The STEM newsletter is a quarterly bulletin designed to keep you informed of the latest developments in STEM: interesting applications, the latest features and a series of how-does-it-work articles, together with news of forthcoming events.
A planner's dilemma exists: the benefits of a coordinated strategy are rarely achieved because it has always been easier to build isolated, bespoke models in small teams, than to risk the initiative being de-railed by unmatched effort or commitment from other departments. STEM offers a framework which can be understood and accepted by everyone involved in the planning process.
The interactive business-modelling exercise at this year's STEM User Group Meeting will examine cost drivers such as telephony, computing, storage, security and help-desk support. Quantifying the benefits of these activities can help a CIO communicate the organisational contribution of these services and justify the associated budget allocation.
Long-term planning of base-load power stations in a national grid should minimise the number of oil and gas (O&G) turbines required for peak consumption. A STEM model forecasts energy demand and the requirements for O&G turbines and calculates end-to-end costs allocated to each type of service and energy user on a per-kWh basis.
A comprehensive new training course is available, written around a demonstration model, The business case for WiMAX vs DSL in rural areas. The 190-page exercise book presents 55 exercises in 15 groups covering all key features of the STEM software and current modelling practices.
The Thirteenth STEM User Group Meeting will be held on 17–18 September in Cambridge, UK, and will focus around an extended, competitive modelling exercise, such as a dimensioning and planning model for enterprise ICT.
The headline features of STEM version 7.2 are mostly complete. The principal objective is to make the software easier to learn and to hand over to colleagues.
Clients demand a single price-per-port for convergent solutions which integrate network platforms, LANs, telecommunications systems and voice traffic volumes. This article, first published in the German-language telecoms journal NET, describes how the costing of telecommunications projects can be made with STEM.
Network business models must account for geography, but typically data is only available at an aggregate level in the early stages of planning. This refresher article illustrates how STEM can make a realistic allowance for slack equipment capacity across a distributed network, how it can perform a manageable site-by-site calculation when the data becomes available, and how the results compare.
