Posted on 12/14/2004 2:55:55 AM PST by crushelits
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Businesses in Sweden, Ireland and Britain top the list when it comes to the use of information technology to improve their operations, according to a country-by-country survey. The United States, which was in the top three last year, slipped four places.
The study by U.S. consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, uses its own "Sophistication Index" to determine how eagerly, and capably, countries have embraced information technology, including wireless access and Internet access.
Commissioned by Britain's Department of Trade and Industry, the survey by the New York-based consulting firm was based on telephone interviews from April-July of nearly 8,000 businesses in Britain, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Ireland, South Korea, Sweden and the United States.
Sweden rose from fifth place to first from 2003 to 2004 because of the Scandinavian country's use of technology by businesses, large and small. Ireland was ranked second because of the knowledge workers there have in using information technology, while Britain finished third, four spots higher than in 2003.
British businesses were quick to adopt new technologies early, including voice over IP, or VoIP calling, which replaces a telephone line by making calls through the Internet, as well as desktop video conferencing, the report found.
Germany was ranked fourth, followed by South Korea, Canada, the United States and Australia. Italy, Japan and France rounded out the survey, which covered companies in sectors including manufacturing, construction, retail and wholesale, transport, communications, finance and services, and government agencies.
On a global basis, the survey — released last week — found that more businesses are measuring the benefits of technology instead of its costs on the bottom-line. It also found that instead of touting their ability to provide access to the Internet, companies are using the speed and reliability as benchmarks of success.
"Overall, businesses are taking a more thoughtful and selective approach to deploying technology," said Frederick Knops, vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton. "We see a tighter focus on value-added applications, and greater emphasis on measurement to assess the benefits of new technology."
Well, this all could be summed up by two words, Weak Dollar.... Obviously European countries are buying IT,(American Technology) because the dollar is weak and they get more for their money right now...
Yes i know IT is Information Technology, which is based on the US dollar, and ruled by silicon valley...
VoIP is slowly coming to life in Britain now.
It is only in the last year that I have heard about it but as I do not pay the phone bill at my place or business I have not considered using it but the costs look very promising.
I have a VoIP crisis on my hands. Our field guys dial in using a modem to upload data at the end of the day. It will not work on VoIP. It's standard Hayes stuff dialing a VPN. I'm anxiously waiting for a test bed and crossing my fingers that not a lot more of our thousands of people will order VoIP in the meantime.
I think George Gilder would tell you that it is the FCC, and possibly our antitrust enforcement, which has resulted in the situation where high-speed Internet is more common in South Korea than it is in the US.If you think about it, the use of cell phones and VOIP should obsolete POTS almost completely, and VOIP should supplement cellular by making it possible to have small cells wherever there is an wireless internet router. And long distance voice should be cost no more than local, nor should international cost a lot.
GREAT POINT! It probably is also a factor that in many of these countries, socialism has driven up the cost of labor to the point where it increases the economic necessity of automation and technology to compete. The European labor situation has in effect created a "burning platform" to innovate!
To put in into modem terms, the VOiP gear supercedes flow control no matter what the modems want to do, so I don't think that's gonna' work for you. Also you might look into the issue of modem vs. VOiP latency. The "acceptable" latency on VOiP is 150 ms. which may be unacceptable to your modems. I've not looked into this specific kind of problem, so these are just suggestions.
It seems if your field folks have the bandwidth for VOiP they should also be using IP to reach the VPN, rather than dialup modems. To test it, buy a cheap VPN appliance for your end, and reconfigure the VPN software on their end to use IP. I think you'll be chucking all those modems after you give it a run.
I'm not clear what variables they use to construct the 'complex' index used in this survey. Until we know what they are, it's difficult to give any comment...
Swedish PING!
Wireless is SO available any more that I can't imagine that you're not moving to that kind of connection anyway. Every hotel I stay in has either wireless, broadband, or both. And you can hook up to wireless outside Kinko's or Starbucks all day long. There's a cost, but you don't have these headaches, and the speed is tremendous, a real productivity kicker. I avoid dial up like the plague unless I absolutely have to use it. Is there something I'm missing here?
Good suggestions, but we have thousands of devices and an InfoSec group that refuses to let anyone on the VPN without an RSA token. Making the device a part of a in-home network also offers challenges. We have serial, USB, BT and 802.11b -- no ethernet. Our next gen device has GPRS which will help eliminate the need for nightly data upload. For the few people that have put themselves on VoIP, we've moved around the problem by allowing them to upload directly via 802.11b when they come back to the facility the next morning.
We'll see how it goes.
It's already there. Vonage supplies a free softphone which installs on any Windows system (laptop or desktop). Once you've connected to an IP network (whether via 802.11 or conventional Ethernet or whatever), your laptop/desktop becomes a VOiP telephone with your own conventional telephone number, and you can initiate and receive conventional phone calls over VOiP.
Bottom line is that you can carry your local (say, Des Moines) telephone number wherever you go, whether it's New York or Singapore or Moscow. Wherever there's IP, your "local" number will work.
Which means your call from Singapore to Des Moine remains a "local" call, and your friends/customers can call you in Singapore from Des Moines at local Des Moines rates.
I'm skeptical. The dollar has not been week for long. This survey appears to be measuring more long term trends, and it can take years from the time of request for proposal to operational conversion. But eventually a weak dollar will have an effect on our role in this.
Rule Britannia!
http://www.sterlingtimes.co.uk/alwaysengland.Html
;o)
Booz Allen Hamilton is a top consulting firm, with an excellent reputation.
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