Charles Osburn - Quintica

2011 - Quintica - an ICT company

2012-01-01T15:04:00.000-08:00

2011 was a fantastic year for the group, far too many highlights to single out, but I do want to extend a personal thanks to the entire Quintica team for all their efforts throughout the year. Our continuing operations in South Africa and the Middle East are a testament to the tireless efforts of all staff working in those regions, despite a generally lacklustre global economy. The second half

Facebook adds new dimension to business

2011-11-03T17:10:00.000-07:00

It is amazing to look at the force that Facebook has become. I will admit, I was not amongst the first wave of 500 million to sign up, but the fact is Facebook offers an intuitive way to find and provide information. The Quintica Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Quintica) is a source of information regarding our services, but also a place to interact with customers, suppliers and partners. We

NCC focus on poor QoS

2011-11-03T04:18:00.001-07:00

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has again threatened to reprimand the three major mobile operators, MTN Nigeria, Globacom and Airtel Nigeria, at the end of next month if the quality of service does not improve on their networks. The NCC last week said it would stop the three selling SIM cards by the end of November if they fail to meet the key performance indicators (KPI) set by the

Bahrain Telco News - Batelco

2011-11-03T03:57:00.000-07:00

Batelco Group reported its results last week for the third quarter ended 30 September 2011. It said that the period was marked by the continued growth and diversification of its customer and revenue base in both the MENA region and India. It reported gross revenues of BHD 245.5 million (USD 649.7 million) for the period, EBITDA of BHD 93.0 million (USD 246.1 million) representing a 38 percent

Market forces will win the day - a comment on Kenyan Telecommunications

2011-10-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

It has been a fascinating year when it comes to Telecommunications in East Africa, specifically Kenya. Airtel really opened up the competition by dropping its per minute call rate by over 50% early in the year and Safaricom, Yu and Orange were forced in similar drastic cuts. Not surprising, Safaricom suffered the most in terms of lost customers as manay subscribers switched across to Airtel or

November 29th 2011 - BMC Day in the Middle East

2011-10-12T05:37:00.000-07:00

What a day the 29th November, 2011 is going to be!! BMC, Quintica, Dell, Cisco and others are bringing to the Madinat Jumeirah a serious showcase of technologies and presentations from industry leaders and major organisations the likes of which will not be seen again for some time. Chat to Gartner analysts regarding industry direction; get product insights from BMC business and technical staff

Springboks on the way home !!

2011-10-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

Following the Rugby World Cup really is not that good for the health. It's an emotional roller-coaster and yesterday's quarter final against Australia, in Auckland was no exception. The Springboks started the game as they finished it - with the ball. At the conclusion of play they had an racked up an impressive 80% of the game spent in the opposition half - BUT statistics such as those do not

The highest praise for ISO 20000 certification

2011-09-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

We have been involved in a major quality improvement project, in Saudi Arabia, implementing ISO 20000 over the past 12 months. Our principal consultant on the project - Keith Reynolds has just informed me that the client has passed their independent audit. Keith added that the audit took into consideration all IT services delivered to the business users and the exercise was based on the 2011

Co-branded integrated online service offering from Zain

2011-09-07T20:33:00.000-07:00

Zain Bahrain and Microsoft have entered into a strategic partnership that enables Zain to provide the latest generation of co-branded Windows Live, an integrated online service offering. It includes updated processes for photo sharing; e-mail, and instant messaging, as well as allowing end-users easy access to their e-mails, contacts, calendars, social networks, and media content. It includes

Essar hands back operations

2011-09-07T20:31:00.001-07:00

The Essar Group is to exit Africa, and it will be returning the operations it acquired from Warid Telecom in Uganda and Congo. It is also reported to be looking for a buyer for its Kenyan operations. Esser set about acquiring the majority stakes in Warid's operations in Uganda and Congo in November 2009, with an enterprise value of USD 318 million. However the Economic Times said the deal fell

Airtel aims at the pan-African unbanked

2011-09-07T20:30:00.001-07:00

Pan-African banking group Ecobank Transnational Inc. and Bharti Airtel have signed a deal that will promote mobile banking services across Africa. This move comes as a number of African countries are implementing new mobile banking strategies in an effort to boost their economy and ICT sectors. Ecobank and Bharti Airtel currently operate in 14 countries in Africa. The deal will see them launch a

The Cabinet Office gets ownership

2011-08-31T15:28:00.000-07:00

As of today, 1st September 2011 all ownership for frameworks that are listed at http://www.best-management-practice.com/officialsite.asp are transferring to the Cabinet Office. You may not have heard of this web site, but I'm sure you've heard of ITIL, PRINCE2 and perhaps MSP. All of the intellectual property for these frameworks was yesterday owned by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC),

