Security is a very big concern when it comes to cloud. And as a leading provider* of cloud to the enterprise market we’re proud that it’s one of our main USPs.

There are other cloud providers, sure. But there’s a difference between the scale of mass market providers with a stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap approach, and the carrier-grade pedigree service and global footprint that we offer our customers.

The difference between a carrier grade cloud provider and a generic scale out cloud hosting company is the level of rigour applied to the protection and security of these systems. All too often the cloud is perceived as a place for low value personal social media data with little or no importance attached to data loss. BT has industrialised its cloud to offer the same level of service as standard IT and this ensures data integrity.   

Failure and security breach can be commonplace with some providers, but BT trades on its 150+ year communications reputation and our network is really expansive, offering diverse routing options on data flood or attack.

That’s reflected in the fact that governments and large global organisations use our services because they trust them — from international trading banks to European and UK governments. We’ve got that trust value as a carrier-grade enterprise provider. We offer powerful security — with weapons grade tested components that are designed to be fault tolerant.

We have data centres with a global footprint, so we’re not restricted by one set of legislative rules. We allow our customers to put their data where they want it, so they know what rules it is governed by. We mitigate emerging cloud standards and differences between different jurisdictions by adopting internationally accepted standards — in our case the ISO standards. ISO27001 is the international standard for data security, and that’s what we use globally.

Using those standards allows us to be transparent about the service we offer and always meet the expectations of our customers. And because of that they can be confident that they can align with their compliance standards, which is one of the major issues organisations face when buying cloud services from providers with smaller global reach than BT.

Another concern organisations have when it comes to cloud is around the security of protecting their data. They worry that hackers can just attack the cloud. So how do we stop attacks, be they singular or distributed in nature from impacting our cloud services?

Because we’re a global telecommunications provider we have control of the whole “network circuit”, so we can protect against threats at all points. We’re constantly scanning our networks and all the pipes connecting to the cloud, not just the data centres themselves. It means we can proactively stop attacks before they even make it to the customer’s network. How many other providers can do that?

Mass market cloud providers tend to use inexpensive non fault tolerant, low end proprietary or poorly supported open source technologies that were never designed to be scaled in a robust way

For our part, robustness is at the heart of everything we do. And it’s all about the cloud building blocks. We only use technology that comes with the highest Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) accreditations. Our security model is tested from the outside-in by external organisations as well as being tested from the inside out by BT’s security experts. So while our solutions aren’t the least expensive, they are the most robust. Plus we offer full transparency of the equipment we use so you can be confident that you’re getting the best technology around.

We choose standard building blocks that are tested internationally, deemed to be market leaders, and we ensure the overall service offering cohesively provides the best performance and security. It’s the same technology that the military use, and so is perfect for big organisations that can little afford the damage of a data leak or failure, but need all the progressive functionality that cloud offers.

Global organisations looking to expand need a strong partner that can manage their ambitions overseas. They want pedigree, and they want to know that we’ve been running to that standard for decades, which we have.

They also want to know that we’re always looking to innovate and improve, which we are. And we test our systems inside out, even letting our customers do the same, which is all about building trust with our customers, and being transparent about everything we do.

To find out more about how we can help you and your organisation take advantage of cloud, stay tuned for more on our common sense series.

* BT is a global top 3 Cloud provider

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I remember an old spy book from the 1960s that said “if you notice someone once, it’s chance; if you notice them twice, it’s a coincidence; but if you notice them three times, they’re following you”.  So, remembering that type of “pattern recognition”, when I was in New York last week I was interested to come across two situations where major financial institutions are making plans to move away from specific technology providers in order to de-risk their own use of IT for trading.  The reason that they gave was that those two technology providers have been bought up by private equity/venture capital firms.  And then a little lightbulb went on – because I quickly recognised not just three but at least four trading technology providers that are currently in a similar situation.

Having worked with the venture capital industry in the USA and Europe in the 1990s, one thing that I Iearned from that sector was that before a private equity firm invests in anything, it first plans its exit.  The intention is generally not to be a long-term investor but to increase the value of the investment and then to sell it on to someone else (preferably via an IPO to get the best price for it).

