“Computing is no longer confined to your computer – it’s everywhere,” Otellini said during his CES keynote speech. “Advances in connectivity, intuitive user interfaces, immersive content and computer chip performance have allowed computing to move into new areas. Computing moving into all manner of devices and experiences all around us improves our personal productivity and enjoyment.”

Otellini described how Intel and the industry are delivering the vision he painted in his keynote 2 years ago at CES. Computing is being integrated into every relevant aspect of people’s lives, he said, whether they are on their computer or smartphone, watching TV, in the car or out shopping. A seamless personalized experience tailored to individuals’ interests, needs and social networks will deliver the information, entertainment and experiences people want, whenever, however and wherever they want. To illustrate his point, he demonstrated exciting advances in mobile device applications, 3-D content, smarter phones and TVs, and areas traditionally not associated with computing such as home energy management and digital signage.

Otellini described how bringing the world of simple and useful “viral” applets to Intel® Atom™ processor-based devices will further bring this vision of “personal” computing to life, creating new usage models and a unique and powerful distribution channel for software developers. Intel created the Intel® Atom™ Developer Program in September to address this opportunity. He revealed a beta version of a software app store for netbooks that Intel launched today called the Intel® AppUpSM Center. The first apps, which span education, entertainment, games, health and other categories, are now available for free download or purchase by visiting www.intelappup.com. Acer*, ASUS*, Dell* and Samsung* are the first OEMs to announce support for apps stores based on the Intel AppUp Center. Otellini said Intel and its partners expect to expand the stores over time to include applications for other large categories such as PCs, handheld CE devices, smartphones, CE appliances, TVs and other devices based on future Intel processor families.

As an example of new ways to connect computing devices in the home, Otellini also unveiled a product today called the Intel® Wireless Display. Using a laptop powered by select all new 2010 Intel® Core™ processors and enabled with this display technology, an individual can quickly stream videos, photos and other content from the PC to the HDTV over a WiFi connection. On Jan. 17 laptops by Dell*, Sony* and Toshiba* and a TV adapter by NETGEAR* – featuring Intel® Wireless Display – will be available at Best Buy* in the United States and Canada as part of its Blue Label 2.0 program.

“Computing in the home is rapidly expanding beyond the PC,” Otellini said. “The TV will continue to be a focal point of the home while becoming smarter, much in the way phones are evolving into smartphones. New user interfaces and forms of connectivity will change the way we interact with entertainment in the home.”

Intel’s CEO also touched on one of the most buzzed about topics at CES – 3-D stereoscopic content – and said that creating 3-D content requires a “ton of computing power.” Powerful microprocessors will play a central role in the transition to 3-D content creation. Otellini also said there are select powerful PCs available today that are expanding 3-D content creation from Hollywood studios to living rooms. To prove his point, he demonstrated how an individual could do real-time creation and editing of a 3-D video with the horsepower of an Intel® Core™ i7 processor-based PC.

This morning Intel launched several PC platform products including more than 25 all new 2010 Intel® Core™ processors, wireless adapters and related chipsets for laptops, desktop PCs and embedded devices. These new processors deliver Intel’s best media and graphics technologies, including the ability to intelligently adapt, automatically providing an added boost of performance for such demanding applications as HD and 3-D video creation.

Otellini also described how advancements in microprocessor technology will continue to transform how people enjoy 3-D movies and TV in their homes. To prove his point, he showed new ways to visually search for TV shows, Internet access to videos and other applications on a yet-to-be introduced Orange* media set-top box powered by one of Intel’s computer-on-a-chip products. The Intel® Atom™ processor CE4100, which is currently available, is optimized for the next generation of set-top boxes, media players and connected TVs.

“Smartphones truly embody personal computing,” Otellini said. “Wireless connectivity is critical and 3G is great, but it’s not fast enough. 4G technologies like WiMAX are needed to deliver on the promise and potential of these new devices.”

All the Internet connectivity for demonstrations in Otellini’s keynote used the CLEAR* 4G mobile Internet service that has been available in Las Vegas since July. The WiMAX Forum forecasts more than 700 million people covered by WiMAX at the end of 2010.

“Two years ago I showed a suite of futuristic, compute-intensive applications for handheld devices,” Otellini said. “The computing was really done on a desktop PC behind the curtain because handhelds didn’t have the processing capability yet. Two years later, the future is here.”

