[November 03, 2009]

UK government "in a time warp" on Broadband needed for business critical tools

(M2 PressWIRE Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) London, Manchester -- Accessibility to good broadband remains a luxury - rather than the necessity it has to be - for the UK's army of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up to 97 percent of the British economy.

SMEs - particularly those located in rural areas - are still finding their ambitions to build their businesses severely hampered by the inaccessibility of high-speed, low contention broadband. The Government recently announced that it would come to the rescue of businesses without broadband with a commitment to provide a universal broadband service with speeds of up to 2Mbps by 2012.

However, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has lambasted these government plans for lacking ambition and being in a "time warp". "More than half of small businesses rely on the Internet for up to 50 per cent of their annual turnover, yet simple tasks such as emailing, marketing, buying and selling are time-consuming because their broadband speeds are letting them down," said John Wright, National Chairman of the FSB.

Mark Seemann, Product Strategy and Development Director at leading communications and hosted IT provider Outsourcery, said: "The reality is that the plans to increase broadband speeds do not go anywhere near far enough. The aim is essentially to tinker with the broadband speed rather than solving the underlying issue which is that the UK is using arcane technology. The nation's copper infrastructure desperately needs to be upgraded to fibre optic in order to satisfy businesses requirements for today and in the future." A broadband infrastructure dependent on copper wires will not push much past speeds of 50Mbps - even with the latest broadband technology - while a purely fibre optic infrastructure can reach speeds of 100 Mbps per customer, rising to 1GB. This allows for the most advanced business applications, such as high definition video conferencing and streaming complex software over the Internet - two increasingly important business tools that can be problematic with low broadband speed.

Outsourcery's hosted IT solutions such as Microsoft Exchange 2007, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics CRM are all seamlessly managed from state-of-the-art data centres. "We handle our customers' IT while they get on with running their business. All that we need now is for UK plc to get on with the job of providing the broadband infrastructure which is vital for our nation's competitiveness in an increasingly tough global market place," said Seemann.

For additional commentary and analysis or to arrange an interview with Mark Seemann contact Joe Morgan or Satwant Kaur on 020 7233 7578 or e-mail joe@flamepr.com, Satwant@flamepr.com Mark Seemannprovides his own incisive analysis of the latest developments in technology on his blog, http://www.markseemann.com/ About Outsourcery Outsourcery is the UK's leading provider of mobile-centric unified communications (UC) and hosted IT solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises. The company has its own state-of-the-art data centres and hosting infrastructure to provide managed services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) IT solutions such as hosted Microsoft Exchange 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communication Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and UC solutions using a BroadSoft hosted switch.

With an annual turnover of circa GBP60 million, Outsourcery is now the UK's No.1 independent provider of business mobile solutions, having acquired the THUS Mobile business in March 2009. It now manages the customer bases for Vodafone and O2, providing mobile voice and data solutions to approximately 25,000 customers and over 100,000 business end-users.

Outsourcery is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner with a total of 7 competencies and employs over 250 staff based in 3 UK offices (London, Manchester and Leicester). Outsourcery is also the UK's No.1 provider of hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and was recently awarded the prestigious "SME Hosted Communications Solution of the Year" award at the Comms National Awards 2009. For more information, please visit www.outsourcery.co.uk.

((Comments on this story may be sent to info@m2.com)) (c) 2009 M2 COMMUNICATIONS

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