With a depressed market for financial technology and a global economic crisis, perhaps now is a good time to buy technology providers while their corporate value is low.  But that also raises the issue for the customers of those firms as to what the future may hold.  In a sector where market regulations like MiFID and industry guidelines like Basel II address operational risk – not just in terms of business operations but in terms of technology operations as well – considering the future of financial technology suppliers also has to be part of an institution’s compliance regime.

Read more on BT’s solutions for financial services.

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A recent BBC investigation uncovered worrying statistics about preventable mistakes that have taken place in England’s hospitals over the past four years. The incidents, such as leaving surgical instruments or other items inside patients after operating, are one of a number of incidents categorised by the Department of Health as “never events”.

Imagine a world where never events are prevented from ever happening. It’s a world where healthcare professionals have quick and easy access to information, anywhere, any time. And where patients get the best possible care whenever and wherever they need it.

BT Trace for Health connects healthcare to deliver that vision now. It uses RFID technology to track surgical instruments in and out of theatre, minimising the chances of a “never event” taking place.The concept is simple yet very effective.

A lightweight tag which provides a unique ID for each item and can withstand more than 1000 sterilisation cycles allows hospitals to understand how many surgical instruments they own and gives them full control over instrument lifecycle, ensuring no defective or duplicate items end up in theatre. By simply counting items in and out using a simple device reduces the likelihood of human error and the chance of a never event.The technology can also be used to trace high value mobile assets such as portable defibrillators or x-ray machines, wheelchairs and beds within a hospital.

In addition to improving patient safety, BT Trace for Health allows NHS staff to locate equipment in a fraction of the time it would have taken previously, increasing their efficiency. Using the hospital floor plan and triangulation from wireless access points, the location of each tagged item in the hospital is pinpointed to within around one metre.

It also enables hospitals to reduce their inventory of equipment, releasing much needed cash for patient care.

Connected healthcare. Delivering for healthcare and delivering for patients.

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By Ben Azvine, Head of Security Futures Practice, BT Technology, Service & Operations

As someone who works largely behind the scenes in Research & Innovation, it’s great to have an opportunity to talk about some of the ground-breaking, innovative projects my team are working on.

My colleague Nicola Millard, BT’s Customer Experience Futurologist, has done a great job of explaining BT’s innovation heritage in her recent blog and I’d like to carry on that theme by focusing on how our latest innovation efforts are making a practical difference to our customers, using protection against cybercrime as an example.

Historically, spotting and tracing cybercrime has been a lengthy business, meaning the perpetrators are long gone by the time the cyber sleuths have worked out the origins of an attack. What was really needed was a way for us to police and protect our networks more proactively than before. You might think that was a little like asking for the moon and the stars but, in fact, it turned out that we only needed a planet…

Ben Azvine, Head of Security Futures Practice, BT Technology, Service & Operations

Assure Analytics is powered by SATURN, which stands for Self-organising Adaptive Technology Underlying Resilient Networks has been in development for a few years now and is ready to join the fight against cybercrime.

Assure Analytics crunches through massive amounts of raw, unstructured and structured data in minutes to detect patterns and predict problems, building greater intelligence into the network. Crucially, it displays the results using visualisation tools that make it easier for people to get to grips with what’s happening. It’s just easier for humans to spot things and absorb the information when it comes in picture form, and SATURN makes the most of that.

It allows our experts to analyse and determine how a cyber event happened and trace its origins in real time using nothing more than a web browser, something new to the monitoring solutions market.

SATURN is already out there, in operation and making a difference, and we’re only just scratching the surface of its capabilities. 

It’s helping in the war against cable theft by enabling geo-tagging of cable theft incidents to provide rapid analysis of trends. And, because SATURN can learn from past events thanks to the very latest artificial intelligence, it’s able to help predict future criminal activity by identifying emerging hot spots.

