Mark Crocker
Mark Crocker has 23 years experience in technology and an in depth understanding of the latest networking, telecommunications and computer systems for the global market. He is group managing director of OTR who provide technology reports and research, benchmarking services and expert advice to a range of high profile international companies. Their clients include the EU and the Inland Revenue and they have offices in Brussels, London, The Hague and Singapore. Mark has spent the last four years working for OTR supporting the European Commissions Anti-trust case against Microsoft.
Mark formed his own IT services company in 1988 and has successfully assisted a number of startups and running businesses develop business models to help them acquire future funding from external sources. During the eleven years Mark headed Fullduplex IT Group, the business grew to 50+ people generating over £3m revenue and he set up offices throughout the UK, Singapore and Australia. He continues to hold a number of NED posts, including a number of Web-based businesses focused on communities and co-operatives.
Mark started his career in 1979, with a degree in computer science, working in real-time imaging systems. From there he moved on to developing real-time operating systems for Gould (SEL) Electronic. In the mid 1980's the company moved to UNIX where Mark continued to work on real-time UNIX enhancements. He quickly progressed to become the company's communication strategy specialist concentrating on network and data communications design, until leaving to form his own company, in 1988.
Mark's career has included work in the business reality of ADSL and VoIP-QoS offerings and working on large Bid processes. He was a founding member of the Dti SEAAF forum, a non-political group related to the awareness of the Euro.
Synopsis
Everybody is familiar with the web and relies on it for both business and personal use. The explosion of mobile devices extends the pervasive web further into the 24x7 world, with ever increasing demands. New performance, reliability and security issues have arisen, with speed and usability coming to the forefront. From searching for timetable information, to banking and shopping, mobile access to the web is vital to the end user whether at work, home or while travelling.
Fresh problems arise from continued access as you travel at speed around the world whilst maintaining connections as your mobile device jumps cells and service providers. There are increasing threats to security of systems already straining under the load.
As the novelty of access declines, along with cost, user expectations increase, what are user expectations and can we get the balances right?
The Panel will discuss the following questions.
- Performance and reliability. Are they issues or are we just impatient?
- Opportunities for Infrastructure support; On-line, Off-line, near and location based who does what?
- Is Mobile/pervasive web a special case, or should we just make the screens larger?
- Application and business Opportunities for pervasive Web
- The wired world does not mean the mobile world
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