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Moving out of the chariot ruts
01 July 2007
With its developing 21st Century Network, BT plans to get away from the restrictions set by legacy technology, which CTO Matt Beal likens to the limits that Roman chariots created for the Space Shuttle. By the end of 2007 he hopes 350,000 phone lines will be connected to the all-IP service, with a nationwide rollout due to begin months later, he tells Alan Burkitt-Gray
Matt Beal: this world is new, so quit biasing it on the old world
Why is the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster directly related to a standard set by Roman legionnaires for their chariots, and what do either have to do with BT's 21st Century Network project?
Matt Beal, CTO of BT Wholesale and the executive in charge of implementation of 21CN, uses this brilliant parallel to explain how legacy systems can govern today's engineering -- and then he uses it to show how 21CN is allowing BT and its competitors and partners in the industry to set new standards.
When you're doing something as profound as 21CN you have a once-in-a-generation chance to ask: "Do you really need to do it that way?" he says.
The Space Shuttle first. The company that won the tender back in the 1980s for...
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