Business Technology Roundtable

Impatient CEOs are demanding more innovation from their business technology leaders, as the digital disruption that's already unseating entrenched incumbents can cause real angst. Some have requested their CIO to move quickly and harness the smartphone device that's in nearly every employee's possession. What is your mobile-first business strategy? Are you prepared to accelerate your mobile application development efforts? The right answers to these key questions will become increasingly important. The savvy IT leaders at forward-thinking organizations across industries are already utilizing enterprise mobility software applications to transform their businesses and gain a competitive edge in the Global Networked Economy. Commercial mobile application development is a strategic business tool in the quest to achieve a significant digital transformation . Leveraging Enterprise Mobility Leadership According to the latest global market study by IDC, $901 billion was spe...

The young and savvy business executives of tomorrow will have high expectations and won't embrace or tolerate obsolete processes. As a new generation is entering the management ranks of companies worldwide, they will bring with them their own preferred ways of communicating and collaborating. A global market study by Cisco Systems has revealed that the majority of these next-generation executives intend to depend heavily upon business-class video to connect with their teams, colleagues, suppliers, customers and prospects -- as well as to help their businesses deliver new products and services. The 2013 Cisco Global Young Executives' Video Attitudes Survey gives insight into what management-track leaders aged 34 and under think about business-class video, which delivers high-quality, reliable, and highly secure lifelike video to users. Cisco commissioned Redshift Research to conduct the survey of more than 1,300 global respondents. "Today's leaders are often tec...

Online collaboration has evolved during the last decade, delivering even greater value -- thanks to a new generation of business technology applications. Forbes Insights released "Collaborating in the Cloud," a Cisco-sponsored study examining the ways business leaders increasingly look at cloud collaboration as a way to increase productivity, accelerate business results and enhance innovation across borders and functions. The research combines a global survey of more than 500 executives with 15 executive interviews. "The ability to collaborate in the cloud is becoming a key driver of competitive advantage," says Bruce Rogers, Chief Insights Officer of Forbes Media . "Leading companies are doing more to foster cloud-based collaboration -- not only internally, but also with an ever-wider swath of external groups including customers, suppliers, partners, and even regulators." The benefits of cloud-based collaboration, Rogers continues, include "gre...

What does today's retail banking customer expect from a financial institution, and how can business technology be applied to enhance the overall experience. The latest results from the Cisco Customer Experience Report focused on the retail banking sector. The global report examined consumers' desire for a banking experience that is more personalized to help simplify the management of their finances over multiple channels -- including online, mobile phones, telephones, video conferencing and bank branches. It also examined views about the privacy of their personal information and the value of financial management tools used in their daily lives. Consumers globally identified the most important attributes when interacting with their financial institution or financial advisor as: availability (63%), competence (65%), and efficiency (68%). Survey respondents indicated a willingness to exchange more details about their financial habits and having banks be more active advisors...

Are businesses truly prepared to adopt the most productive practices of high-performance ICT enabled work environments? In search of answers, Cisco commissioned independent research among IT decision makers in enterprise and SME organizations across the UK and Ireland -- to better understand how businesses are responding to macro trends in the marketplace. Next-generation workspaces will be a reality for 76 percent of businesses by 2016, according to the latest market study by Cisco Systems. Their study found that while IT decision makers are primarily focused on reducing IT complexity and balancing investment against cost-cutting, they still must tackle the more forward-looking core IT challenges. In particular, now they need to support investing in new technologies which enable new distributed working environments and thereby create these next-generation workspaces. CIOs face a myriad of trends which challenge and test current IT infrastructure and communication networks. Bri...

The demand for substantive customer feedback -- and engaging all constituents into the feedback process -- drives the need for businesses to innovate and also manage innovation in a new way. Results from a recent market study show that this inherent need is also creating the opportunity for social technologies to help support and add value to the commercial innovation process. The fourth annual "Social Business Survey" from International Data Corporation ( IDC ) revealed a significant departure from previous years -- in terms of focus and use cases for social business technology. With the maturing of social media tools within the enterprise -- and their adoption as an engagement channel -- use cases have grown into some broad categories, such as customer experience, sales enablement, digital commerce, enterprise social network (ESN), innovation management, and socialytics. IDC says that as users request solutions to extend outside the firewall, the 2012 survey demons...

As video calling usage increases, 81 percent of Europeans say that they now see it as personally important for them that these communications technologies work together, according to the findings from a recent market study. In a clear signal to the video communications industry, 86 percent want companies to agree to a common standard so that software and devices -- including popular video calling apps like Skype, Facetime, and Google Chat -- are able to communicate with one another. Unfortunately, that is still not the case in video calling, as opposed to speaking on the phone or exchanging emails, where interoperability is already the norm. Europeans appear to have a very healthy appetite for video communications. In a survey of 1873 consumers, conducted on behalf of Cisco Systems , nearly 40 percent of those who use video calling said they will use it more often in the next twelve months, whereas only 4 percent expect to use it less often. Growing Applications for Video Cal...