To prove his point, Otellini showed how multi-tasking capabilities combined with new user interfaces are creating exciting new applications for smartphones today. This included the world’s first demonstration of the LG Electronics* GW990 smartphone to help demonstrate the performance and software compatibility of “Moorestown,” Intel’s next-generation platform for handhelds and smartphones. He also showcased a smartphone reference design from Aava Mobile* and a tablet reference design from OpenPeak*. “Moorestown” is scheduled to launch during the first half of the year with devices coming to market in the second half.

Otellini also described how many machines and applications traditionally not associated with computing are now connecting to the Internet, creating more personal computing experiences at home and out in the world. Examples include infotainment systems for cars, digital interactive signs, shopping kiosks and medical devices. Intel’s Atom processor is making inroads in these and other intelligent devices. Otellini said customers are in process of developing 2,500 different devices and machines powered by the Intel Atom processor including a concept device for managing energy consumption in the home. He also unveiled a digital sign based on an embedded Intel® Core™ i5 processor that brings the data-richness of online shopping to the in-store shopping experience.

Permission
Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses
When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes. Message Format Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format. Content Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:
Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:
Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:
Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:
With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance
The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages. Reputation Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all.

Several reputation services are:
* http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
* http://www.bondedsender.com
* http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting
Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list. Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

(Tom Kulzer is AWeber CEO)

In 2002 there were few, if any, India-centric vendors in the top 150 worldwide providers, but by the end of 2008, the top 20 India-centric BPO providers accounted for $4 billion in revenue, representing 5 percent of the $80 billion revenue of the top 150 BPO vendors. Gartner expects this trend to accelerate because of economic pressures that are leading to demand for low-cost BPO.

“Indian BPO providers are swiftly evolving to balance exposure to vertical industries, currency and legislation issues,” said Mr. Arup Roy, senior research analyst at Gartner. “Their strategies include investing in onshore and nearshore delivery, and pioneering new area of analytics services or knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) where Indian BPO players are shining.”

Although there are still no Indian vendors in the top 20 global BPO players, half of the top 20 India-based BPO providers now operate local U.S. and European sales and delivery centers.

ndian BPO providers have had the most success servicing English-speaking requirements, from North America and the U.K. North America has been the most successful sales location for Indian BPO providers, where the top-20 India-centric BPO providers generate about $2.2 billion in revenue. Western Europe showed strong growth, mostly in the U.K., and accounted for $1.4 billion in revenue for the top 20 Indian BPO providers in 2008.

From a vertical-market perspective, Indian BPO providers also had more success in telecommunications, manufacturing, insurance and banking than in government and retail, which are not traditionally sectors that have been strong users of offshore outsourcing.

Overall, Indian BPO vendors achieved growth rates between 12 percent and 200 percent (however some of them are starting from fairly small revenue in the first place). Gartner analysts said the BPO market share of Indian vendors will continue to grow based on:

*Indian BPO vendors gaining increased acceptance as being able to reliably deliver services in a market
* Indian vendors continuing to make acquisitions of Europe- and North America-based shared-service centers
* Many of these vendors are starting to grow revenue from continental Europe and via partnerships with indigenous BPO providers; this will also help Indian BPO providers understand local business cultures

“It is highly likely that many new competitors will emerge from India during the next few years. Contact centers and analytics services will likely see the highest growth, having the lowest entry barriers because relatively little technical or specific process expertise is required,” said Ms. Cathy Tornbohm, Research Vice President, at Gartner. “These barriers will also be kept relatively low for other types of BPO as prospective clients with existing Indian player IT relationships will look to Indian BPO players to balance their portfolio of bidders.”

“The mini-notebook is a great tool for casual and entry-level computing, especially among younger users who are obsessed with social networking sites such as Facebook,” said Lillian Tay, principal research analyst at Gartner. “The falling cost of mobile broadband as well as continued rollout of third generation (3G) services and coverage in countries such as China will encourage more desk-based PC users to switch to mobile replacements, as well as stimulating purchases of mini-notebooks as second PCs.”

Gartner expects significant growth in shipments to the more mature IT markets such as Australia, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore and to major cites in emerging countries such as China, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.

In Australia, shipment of mini-notebooks is expected to grow 40.8 per cent this year. They will account for 13.7 per cent of all mobile PC shipments in 2009, with the government’s student PC program providing a major boost, and will take a 11.8 per cent share by 2011.

“Due to their small size and low price, PC vendors have begun to find some traction for mini-notebooks in the transportation, logistics, repair and servicing, manufacturing, and healthcare markets,” said Tracy Tsai, senior research analyst at Gartner. “A further attraction is the ability for users to create or run custom applications quickly and inexpensively because of standard PC operating systems, unlike handheld devices.”

