007

Collaborate via Blackberry

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, Telecoms, Vendors
22 February 2007

At the Autodesk Connected blog Alex Willingham talks about using the US-based Constructware construction collaboration system via a Blackberry wireless device. The tools clearly focus on document collaboration rather than drawings, which is hardly surprising. I regularly hear seasoned AEC professionals moaning about how it is more difficult to view and mark-up drawings on-screen than …

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2007/02/collaborate_via/

Jan 24 2007

BT Workspace

By Paul Wilkinson in Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Internet, Marketing, SaaS, Telecoms, Vendors
24 January 2007

Almost unnoticed, UK telecoms provider BT has recently launched a web-based service, BT Workspace, aimed at helping people in small to medium-sized enterprises share information and collaborate with each other. It talks about getting rid of email clutter, and managing and controlling projects via extranet functionality, with intranet functionality also available for internal company dicussions …

AEC, BT, BT Workspace, collaboration, extranet, Microsoft, Office Live, on-demand, SaaS, SME, Software-as-a-Service, UK, Workspace
8 comments

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2007/01/bt_workspace_1/

Nov 03 2006

“QS News” feature on mobile working

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, Internet, Marketing, SaaS, Telecoms, Vendors
3 November 2006

UK trade magazine QS News has published a feature article written by me: Why ‘I’ always comes before ‘T’. In the article, I argue that providers and users of mobile IT solutions in the construction industry need to focus on ‘whole life information‘ instead of getting hung-up about technology hardware and connectivity issues. The key …