Business Technology Roundtable

A significant new analysis of the economic potential of video, data and voice systems that work together over the Internet -- known collectively as Unified Communications (UC) -- demonstrates that when these collaboration technologies are interoperable, they deliver clear commercial and consumer benefits. The paper, written by Dr. Michael Katz and Dr. Bryan Keating studies the current unified communications market. The Katz/Keating study outlines the potential negative outcomes for the market of some UC vendors refuse to adopt industry standards that would enable video-to-video calls between different systems. "The economic effects of incompatibility are not an abstract academic theory," Katz said. "There are real, everyday consequences to economic growth, consumer well-being and business productivity when one company has a proprietary Internet video system that does not work with others. This means less jobs will be created and people and businesses wil...

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...

Cisco has introduced the AppHQ -- an application ecosystem built specifically for Cisco Cius that provides new ways to create, manage and rapidly deploy tablet applications in the enterprise. Cisco Cius, an Android-based tablet created for the enterprise, combines voice, video, collaboration, and virtualization capabilities unlike any other tablet on the market today. With Cisco Cius, organizations can now deliver an optimized tablet with enterprise-grade security, as a natural extension of the enterprise network. The device provides customers with mobility, centralized manageability, virtual content creation and computing capabilities, and a comprehensive suite of collaboration applications. AppHQ provides developers with tools and resources to create, test and market applications for Cisco Cius, and allows IT managers to control which applications can be used on the devices. Additionally, companies can create private, custom-branded application storefronts for th...

We're clearly in a period of global IT market transition. Enterprises are moving more applications, data and associated services to the central data center. Meanwhile, more small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are relying on managed service providers to deliver various types of hosted service offerings . These trends are driven by cost savings that are realized through consolidation -- the impact reaches beyond basic data processing requirements, as it also impacts traditional voice communication needs. SMBs are turning to hosted Centrex service, and enterprises are moving PBX capability and SIP trunking -- a VoIP solution based on SIP protocol -- to the unified data center . Looking to support less infrastructure on-site, branch offices and SMBs are able to consolidate multiple services into a multi-service business gateway (MSBG). According to the latest market study by In-Stat , they have forecast that the growth of MSBG revenues in the SMB market will exceed $1 billio...

Savvy business leaders are increasingly turning to managed services to enable them to focus more attention on their core competencies, according to the latest market study by Pyramid Research. Managed services free up valuable IT and networking resources, decrease staffing needs and enable investment in activities that differentiate companies from their competition. That said, the primary adoption driver is the current state of the global economy. As business leaders everywhere face increased financial pressure, they’re looking to managed services to offload their capital expense burden and improve operational efficiencies. Analysts typically define managed network services as the management and monitoring of telecom infrastructure or applications by a third party -- either with equipment at the customer’s premise or hosted in a managed services provider (MSP) data center. Responding to the Growing Global Demand MSPs have responded to the increasing demand for new managed cloud...

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...

Organizations that deploy the most advanced Internet protocol-based collaboration technologies achieve more than twice the return on their collaboration investment and perform better than their less collaborative peers, according to a thought-provoking Frost & Sullivan market study. " Meetings Around the World II : Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration," sponsored by Verizon and Cisco, examines how busy professionals in businesses and government agencies use advanced collaboration tools such as voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging or meeting via high definition video or Cisco TelePresence to get their work done. The study is the first to develop a model for measuring a return on collaboration investment, the Return on Collaboration (ROC) Index. It establishes a progressive impact of deploying advanced Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) technologies on business performance and measures improvements in areas such as research and ...

Having had their fill of the economic downside, business leaders are truly ready for the eventual upside. Apparently, U.S. companies are preparing for a global economic recovery to begin in the first half of 2010, according to a new "Road to Growth" market study from AT&T . Key study findings include the following insights: Business Agility and ROI Pressures In today's economic climate, U.S. companies have significantly shortened the time frame over which a Return on Investment (ROI) is delivered. More than half of U.S. IT executives stated they are under pressure to deliver a return on investment in half the time than their previous efforts. As a result, two-thirds cited that the change has affected their IT budgets, strategies and priorities. The study found that companies are less willing to invest in longer-term projects -- where the return does not come quickly. One CIO stated that IT projects must give at least a 100% ROI in 12 months -- otherwise, the project i...