Industry recognition is always encouraging, and being shortlisted recently for the Innovation Award category of the 2013 SC Magazine Awards Europe was a real honour. I was particularly pleased because the nomination focused on our online security capability and efforts in leading the fight against cyber attacks. It was a boost to our whole team.

Thank you for reading. Watch out for more insight into BT’s innovation, coming your way soon.

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Innovation is a defining feature of progress. Without people devoted to doing things better, faster, cheaper and greener we’d still be stuck in the smog of industrial revolution. Steam trains and snail mail — not spaceships and smartphones — would be at the forefront of travel and communication.

To innovate is even more essential today, in a tough economy, than it has ever been. When times get tough, the tough get innovating. For our part we’re always pushing boundaries in the world of IT and communication technology. And we are proud to have been at the forefront of innovation for at least 150 years.

We can trace our innovation history back to the pioneers of the GPO research organisation who, at Bletchley Park, invented the world’s first programmable electronic computer. Since then we’ve also achieved a number of world firsts including the invention of the digital telephone exchange, early trials of video on demand and Europe’s first satellite transmission service. For one and a half centuries, we’ve been innovating, honing and improving communications technology, trying to make the world a more connected place than ever before.

Located a few miles outside Ipswich, Adastral Park is a former RAF base which is now the hub of BT’s innovation activities – not only are there around 4000 technologists on site, it also hosts about 2000 key business customers each year through its future showcases.

BT has invested more than £4bn on R&D in the last five years and BT researchers have produced more than 10,000 patents over the years – in 2011-12 alone we filed patents for 65 inventions.

Some of these innovations are things the world now takes for granted. Single mode optical fibre – the hair-thin strands of glass that power our communications networks globally – is an innovation which now underpins almost every network-based interaction you have, including any phone call or credit card transaction you make, and increasingly, how you watch TV.

Our open innovation model means we also work with more than 30 universities around the world — including forming strategic relationships with the University of Cambridge (UK), EBTIC (Abu Dhabi), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) and Tsinghua University (China). This means that our in-house researchers can tap into the best brains that academia can offer to do research, applied innovation, thought leadership and customer engagement.

It’s all so that we can continue to offer our customers the best in network and communications technology, now and for another 150 years to come. To find out more about BT’s thirst for innovation, and the work we’ve been doing, stay tuned for more from our innovation series.

Find out more on how BT supports innovation.

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Cisco is a leading vendor of collaboration technology and an important global partner of BT Global Services.  We asked Fred Gerritse, Director Partner Organization & Commercial Business at Cisco, about his view of the market and what collaboration means for Cisco.

What are some of the key trends in the market for collaboration services in your opinion? How are CIOs looking at collaboration?

Fred Gerittse

The only constant is change. We find that the drive for change is just tremendous at present, sometimes out of need to reduce costs, but more often to exploit opportunities in the market, to innovate, to improve the way customers are served, to improve business processes in the supply chain.  More than ever, IT is looked upon to enable such change.  As such, the needs of business owners increasingly steer IT strategy. That is a challenge for IT because the limitations of existing IT infrastructure can often hinder instead of enable change. At Cisco, we believe the key to this challenge is building a more unified enterprise-wide communications and collaboration architecture. People and companies need to be able to work together seamlessly and that is why communication and collaboration tools such as IM, video, mobile and document sharing are increasingly important.

What are the biggest challenges facing the CIO in this area?

Simply put, people need to be able to work anywhere, anytime and anyplace. That has implications for mobility, BYOD, collaboration, cloud applications and so on. The main challenge running through all these is security.  Enabling access to your data centre and business applications in a way that is both secure and convenient is not easy.

Also, communication needs to be looked at more strategically. It increasingly is an essential process running through the entire value chain of a typical enterprise. Understanding the role of communication from a business perspective is an important challenge facing the CIO today.  For example, how can you best deploy experts within your organisation? There is a shortage of highly skilled personnel so it is crucial that your experts are accessible and able to deploy their expertise globally.  Communication and collaboration technology can play a helpful role in that regard but it shouldn’t be deployed blindly. It needs to take into account the way people work together, their communication habits, and the technology and tools they are familiar with.