The economic downturn could also drive demand for mini-notebooks in 2009. Their low cost may lead buyers to extend the lifecycle of their standard notebooks and consider a mini-notebook as an additional device for on-the-road Web surfing and entertainment.

All major PC players – including Toshiba, HP, Lenovo, Dell, Samsung and Fujitsu Siemens – entered the mini-notebook market in the second half of 2008, so buyers now have much more choice. These vendors are primed to recapture the market from pioneers such as Asus and Acer. The mini-notebook market will soon become saturated with vendors, models and price points, Gartner predicts.

From 2010, Gartner expects the mini-notebook market to stabilise and carve out a sustaining segment, especially in the 8.9-inch to 10-inch “sweet spot” screen size. Threats such as the falling average selling price (ASP) of standard notebooks and ultraportables will put more pressure on the price and weight of mini-notebooks.

Cyber and communications crimes attained maturity as a result of two incidents. The first was the hacking of a wireless network by the so-called Deccan Mujaheedin terrorists (desperate Pakistani terrorists use such generic names for projecting it as an Indian outfit), which resulted in an e-mail threat that implicated a foreigner. The second incident was the Pakistani terrorists Lashkar-e-Taiba’s (Jamaat-ud-Dawa) use of a satellite phone and Russian server during the attack on Mumbai, which resulted in the deaths of more than 180 Indians and foreign citizens alike – women and children among them.

Technology used by hackers and other violators — past and future

Cybercriminals count DNS servers–the phonebooks of the Internet—among their technology of choice to amplify their assaults and disrupt online business. Social engineering — nontechnical ways of gaining access to otherwise inaccessible information — has also become a big threat in recent years. One growing form of social engineering is the use of e-mail to get into networks. The hackers can then send e-mails with embedded code designed to gather information from their targets’ networks. The message may have a line in it that says something like “Click here for more information,” which will actually establish a link to a data collection site set up by the hacker. A bigger issue is Microsoft Word attachments that execute Trojan horses when opened. The attachment may include a virus or a worm, but it could also execute a keystroke logger or some other program for opening up a back door into a target’s network.

Many of today’s hackers and other violators also use blogs to store and distribute malicious code. Different hackers use blogs different ways. Some may create a blog on a legitimate service, then post viral or keylogging code on the page, and entice users to visit the page — where they’re infected — using spam or spim. Others may use the blog only as storage for malware that previously-planted Trojan horses access to update themselves or install a keylogger onto the infected PC.

Threat environment

Cyber warfare goes far beyond malicious hacking by teenagers seen years ago. This phenomenon occurs in a parallel, virtual world, and is essentially the “New Cold War”—it’s organized, it’s coordinated and it’s well-funded. Cyber attackers are motivated politically, financially or maliciously.

In recent press coverage, it was reported that Indian ministries, government departments and other Web sites have been attacked by Chinese and Pakistani hackers. Attacks for financial gain are increasing with scams to phish for personal financial data then reselling the stolen financial information.

According to India’s CERT-In, in 2006, a total of 5,211 Indian Web sites were defaced, averaging about 14 Web sites per day. Of all hacking incidents in October 2006, about 61 percent related to phishing, 27 percent to unauthorized scanning and 8 percent to viruses/worms under the malicious code category. India, like the western countries, has witnessed a massive rise in phishing attacks with incidents in 2006 180 percent higher than in 2005, and the trend carrying through into 2007.

In August 2008, Silicon India News reported that an unknown Indian hacker was being charged with the greatest cyber-heist in history for allegedly helping a criminal gang steal identities of an estimated 8 million people in a hacking raid that could ultimately net billions in illegal funds.

What are the future of cyber threats?

The usage of Trojans continues to dominate cyber warfare. And the use of bots and armies of botnets to unleash DDoS attacks and bring down networks will continue to be a critical part of cyber warfare as well.
According to the most recent Symantec Global Internet Security Threat Report, viruses accounted for 15 percent of potential infections by malicious code, worms accounted for 22 percent, back door 13 percent and Trojans 71 percent. The Symantec report also cited the United States, China and Germany as the top three countries with the most malicious activity from the period July 1, 2007 through December 31, 2007. (India was not ranked in the top 10.)

Economic cost of such threats

In 2006, IBM conducted a global survey (excerpts from The Hindu) of more than 3,000 CIOs or other individuals qualified to answer questions about their company’s IT practices. It included 150 respondents from India. The survey showed that Indian businesses perceived cyber crime (44 percent) as a greater threat than physical crime (31 percent) to their business. Indian businesses felt that loss of revenue (75 percent versus 72 percent of global businesses) ranks as the highest key cost associated with cyber crime. Loss of market capitalisation (72 percent versus 47 percent of global businesses) ranks as their second-highest cost. Other costs for Indian businesses include damage to their brand/reputation (65 percent), loss of current customers (64 percent), loss of employee productivity (60 percent), loss of prospective customers (57 percent), and the cost of restoring service (53 percent), the report stated.