Airtel says that Ericsson to get Africa as well

2011-08-08T04:08:00.000-07:00

Bharti Airtel said recently that it had entered into a 5-year services deal for its African mobile networks with Ericsson. Bharti has operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa. Under a separate 2-year deal Ericsson is to modernise and upgrade Airtel's mobile networks in Africa with the latest technology, including its multi-standard RBS 6000 base station. Ericsson will deploy the 2G and

Riverbed Certified Solutions Associate – WAN Optimisation (RCSA-W)

2011-08-08T04:04:00.000-07:00

In today’s world, certifications are used as a measure of understanding products, services, concepts and ideas. This is for life in general and includes those working in the IT industry. Riverbed - the world's leading WAN Optimisation supplier - has technical certifications that will enhance credibility of the individual and the employer. Riverbed has two dominate levels of certification;

It's a long way to Mombassa, via Wajir

2011-07-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

No matter how you spin it to travel to from Nairobi to Mombassa via Wajir, in Kenya is a very long way. However, these are the sorts of things that have to be done when it comes to building in redundancy for a fibre optic network. The fact of the matter is that the current fibre between Nairobi and Mombassa is under constant attact and is frequently severed. This means that if "Nairobieans" wish

Political instability has it's price in Egypt

2011-07-07T23:51:00.000-07:00

Telecom Egypt - the country's largest telco recently posted financial results linked to the political unrest earlier this year. The unrest at the beginning of 2011 saw the company record losses for the period 1 January to 31 May 2011 of some EGP 85.6 million. It recorded EGP 29.9 million in damages relating to fixed assets, thefts and fires at exchanges in the first three months from 1 January

Bahrain scores well on 87,683 calls !!

2011-07-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) in Bahrain has published its first mobile quality of service (QoS) report. Independent consulting firm Directique performed the audit during October 2010, and involved all three mobile operators: Batelco, Viva and Zain. The report found that all three were achieving good performances compared with benchmarked mobile operators in other markets,

Kenyan termination rates reduction is halted

2011-07-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

The government has called a halt to the mandated fall in mobile termination rates whilst it examines the impact on the economy. President Mwai Kibaki has signed an order barring further cuts in network interconnect rates. The Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) planned to further lower interconnect rates next month, but Kibaki has directed the regulator to shelve the plan. This means that

Stunning WAN Optimisation results !!

2011-07-05T05:19:00.000-07:00

One of the best parts of my job is delivering stunning news to clients. I am lucky that when it comes to WAN optimisation products from Riverbed, this is a common occurrence. Take for example, actual results we obtained for a client recently: Within a period of 7 days an overall reduction of 96% has been achieved for TCP traffic this means a total of 1203MB (1.2GB) LAN Traffic was reduced to

Professional Services news from South Africa

2011-06-04T22:49:00.000-07:00

My Professional Services Manager for South Africa - Ilze Roussouw - recently gave me an update on some of the specific customer activities across our regions. Of particular interest to me was the following: Multibillion dollar global energy company, where we assessed the IT operations in Canada, Scotland, Netherlands and United Arab Emirates. We have completed 4 x Process maturity assessments

Airtel heading in the right direction

2011-06-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

Latest figures show that Bharti Airtel in Kenya have grown their market share by 140% year on year. Stunning results but in terms of actual market penetration still a very long way from Safaricom's numbers. Quarter-on-quarter results for Yu Essar will be causing some concerns in the boardroom, registering an actual negative growth of just under 2%. Orange has have a great year with a yearly

80% of Fortune 1000 companies can't be wrong.

2011-05-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

Telecommunications giant Vodacom is the most recent Telco to take advantage of a huge customer base by offering cloud based IT services from later this year. With research showing the by 2012 at least 80% of Fortune 1000 companies will have some element of their operation working from "the cloud" it is not surprising to see this move. What may be of interest is that in the same breath we are

APMG connected

2011-05-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

The recent tragic circumstances of New Zealand (Christchurch earthquake) and then Japan (Earthquake, Tsunami, Nuclear Power issues) paralyses entire countries and changes the lives of entire populations. It is refreshing to see that in some very small way we can all help. I noticed that the APMG who control the examinations for all the OGC frameworks have extended some exam deadlines for both of

Mobile Devices - complexity or productivity ?

2011-04-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if the uptake of mobile devices has been bigger in the business world or the connected school child. One of my staff recently told me that his children had more web access than he did !! He sat down and analysed netbooks, ipods, notebooks, computers and even the TV at home; then analysed who used what. The findings were that his children had more access to services than he did. So

Leveling the playing field

2011-03-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

It seems that no matter how successful you build your business there will always be some "useful" mechanisms to bring you back to a level playing field. In Kenya, there are new sub-laws coming into play regarding number portability that will prevent telco's trying to entice customers back that want to switch networks. I am a bit puzzled as to why an organisation couldn't work hard to keep its