Finally, many enterprise-level companies are hindered by a fragmented IT setup. Components such as the network, storage, data centres, applications and UCC are often managed by different teams across the organisation; that is not likely to change radically in the short term.  This makes it harder to develop an integrated UCC strategy that is shared and supported by all stakeholders.

So what is the winning approach to solving these challenges?

We find that the most progressive companies are taking a more unified approach to IT architecture.  They’re developing a single, enterprise-wide strategy for UCC, security, policies, and network architecture. Furthermore, they are developing that strategy by looking at the needs of the company’s customers and how the company can best deliver customer value, independent of the functional units of the organisation.  The best CIOs are able to develop a shared vision on IT architecture that crosses organisational silos.  And they have in place a viable roadmap for getting there.

Tell us about the collaboration infrastructure at Cisco.

At Cisco we have a communications infrastructure that enables access to corporate resources independent of time, place and device. We’re happy with the architecture and are succeeding in what we set out to do. We’re able to communicate among colleagues pretty seamlessly, saved costs, and are better able to serve our customers.

For example, all the tools I currently use in the office I have access to on the road. At home or in the car I have access to my full collaboration suite, which is based primarily on my personal profile. Specific applications and corporate data are linked to my profile, independent of the device I’m using. When I’m making use of a public hotspot some sensitive services may be blocked but at home, where I’m able to set up a VPN, I have access to all my corporate services. Also important to mention, services such as online conferencing and Telepresence are fully embedded in our corporate culture and business processes.

What was the biggest challenge Cisco faced in building that collaboration infrastructure?

Security was the most important challenge, no doubt.  We ended up developing an entirely new approach to security, which evolved into our Identity Services Engine.  Basically it is system that controls access on the basis of users’ profiles. Also for most of our customers, security is one of the biggest challenges.  If you want to succeed in delivering a good collaboration service with BYOD, then it is crucial to tackle the security question.  Often security concerns end up being the main obstacle to a further or more complete roll out of collaboration services.  I think that in our partnership with BT we have excellent capabilities in helping customers address these concerns.

How does Cisco look at the future of collaboration?

There are four key trends that define the future of collaboration and also inform our investment strategy.  First, mobility – the ability to work independent of place and device – will continue to be a priority for most companies. Second, visual communication is becoming increasingly important.  This refers not only to video conferencing but also to video-based content creation. Tools will emerge that make it much easier for anybody to create video content for customers or colleagues.  Third, cloud services will continue to evolve. More and more services that are still mainly premise-based today will move to the cloud. Finally, social media will continue to gain traction in the corporate environment.  These four trends sum it up for us. They drive our investments and we see our customers making increasing use of such tools.

A final word on the partnership with BT?

A top partnership. BT and Cisco have complementary capabilities and we both have a very strong international presence that allows us to serve our national and international customers very effectively, together.  With BT, our portfolio is more competitive than ever.  We’re very happy, which is why last week we awarded BT with our Service Provider of the Year accolade.

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I was at Ovum’s BYOX event last week talking about the effect the consumerisation of IT — and in particular BYOD — is having on organisational networks.  At the event Ovum announced the findings of their new BYOX (bring your own anything) employee study. The media headlines post the event have been interesting, everything from “BYOD resistance is futile” to the more scary “Ignore BYOD and lose control of your corporate data”.

There are 1bn smartphones in the world today with that number set to double in the next 3 years, plus the sale of tablets is rising rapidly, Forrester predict tablets will overtake PCs as the computer of choice by 2016. Smart devices allow people to do great things by becoming more innovative in the tools and applications they use. This can transform the way they work and give organisations a real business edge.  

No industry is immune to the BYOD trend — research from OVUM has found little difference in BYOD take up across verticals.  Organisations who ignore BYOD, believing it does not affect them, not only miss out on the benefits but worryingly open themselves up to potential risk, particularly around security and cost.

And then there’s the performance of the networks themselves. Behind every great device you need a great network. Smart devices allow you to do great things but no matter how great the device is, without connectivity it is just an iPod, or a phone.

