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A Series of Tubes #97: Cisco on UCS, Stil on AFACT vs. iiNet, Telstra’s Share Price Scare and the Pirate PartyOctober 7th, 2009First, apologies that this has run so late. A Series of Tubes discovered last weekend what happens if Audacity (our audio editor of choice) crashes, and it’s not pretty! Cisco announced its entry into the data centre market earlier this year with the launch of the UCS, and last week was showing the system to Australian customers at its Networkers forum in Brisbane. A Series of Tubes talks to Dylan Morrison of Cisco about the constraints on data centre power, and what UCS can do to help. And Tubes regular Stilgherrian talks about the AFACT vs. iiNet court case which has just kicked off, along with discussions of Telstra’s share price and the launch of the Pirate Party in Australia. Smart Call #69 – Who’s the boss?October 1st, 2009In this episode of Smart Call, we ask: Who’s the Boss? And we do so in two ways. First up, we have Dr. Catriona Wallace of callcentres.net sharing the results of her firm’s annual Australasian Benchmarking Report with us. Catriona finds that call centre bosses have some happier challenges at the moment, because fewer workers are leaving the industry. Our second interview is with the ATA’s Michael Meredith. Together, we explore the prospect of the government setting customer service levels, a notion flagged in recent telecommunications industry reform proposals. A Series of Tubes #96: Matt Gast, Trapeze Networks; Stilgherrian on not-hacking the PMSeptember 14th, 2009This week, A Series of Tubes wandered down to Darling Harbour to talk to Matthew Gast, chief strategist in the office of the CTO for Trapeze Networks. Our live-recorded interview (with background noise provided by the exhibition floor and the nearby coffee machine!) ranged across matters of wireless security, future WiFi developments, and the issue of transitioning from 802.11 a/b/g networks towards 802.11n. In our weekly rant with Stilgherrian, A Series of Tubes farewells Nowwearetalking, looks at the loserly protest “hack” on the PM’s network, and looks at the review of cyber-safety literature. A Series of Tubes #95: Arbor Networks on Real User Security, Stilgherrian on 4G WirelessSeptember 7th, 2009Please excuse the brevity of this post, but Tubes is multitasking today! In this week’s episode, Tubes talks to Arbor Networks’ Roland Dobbins about how to educate ordinary users – and the media – about real-world, practical security. And Stilgherrian wanders around the world of 4G wireless as Channel 7 announces plans for a new network in Perth, and we ask “do you know what five nines really means?” A Series of Tubes #94: Riverbed’s Steve Dixon on optimisation and the NBN, Stil on IT journalism, Apple and GoogleAugust 31st, 2009Slow links aren’t the only thing that makes IP connections slow; there’s also the chattiness of IP itself. In Tubes this week, Riverbed’s Steve Dixon puts his case that optimisation could help us get more out of the networks we have, while we wait for the advent of the NBN. Smart Call #68 – The geek show!August 31st, 2009This episode of Smart Call gets geeky as we talk to two IT strategists. But don’t worry that we are going to go all dry and technical on you! Instead, we have a fascinating presentation from Genesys’ G-Force about the future of customer service, from Bill Peer, a Vice President for Enterprise Architecture at the InterContinental Hotels Group. We’ve also got a CIO for you, in the form of Phil Edwards from Smart Salary. Phil teams up with Global Speech Networks Nick Rodda to explain how he’s adopting an incremental approach to contact centre innovation. A Series of Tubes #93: Pacnet on the NBN and growth; Stil on meaningless babbleAugust 24th, 2009Pacnet’s CEO Bill Barney has seen downturns before, with a history that includes working for MCI WorldCom during (and surviving) the telco collapse that bookended the other end of this decade. And, as we hear in A Series of Tubes, he believes in the NBN – as does Pacnet Australia CEO Deborah Homewood. In this live interview, the Pacnet duo talks about surviving downturns, the importance of the NBN and international traffic. Smart Call # 67 – The tail wagging the dogAugust 19th, 2009This week’s show tackles a couple of long-held assumptions:
Many listeners’/readers’ will be just about to leap out of their chairs upon reading this pair of statements, because they just are not true and this week’s Smart Call proves it with two stories explaining how the call centre tail is wagging the dog. We prove it in an interview with Genesys’ Jason Stirling, who explains how the company is working to get every part of an organisation that touches a customer working together, instead of just leaving the contact centre to do it all – or just to cop all the flak when things go wrong. We’ve also got an interview with Denice Pitt and Sadip Sen of Aegis, who together explain how Aegis – which has just formalised its takeover of UCMS – plans to bring 2000 new BPO jobs to Australia. Yep that’s right – an Indian company BRINGING jobs to Australia! Oh and as I mention in the show, here’s Episode 15 of Smart Call, which pertains to Jason Stirling’s interview. A Series of Tubes #92: Wireless at Scramjet Speeds, Stil at TechfestAugust 16th, 2009How about some really fast wireless? Smart Call # 66 – Crowdsourced IVR hackingAugust 3rd, 2009One of the big buzzwords in IT right now is “crowdsourcing,” the practise of harnessing “the wisdom of the crowd,” as represented by the millions of people online, to find the talent needed to solve problems. Crowdsourcing is generally held to be a positive thing because it lets you tap into willing and clever people who help you to solve problems. But what if crowdsourcing instead solved problems that your customers have? Like their frustration with your IVR? That’s what’s happening at Ihateholding.com, a site on which members of the public can post the keypress sequences that get them through an IVR and straight to an agent. Sean Riley, the site’s creator, joins us on this week’s show to explain why he developed the site, the public’s reaction and his future plans. We’re also joined by Dr. Catriona Wallace from callcentres.net to analyse news including:
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