As the role of cloud computing is growing around the globe, many CIOs and other senior IT decision makers are facing challenges with their existing network infrastructure -- to support the migration of their business applications to the cloud. A new international study by Cisco Systems revealed the ongoing challenges associated with public or private cloud deployments. These latest research findings provide insight into the current state of cloud service adoption and the chasm between IT expectations and network realities. The survey also examines the experiences of IT professionals regarding the level of difficulty and time required to update their networks and migrate their applications to the cloud. The 2012 Cisco Global Cloud Networking Survey addresses the applications that are most critical for businesses to move to a cloud services delivery model, as well as the network challenges and potential disruptions and road blocks they are facing during this process. The report also...

Government agencies are reportedly one of the primary benefactors of managed cloud services. According to the results from a recent market study by IDC, IT decision-makers across the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan) found that 59 percent of public sector respondents are confident in the ability of their internal IT departments to deploy private cloud environments. However, IDC Government Insights cautions that high levels of private cloud adoption may not bode well for a collaborative and citizen-engaging government and preemptive measures should be taken for collaboration to take place across organizational boundaries. More insights can be found in the IDC report entitled, "Cloud Computing for Government: a View from Asia-Pacific." Frank Levering, Research Manager for IDC said, "An efficient and productive internal IT department is definitely a good to have in any organization, private or public. However, a department that is highly confident in running its o...

Today, most important executive relationships are globally distributed, but many business leaders still say that they want more collaboration in person. Particularly during activities such as brainstorming for new ideas, managing a specific crisis or making presentations. This is among the key findings from a new Economist Intelligence Unit ( EIU ) survey. While the primary function of meetings is to build relationships with customers, some 89 percent of EIU survey respondents say communications where the parties can see and respond to each other benefit internal business functions such as employee coaching and training as well as communications with partners and customers. An additional 43 percent of respondents use meetings to discuss and resolve major issues with customers such as a service or product failure or dissatisfaction with the partnership. Motivations for expanding these meetings also include contract renewals, brainstorming sessions and being introduced to other clien...

There's little doubt about the continued adoption of videoconferencing and telepresence applications over the past few years. Clearly, growth has been fueled by the increasing popularity of video communications among multinational companies around the world -- particularly with mobile video chat applications that utilize new handheld devices . According to IDC's latest market assessment, the videoconferencing and telepresence market will continue to be one of the fastest growing networking markets for the foreseeable future. "Growth has been spurred on by more well-defined video use cases among organizations across a range of vertical market segments, including healthcare, higher education, financial services, legal, law enforcement, manufacturing, and retail," said Rich Costello, senior analyst, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, at IDC . Other industry analysts are equally enthusiastic about the market outlook, as more enterprise users find new ways to ...

Market leading companies are embracing enterprise talent networking practices -- to gain a competitive advantage within their industry. While Online collaboration tools have been readily available for some time, few IT managers proactively combine them into a cohesive strategy to advance their organization's productivity. That being said, it's been the tech-savvy forward-thinking executives that have led the cause to date -- enabling their organization to join the ranks of the early-adopters, and paving the way for others to follow. Cisco announced that Virgin Media, the UK's top entertainment and digital communications company, is deploying the powerful combination of Cisco Quad , Cisco WebEx and Cisco Unified Communications to its eager employee base. The solutions are part of the Virgin Media progressive "Flexible Working Initiative" that will enable thousands of employees to collaborate and work remotely -- utilizing video calls and shared documents, a...

Mobile communication related activity is now considered the number one business technology issue on the minds of IT professionals in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the latest market study by IDC. Their analysts have been exploring, in depth, what mobility really means for organizations and how utilizing a variety of commercial mobile applications will become the norm in the near future. Clearly, enterprise mobility has been a familiar topic for savvy business and technology leaders within most multinational organizations. For many companies it means mobile email, perhaps some form of unified communications (UC) or fixed mobile convergence (FMC). Moreover, for the more adventurous IT leaders, they have already embarked on extending workplace applications into the mobile environment. How Mobility Supports Operational Business Goals Tim Dillon, IDC's Associate Vice President for Asia-Pacific says, "That's yesterday's view. It's changed. Organization...