You never know when an unexpected turn of events is going to keep you out of your office. You may not live in earthquake country, or a hurricane zone, or a tornado corridor, but that doesn't exempt you. Everything from fires to broken water mains to police actions can unexpectedly mean that you're suddenly not able to do business where you thought you would that day. Acquirent, an outsourced sales execution firm based in Evanston, Illinois, knows this all too well. When its eleven employees were told to evacuate the premises unexpectedly one day, they had no choice but to pack up and go. But the disruption was surprisingly minimal. Built-In Business Continuity Because Acquirent offers outsourced sales services, founder and CEO Pete Kadens had a high level of confidence in choosing an outsourced phone system. He had deployed Geckotech's hosted IP phone system , which meant that his telecommunications capabilities weren't even inside the affected location. "We all ju...

A professional education trains someone to be a lawyer, doctor, or accountant, but it rarely teaches them how to run a business practice – that's typically learned from experience. Ken Wolfe is a worker's compensation lawyer in Chicago with 25 years experience. When he hung out his own shingle, he realized that in addition to being a lawyer, he was now managing his own business operations. Among other things, that meant making decisions about choosing the best telephone system for his business needs. Wolfe thought he was playing it safe by setting up his operation with phone and Internet service from a leading telecommunications provider, using traditional technology. But before long, he realized he missed many of the services that had been available at his previous firm, which had used Geckotech's hosted IP-based phone system . Lesson learned, he switched providers after a year. Hosted System Brings Voice and Data Together Because the replacement phone system was hosted, W...

Companies with branch offices are facing a technology paradox: On the one hand, businesses are expanding their branch office locations by 6.8 percent annually. On the other hand, only 15 percent of those remote locations have on-site technology staff members, according to Nemertes Research. Those stats beg the following question: How do you empower branch office employees with the proper technology when you can't afford to staff those remote offices with more IT staff? The answer (as our regular readers already know) is managed services. Increasingly, companies are moving their IT assets out of remote offices and into either (A) a centralized data center or (B) an Internet cloud. The march toward centralizing and virtualizing IT has some benefits and some challenges. Next Generation Empowered Branch The good news: Centralizing applications and IT infrastructure can make networks easier (and less costly) to maintain. The bad news: Accessing centralized applications from remote offic...

Perhaps the restaurant sector doesn't immediately come to mind when you think of creative applications of current business technology. But, that's exactly why it can provide a distinctive competitive advantage for a savvy forward-looking company. Popeyes quick-service restaurant was founded in 1972 and has expanded to over 1000 franchised locations globally. A Popeyes franchise owner of multiple U.S. east coast locations became interested in using the latest communications technology to reduce his operational costs and streamline back-office functions at each site. This upgrade included installing a new voice and data network that could manage secure credit card transactions. The decision was made to research a solution to update communication capabilities with a private Internet Protocol (IP) network. A network using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology was procured, replacing the cumbersome and outdated analog communication lines. Once the private voice, data, and...

The trend of globalization, and the need to connect remote employees, now touches nearly every segment of American business -- regardless of organization size or industry. Here’s a case in point. Founded in January 2001, Illinois-based Kirix began as a data analysis specialist for the recovery audit industry. They've done a lot of data analysis and software development work in that time and have had a particular specialty in identifying duplicate payments and other overpayment errors in large corporate accounting systems. More recently, by generalizing their tool set and incorporating Web connectivity into their software, they apply that analytical firepower to all kinds of data -- regardless of where it is located -- even data that's on the Web. The Borderless Communication Challenge Benjamin Williams, one of the company founders, had been planning to relocate to Germany. As a valuable asset to their corporation, Kirix wanted to retain his services, but wasn't sure how th...

By out-tasking business technology responsibilities, you can avoid the need to manage equipment and add operations staff, freeing your in-house talent to focus on strategic projects. How would that work in practice? Here's a case in point. A residential Real Estate brokerage, located in Chicago, came to Geckotech as a new business looking to differentiate them in a highly competitive market. The owner was looking for something unique, a communication solution to launch his new business -- without worrying about how a phone system worked. And, he needed a system that would easily scale, as they added agents. The owner didn't want the distraction of managing hardware, but needed a high-tech solution for his mobile workforce and wanted to use technology as a competitive advantage -- as well as a way to recruit quality agents to the team. Geckotech proposed and implemented a best-fit out-tasked solution at their new office, which included a private T1 connection, Cisco IP phones a...