To get a general idea of the economic impact of this malicious behaviour, as per information from a 2007 report by Computer Economics, “Malware cost damages declined worldwide, but still exceed $13 billion. In 2006, direct damages fell to $13.3 billion, from $14.2 billion in 2005, and $17.5 billion in 2004.” However, the report states that this may be due to an underappreciation of the seriousness of bots. Additionally, although most organizations track the frequency of malware attacks, most do not formally track the economic impact of these events.

Are We prepared?

The 2006 IBM survey showed overconfidence by Indian businesses to contain growing cyber crime threat. Sixty-nine percent of Indian businesses believed they are adequately safeguarded against organised cybercrime (compared with 59 percent of global businesses). When asked which were the two initiatives that were the most important to undertake over the next year, Indian IT executives said:

a) Upgrading firewall (62 percent vs. 28 percent of global businesses)
b) Implementing vulnerability/patch management systems on the network (31 percent vs. 19 percent of global businesses)

Historically and currently, Indian IT companies and operators used or are using siloed applications and installed them incrementally to address specific needs, each of them deployed to solve a specific problem. This practice led to a dispersion of information across many products that do not interact with each other, and a large operational investment to manage and maintain this complex infrastructure.

Operators most often use deep packet inspection (DPI) for traffic management, and a wide range of solutions for traffic security, including firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDSs), security event managers (SEMs) and network behavior anomaly detection (NBAD).

Each of these solutions brings something novel and important from an operational perspective, either as a useful tool to better manage the traffic itself or as a fundamental security shield against an ever-growing number of threats. Although each of these products is needed to carry out a specific type of analysis and function, a system that leverages the strengths of each can dramatically improve operational efficiencies. A system that can correlate and analyze all the information captured and processed, interpret and cluster associated alerts, and manage the overall infrastructure as a whole (monitor, diagnose, act on the data collected from a large pool of such solutions) from a single console is even more powerful.

To be brief, security without traffic intelligence won’t work, stovepipe solutions won’t work, and a “box” alone won’t work.

Narus: Defending India’s telecoms against cyber attacks

Narus is the only vendor to offer a real-time traffic intelligence system to adequately protect carrier-class networks. Narus shields some of the world’s largest carrier networks, and as such it sees 35 percent of the world’s Internet traffic. As a company, Narus is focused on helping its customers protect and manage their IP networks on a worldwide basis.

Currently, Narus projects that by the end of 2009, two-thirds of the IP-based service providers in India will use the NarusInsight real-time traffic intelligence software to protect and manage their large and complex IP networks. This software detects potential attacks and other network abnormalities in real time and directs actions that can prevent security breaches, unwanted traffic and network outages. Narus also provides carriers with software that enables them to meet India’s Department of Telecommunications Lawful Interception and Monitoring System regulations.

Going forward, Narus expects to play an even greater role in the management and security of networks belonging to India’s telecoms due to:

1) The growing number of carriers operating in India
2) The addition of new voice and data services these carriers are providing customers, such as voice-over-IP, cable and wireless
3) The greater sophistication of security threats, which include hackers who are becoming more adept at disabling entire networks. One example was evident in the 2007 Estonia attacks, which threatened an entire country’s commerce. A more recent example is Russia’s purported attack on Georgia’s IP networks.

While Narus is based in Silicon Valley, it has had a presence in Bangalore since 2004 and recently opened an office in New Delhi. Narus’ India teams do important research and development of new products, customer support, consulting, and sales. To that end, Avinash Agrawal was recently appointed to lead Narus’ India operation as managing director. Moreover, Narus’ worldwide engineering organization is managed by an Indian executive, Yogi Mistry, who is based in Silicon Valley.

Satyam Infoway (SIFY) is the first company in India to adopt NarusInsight. NarusInsight helps Sify to protect and manage its network traffic, capturing and analyzing network events on Sify’s backbone. It also helps Sify to evolve traffic intelligence solutions to include gray VoIP and network security.

Sify also uses Narus to meet government mandates for real-time intercept and precision targeting. (Thanks to Narus’ certification by the Telecommunications Engineering Centre, Department of Telecommunications, all Indian service providers may now leverage Narus technology to meet this mandate.)