Employees and customers (let’s not forget that BYOD is changing the way consumers want to interact with your organisation too) don’t want to think about what is happening beyond their device, they just want it to work. But, the experience they get depends on how quick your network is, how easy it is to get connected and what information they can access. 

With the right control and connectivity you can deliver a great user experience on any device, but demand is continuing to grow, and because of that any bandwidth improvements have to be prepared to grow with that demand.

Beyond Your Device research media roundtable

According to the latest updates to the Visual Networking Index from Cisco, the average smartphone in Western Europe in 2012 generated 246MB per month and is forecasted to rise 17X to 4,167MB per month by 2017. By comparison, the same analysis shows that that the average tablet used 771MB per month in 2012, and is forecasted to rise 8X to 6,521MB by 2017.

These are huge increases, and your network is going to have to be prepared to deal with its share of that traffic. Not all networks are the same, and neither are the challenges they face. But you need to build the foundation you need to achieve the benefits you want.  

Look beyond your device — and the devices of your customers and colleagues — and embrace this coming of age of consumerization, turning it to business advantage, reliably, securely and cost effectively.

Find out more about BT’s BYOD solutions at www.bt.com/beyondyourdevice

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Recently I went on a pretty lengthy business trip where I visited customers in different countries around Asia and the Middle East. I even managed to get back to my home country, the UK.

What struck me as I visited the three regions is just how small the world is becoming when it comes to financial services. 

Banks are increasingly embracing globalisation. They are looking to build their presence in new markets and to support the growing global presence of their customers. And we are starting to see new frontier markets make their presence known on the global stage, as well as emerging market banks expanding their presence in developed markets.

For example, Myanmar is starting to attract a large number of visitors and is increasingly becoming an interesting market for investors around the globe.  The economic potential of this frontier market — home to more than 60 million people — has been strongly identified by multinationals.  Coca-Cola Co and Unilever recently announced that they will be investing a total of nearly $1 billion in Myanmar over the next decade, making the biggest commitments by Western multinational corporations and becoming the first prominent global companies to restart manufacturing in the Southeast Asian country. 

The country is also making moves to permit foreign banks to own majority shares in joint-venture banks if new legislation is passed.   And ATMs — once a rarity in the country — now offer access to withdraw Myanmar kyats in many cities following agreements with two major global payments companies, Visa and Mastercard.  Only last week, its capital city, Nay Pyi Taw, played host to the World Economic Forum on Asia

So, from a financial services, and global perspective, this is just one of many interesting countries to watch out for in the future. 

But what is very apparent is that what is underpinning this globalisation is technology.  The building and management of a business platform (including the IT to support it), is the challenge of any bank. The larger and further its network expands, the more complex it becomes. And so a bank needs to choose wisely when selecting who to work with.

BT is well placed to help banks address their global challenges. We can help banks all over the world adapt their IT infrastructure so that they can focus more on the needs of their business. For too long, technology has been a limiting factor rather than the business enabler that it should be.

BT for financial services has been serving the world’s biggest names in the financial sector for many years, and has a track record of helping them thrive. We support the largest secure networked financial community in the world. One in three traders worldwide now uses a BT turret – that’s more than 68,000 traders in over 800 trading firms across over 60 countries – and the networks of many leading retail finance institutions are powered by us.

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By Nicola Tongue, Director of Innovation and Governance at John Taylor Hospice.

John Taylor Hospice provides specialist palliative care and emotional support for the people of Birmingham and the wider West Midlands area. It looks after the needs of some 600 patients and their families, with 80 per cent of care delivered directly by mobile community staff in people’s homes.

As a community interest company it is of paramount importance that the people who choose John Taylor Hospice for help can see the information recorded about their care. An invitation to take part in a national N3 Mobile Health Worker pilot was therefore timely. It dovetailed nicely with our electronic patient record plans and we were fortunate to be one of eleven trial sites chosen by the Department of Health.

Specifically designed and developed for field-based healthcare professionals, N3 Mobile Health Worker provides secure remote on-the-move access to central clinical healthcare applications.