Theoretically, all types of organizations should be predisposed to consider the transition to managed cloud services -- due to the numerous anticipated benefits. However, based upon the results of recent market research in the United States, it now appears that some sectors are much more likely to be part of the growing early-adopter movement. International Data Corporation ( IDC ) announced the findings of a new market study, which forecasts that from 2009 to 2014 the U.S. public IT cloud services revenue will grow 21.6 percent -- rising from $11.1 billion to $29.5 billion. According to IDC's market assessment and forecast, the professional services, communications & media, and discrete & process manufacturing sectors will drive the greatest market adoption -- generating the most public cloud services revenue. Broad Appeal of SaaS Offerings Will Continue IDC believes that the professional services market, in particular, will be the primary beneficiary of increased ...

With the increased reliance on IT from business leaders, it's important for CIOs to understand the concerns of CEOs and the implications they may have on IT, according to Gartner, Inc. "Business leaders see very uncertain times ahead in 2011, and they must defend growth despite falling business and consumer confidence," said Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner Fellow. According to Gartner's assessment, CIOs should target at least one major business process to be revolutionized or obliterated in 2011 or 2012 -- substantively improving how companies collaborate is one example. BT and Cisco have a shared vision for the future of hosted collaboration and unified communications services, built on their insight across a variety of networked IT and communications services. The companies' mutual understanding of complex network environments and solution provisioning has helped them deliver superior capability, service, and value with global reach. BT and C...

Managed cloud services can accelerate your business by allowing you to transform ideas into marketable products and services with greater speed. Cloud can provide nearly limitless scalability, enabling your business to grow without time and resource intensive IT build-outs. Cloud can transform the economics of your IT -- from capital-intensive, to pay-as-you-go. Service level agreements guarantee the capabilities you need, when you need them. Costs are tiered and metered to accurately reflect your requirements and usage. All applications, including legacy, run more efficiently and sustainably with greater utilization of the underlying infrastructure. Cloud can make new business models possible and unlock revenue potential. Companies can enter new markets, respond more quickly to changing customer needs, collaborate more effectively to drive innovation and business value. Collaboration Use-Case Scenario Global organizations face real collaboration challenges. Employee expertis...

The reinsurance business is evolving. Traditionally, reinsurance transactions are between two insurance entities: the primary insurer that sold the original insurance policies and the reinsurer. The companies in this industry are long-standing users of advanced communications technology, now including video collaboration. Tata Communications announced that it has been chosen by German reinsurance company, Hannover Re, to deploy and run its Telepresence facilities -- serving the group’s internal teams in 18 locations across 16 countries, worldwide. Tata Communications will deploy the Cisco TelePresence high-definition, immersive video collaboration systems to help employees based in Europe, North America, Asia, Middle East and Africa collaborate with each other on a daily basis. Under this agreement, Tata Communications will provide Hannover Re with a solution that includes deployment and installation of rooms, maintenance, management and concierge service for scheduling and reservati...

The National Retail Federation (NRF) released its 2010 economic forecast, projecting retail industry sales to increase 2.5 percent from last year. In contrast, total industry retail sales for 2009 had actually declined by 2.5 percent. "As we continue to see signs of improvement throughout the U.S. economy in 2010, overall sentiment will begin to lift, making way for slight increases in consumer spending," said NRF Chief Economist Rosalind Wells. While this past year certainly has been a challenging one for most retailers, they continue to seek out ways to apply business technology that helps to transform both their in-store communications and the way they interact and collaborate with their primary suppliers. Earlier this month, the NRF 2010 "Big Show" attendees were able to once again experience Cisco TelePresence systems and AT&T services in action. The above video includes insights from some of the people who shared their perspective about how business vide...

Social media tools are entering the workplace, either by thoughtful intent or purely by accident. To date, for those organizations that actually have a plan of action, most tend to focus more on "damage containment" policies for their employees. Is a protection-centric strategy the prudent approach for concerned -- but otherwise uninformed -- business leaders, or is it shortsighted thinking that undervalues the upside opportunity ? Cisco released the results of a third-party global market study designed to assess how organizations use consumer social networking tools to collaborate externally. The use of these tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, are connecting organizations with their external stakeholders. On the upside, the tools connect people and information, establish potential new routes to market, and enhance customer intimacy and brand awareness. According to the third-party researcher , the study findings indicate that we're at the early stages of adoption and ...

European business leaders believe their companies are more vulnerable to IT-enabled market disruptions than companies in other parts of the world, according to a new market study by McKinsey & Company . McKinsey found that 74 percent of European business leaders believed their company was 'very' or 'extremely' exposed to IT-based market disruption. Regardless, only 18 percent of European IT executives believed their companies were 'very effective' at introducing business technology faster and better than their competitors. According to the McKinsey assessment, European companies need to grasp the opportunity to make bold, transformative moves to ensure their business continues to thrive within the " New Normal " environment of ICT-empowered borderless commerce. A significant number of businesses have recognized the need to adapt, with 31 percent of European executives saying the development of new products and services in response to changing consu...