NarusInsight

NarusInsight is Narus’ flagship product, and is the most scalable traffic intelligence system for capturing, analyzing and correlating IP traffic in real-time.

NarusInsight provides a total network view across the world’s largest IP networks. This includes:
* Deep traffic inspection and full correlation of Layer 2 and Layer 7 information across all links and elements
* Industry-leading packet processing performance that supports network speeds up to OC-192/10G off the wire and uses a distributed architecture to scale so it can process multi-petabytes of data
* Carrier-class scalability and reliability with over 2.7 petabytes of IP traffic processed at a single customer, driving 100 billion packet records per day (greater than 7 terabytes) to upstream security applications
* Full traffic correlation across every link and element on the network
* Entropy-based security algorithms to provide unprecedented early detection of sophisticated anomalies such as low-volume and polymorphic worms and next-generation traffic analysis with advanced algorithms for real-time security, intercept and traffic classification and mitigation.

One of the key benefits of NarusInsight is that its programmable analytics engine provides flexibility to customers to develop their own solutions and proven integration models with third-party applications such as Cisco, IBM, Oracle, NetWitness, Frontix, Omniture and other customer applications.

Spend on network security appliance and software market

According to Gartner, Worldwide security software revenue will increase from nearly $8.3 bln in 2006 to more than $13.5 bln in 2011. As per IDC Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) will grow from US$4.7 billion in 2007 to US$9.1 billion in 2012. RNCOS, an industry research firm brought out a study “Global IT Security Market Forecast to 2012.” The study states that the Indian IT security industry is moving strongly, and is expected to continue scoring solid growth in near future with further widening of security war chests. IT and BPO industries are currently the two biggest consumers of security solutions in India, boosting growth in the country’s IT security industry. The SMB segment is projected to spend around 44-48% of the total IT spending in the country. The Indian IT security market in 2006-2007 was totaled at nearly Rs. 210 Crore (US$ 46.8 Million), and by 2010 end, it is forecasted to surge to Rs. 1,958 Crore (US$ 464.4 Million) on account of increasing demand from business sector and continuous IT development in infrastructure. The growth momentum is likely to remain inclined towards the service side, where most of the solution providers will target managed services.

2. An effective anti-virus solution is absolutely fundamental to the security of any computer network.

3. Equally, a firewall is one of the most basic security mechanisms and should form an integral part of your internet security defences.

4. However, anti-virus solutions and firewalls are only of value if they are regularly updated. The range and scale of internet-threats is constantly changing and in order to address these it is vital that you ensure your anti-virus software and firewalls are fully patched and up-to-date. Ideally this should be carried out automatically in background mode.

5. Authentication provides an effective means of ensuring that only the people you want to have access to your computer network are actually allowed to do so. There are a range of different levels of sophistication, so you need to select the authentication solution that is the most appropriate for the particular needs of your business.

6. Bear in mind the need to provide secure access for your remote workers. A security defence is only as strong as its weakest link and any remote weaknesses can, and will, be fully exploited by attackers.

7. Wireless technologies pose serious security threats unless they are effectively managed. Consider the use of encrypted VPNs to address these issues.

8. Encryption is a growing requirement, particularly with the number of laptops now containing confidential or sensitive information. Even if you are just starting to use encryption, you should look to develop a staged implementation based around a unified encryption management approach.

9. Spam can be managed effectively through the use of anti-spam solutions. Outsourcing spam management is an option but take account of your need for control and effective reporting, if you opt for this solution.

10. Unified threat management systems now provide a range of security solutions in an integrated product. Whilst these can offer significant cost savings, you should bear in mind that if anything goes wrong, you will lose all your security functions at once, so a failsafe arrangement with a spare device is recommended.

11. Penetration testing can be a useful means of checking how secure your corporate networks are and identifying points of potential weakness.

12. Finally, remember the ‘people’ factor. No matter how good the technical countermeasures you put in place, your security will only be as good as the users tasked with making these work. So, ensure that they are aware of your security policies and committed to enforcing them, and reinforce this with top management support.

Ian Kilpatrick is chairman of value added distributor Wick Hill Group plc, specialists in IT security. Kilpatrick has been involved with the Group for more than 30 years. Wick Hill is an international organisation supplying most of the Time Top 1000 companies through a network of accredited resellers.

Kilpatrick has an in-depth experience of computing with a strong vision of the future in IT. He looks at computing from a business point-of-view and his approach reflects his philosophy that business benefits and ease-of-use are key factors in IT. He has had numerous articles published in the UK and overseas press, as well as being a regular speaker at exhibitions.