Participation in the national Mobile Health Worker pilot programme was carefully measured.  In the case of John Taylor Hospice, 21 people recorded 757 days’ worth of information, capturing more than 1,350 patient contacts. Results showed a rise of 40 per cent in clinician productivity and a 150 per cent increase in time spent with patients.

N3 Mobile Health Worker has also brought the John Taylor Hospice other important benefits in terms of flexible working, enhanced quality of care and cost savings.

After some initial apprehension, our clinicians have embraced the new technology. It is also helping staff find innovative ways of working with patients and their families. One member of staff was dealing with a little boy who clearly had a lot of emotion but was unable to express it. She was able to introduce her laptop like a toy to help him communicate.

Finally, having internet access and other sources of information readily at their fingertips is enhancing the quality of advice that mobile clinical staff from John Taylor Hospice can give to their patients. We are committed to using mobile working devices as part of our normal practice now and in the future. I know I would be very unpopular if I suggested we were going to take these devices away.

Watch our video about N3 Mobile Health Worker at the John Taylor Hospice.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read our case study:  http://www.globalservices.bt.com/uk/en/casestudy/john_taylor_hospice

Find out more about BT’s health solutions.

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As you may already know, we’ve been giving a lot of coverage to the notion of ‘customer effort’, with the following blogs defining what it is and suggesting how it can be reduced:

So what is ‘customer effort’ anyway?

Make it easy and they will come

Easy does it: a new take on loyalty 

As part of the series we’ve already shown the first half of a video by Dr Nicola Millard, our resident Customer Experience Futurologist, as she explains more about some research from the Henley Centre for Customer Management that suggests reducing customer effort could be at the heart of keeping customers loyal.

So why not take a moment to watch part two, which focuses on how you can encourage customer loyalty by making it easier for your customers to do business with you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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With all the world talking about how BYOD is set to change the way we work forever, little thought is given to the CIOs expected to help make those changes happen.

There’s no doubt that there are efficiencies to be unlocked — but just how easy is it to do that? And what are the major challenges CIOs are facing?

Recent research[1] reveals that the rapid growth in the use of smart devices has led to increased demand for bandwidth and services. Because of that a majority of users are suffering from login delays and performance decline in some applications, which is impacting negatively on the productivity gains promised by the devices themselves — something that has become one of the most pressing issues for CIOs.

It’s a stark reminder that great devices need to be underpinned by great networks — something that needs to be addressed if, as the research suggests, ubiquitous Wi-Fi access over a better network is key to the development of BYOD.

Luckily we’ve just announced a set of solutions designed to help organisations reap the productivity gains promised by BYOD. Our integrated approach is built to help CIOs manage the deployment of smart devices on a large scale, while improving end-user experience for their colleagues and customers.

BT’s BYOD approach provides the control, connect and experience features at the core of successful BYOD strategies. It uses market-leading capabilities from the BT Connect and BT Assure portfolios and is supported by BT Advise professional services, meaning we’re there for our customers the whole way.

So what is new in our portfolio?

BT Advise BYOD Ready Infrastructure Quick Start — a new professional services offer, assessing organisations’ readiness and the impact of requirements on their WAN and LAN.

BT Advise BYOD Quick Start — a new professional services offer helping customers quickly identify the steps needed to minimise potential risks and assess how prepared an organisation is for the introduction of smart devices and BYOD, from policy to implementation.

A new suite of integrated solutions for CIOs:

• New wireless LAN capabilities, including enhancement management, policy control and reporting. This includes enhanced guest Wi-Fi services giving CIOs greater visibility and control of guests, including their location, allowing for customised content delivery across company premises.
• A new cloud based device management and mobile application management service — managing content and apps for users.
• A new MobileXpress package — offering secure remote access delivered from the cloud from £5 per user per month.
• Connect Intelligence for devices — a new service that gives central visibility of applications running on smart devices.

To find out more about our new range of products to help you make the most of BYOD visit www.bt.com/beyondyourdevice.

