Christy Kulasingam says for all the hype surrounding the idea of cloud technology, “there is a lot of substance behind State Street’s thinking.”... He says: “State Street are well capitalised to meet the investment needed to go to the cloud model. It is certainly not an easy cost/benefit analysis to make.”

According to Christy Kulasingam... creating a seamless experience is only one of the advantages that good collaboration can bring. The theory is that by involving a greater number of people — whether they be other firms, customers or even your own employees — in running of the company, the chances of spotting opportunities to innovate are much better.

Although retailers had much to gain by the supply chain visibility offered by RFID, Chris Kulasingam... said manufacturers could also benefit. He suggested that RFID could act as a confirmation of delivery note. Armed with this information a supplier might be able to negotiate better payment terms with a retailer, which could then fund development projects required to support the retailer's RFID mandate.

Christy Kulasingam... explained that technology providers are increasingly being differentiated on the basis of their energy consumption, as has happened in a range of other sectors from white goods to motor vehicles, in response to the growing concern about the environment in general.

“An unusable product may have as little value as a broken one, regardless of its underlying technical brilliance”, warns Christy Kulasingam.... The falling cost of processors — the tiny memory chips used in electronic devices — may be a key culprit, encouraging manufacturers to include increasing functionality in their products.

Christy Kulasingam... said the Startup Accelerator Programme is part of a growing trend that is seeing vendors trying to nurture innovation to extend the ecosystem around their products. Vendors are tending to hire individual developers or use small companies to innovate, rather than do it themselves, [he] added.

Christy Kulasingam, [former] media director at Deloitte, comments on [the] announcement by Ofcom on social networking. “There is growing resistance and concern to the volume and depth of information that websites are capturing about consumers' online behaviour, as demonstrated by today's warning by Ofcom about the dangers of children publishing personal details on social networking sites. While Britain's children are new media aware, they're not always new media savvy.”

Christy Kulasingam looks at the role of the user interface in consumer technology, now and in the future.... Over half of all consumer electronic devices returned to retailers are not broken — they have just confounded their owners with their complexity.

Corporate Lowdown: Christy Kulasingam, Radbourne Consulting:
Top restaurant — “Madrid is now very cosmopolitan with a diversity of cuisine. My favourite is Bice, an elegant Italian eatery, which has a private room for groups of 30 and cut off from the main tables. The service levels are second to none. There are tapas restaurants in abundance... Juana La Loca, which is located in the hip area of La Latina, is where locals go to meet up to have tapas late into the night.”

Christy Kulasingam... says demand for mobile technology will increase due to software companies clamouring for more of their applications to be included on handheld devices. He says business software firms SAP and Oracle have recently pushed for more of their applications to be included on mobile devices, with Oracle recently announcing a set of business application tools for use on the iPhone.