—————————————————————————————–

[1] BYOD research undertaken by Vanson Bourne for BT and Cisco in May 2013 – www.bt.com/beyondyourdevice

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With all the hype given to each new, faster, better, sleeker more high-definition device, it’s easy to forget the networks behind delivering the most connected age in humanity.

And with the booming consumerisation of IT and the growth of BYOD in the workplace unprecedented pressure is being put on organisational networks.

So in an age where individuals and organisations expect — and even compete for — more bandwidth, it’s clear that any productivity gains from BYOD can only be achieved if networks can securely cope with the extra demand being placed on them.

In fact new research commissioned by BT and Cisco, shows that the exponential growth in the use of smart devices has led to significant increases in bandwidth demand across 84 per cent of organisations globally.

More than half of IT managers have also noticed a performance decline in some applications, which impacts negatively the productivity gains promised by smart devices.

The same research shows that nearly half of workers, with Wi-Fi access in their office have experienced long delays logging on, or accessing applications – something that will have to change for organisations looking to embrace BYOD.

Adrian Drury, practice leader, Consumer Impact IT, Ovum said: “The growth in employee smartphone and tablet ownership is changing the ways we work. Implementing a BYOD policy is about enabling employees to work more flexibly, and be more productive.

“Draconian Wi-Fi access limitations or failure to invest in sufficient Wi-Fi coverage is a fast way to ensure a poor employee experience. However, this is not a mandate for open networks. Businesses still need to ensure that network security policies are maintained, and ideally they should take an integrated approach to network access control, device management and application management.”

Enabling BYOD in its many forms is about much more than simply cool devices and a mobile contract.  Organisations need to consider elements of device compatibility, security, Wi-Fi, network, application performance, with a focus on driving costs down, not up.

We have some exciting new research findings to share and so we’re running a series of blogs on BYOD, covering all the issues you need to think about to make BYOD work for your organisation.

From security implications and flexible working, to making sure your network performance is always up to the task of managing the new proliferation of devices connecting to it, we’ll cover all the issues you need to know about to make sure you can stay operational and ahead of the game.

So stay tuned for more from our BYOD series by checking back here over the coming days and weeks.

Find out more about BT’s BYOD solutions at www.bt.com/beyondyourdevice

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There was a sense of urgency in the air at the NHS Confederation annual conference and exhibition in Liverpool.

The event is one of the largest gatherings of NHS leaders and discussions covered everything from the impact of the Francis report into care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, the financial situation, emergency care, the impact of the recent reform and of course, speculation over who will be the next Chief Executive of NHS England.

Recurring themes developed over the three day event in speeches from Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, chief executive of NHS England, David Nicolson and Mike Farrar, chief executive of the NHS Confederation.

Care for what Hunt called ‘vulnerable older people’ and those with long term conditions requires integration between health and social care and a bridge between the general practitioner and accident and emergency. This resulted in great interest from delegates in telehealth and telecare and interoperability, the integration of different health and social care systems, on BT’s stand as they seek solutions to help them overcome the challenge.

Mike Farrar also commented on how there needed to be a sense of urgency to help the NHS achieve the outcomes it needs to be sustainable and deliver the best quality care for patients.

In fact, in BT’s seminar session on how we can achieve Jeremy Hunt’s vision of a paperless NHS by 2018, the panel went as far as saying that we hadn’t been ‘ruthless’ enough in our pursuit of the implementation of an information revolution. Key success factors highlighted by the panel, which comprised Mike Cooke, chief executive of Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, Chris Gray, executive medical director of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, Mike Farrar and president of BT Global Health, Ian Dalton, included support from the board and also the integration of IT, clinical and business strategies.

The session, part of BT’s partnership of the NHS Confederation annual conference, provoked debate in the room and on Twitter, with many agreeing that we are not going fast enough and that the rise of the ‘digital native’ and consumerisation of devices may mean that we risk alienating the healthcare professional of the future and putting the care of patients at risk.

BT’s vision is of healthcare that connects, where we use innovative technologies to enable our customers to provide higher quality care at lower cost during the most challenging times healthcare has ever seen.

Find out more on BT’s solutions for health

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