Business Technology Roundtable

Examining the ever-changing landscape of online collaboration, and assessing the growth of social networks, Cisco announced findings from a recent market study about end-user collaboration applications and individual preferences within the workplace. Within the group of respondents using social networking for work, fifty-nine percent say that their usage of social media applications has increased over the past year. The study also found the most frequently used application for collaborating with others is email (91 percent). However, what people want from their email application is changing -- the findings highlight the potential for email service evolution. The market study, conducted by Harris Research, surveyed more than 1,000 end-users from across the United States and found that email is the preferred collaboration application at work for a variety of reasons. Navigating within the Comfort Zone Respondents like the fact that email provides an easily-accessible record of communicat...

Enterprise leaders say that it's becoming difficult to find the highly qualified IT and network security talent they need that's affordable, and so they look to service providers for a solution. According to the latest market study by Forrester Research , demand has been growing. That said, Forrester believes that using a managed security services provider (MSSP) is more than just a lower-cost alternative to doing the same work in-house. MSSPs are not just managing devices, they also provide insightful analysis that can help with business decisions. CIOs and other business technology leaders used to resist out-tasking their IT and network security requirements. The talent scarcity issue has helped to change that mindset. Now, one in four out-task their email filtering, and another 12 percent are very interested in doing so in the next 12 months. Another 13 percent already out-task their vulnerability management and an additional 19 percent say they are very interested in doing ...

The goal of creating a collaborative enterprise might seem like an essential requirement that all forward-looking business leaders would actively support. However, fear of the unknown sometimes makes intelligent people react in ways that, in hindsight, appear totally illogical. A case in point, Cisco announced results of a global study that found that while 77 percent of IT decision makers surveyed plan to increase spending on internal collaboration tools, company employees believe that their ability to collaborate is constrained by their own employer policies. That said, more than a quarter of those who work at organizations that prohibit the use of social media applications admitted to changing the settings on their corporate devices to gain online access -- claiming they "need the tools to get the job done." This new insight was attained by investigating practices at medium to large enterprises -- those with more than 250 employees. The study, conducted by InsightExpress,...

The American hospitality industry has suffered from the global economic meltdown. While room rates sank nearly 9 percent for the U.S. hotel industry overall, luxury hotels saw their rates decline more than 16 percent, according to a market study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Was the "frugal consumer" phenomenon to blame? Actually, they're not the main culprit. Business people that chose to travel to meet their customers and suppliers are still not likely budgeted to stay at the pricier hotel properties. What's a savvy upscale hotelier to do, given this scenario? Follow a customer demand trend that has gained momentum -- where spending has risen, based on a solid ROI justification. Starwood Hotels & Resorts unveiled its first in-hotel Cisco TelePresence meeting suites with a virtual, interactive meeting spanning across two continents. The W Chicago City Center and Sheraton on the Park Sydney are the first in Starwood's global portfolio to introduce the new meeti...

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 ...

It's the time of year when most business technology market research and consulting companies release their predictions for the new year. In its annual outlook for 2010, IDC predicts the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) spending and growth in the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region will reach $184 billion -- with a 7.7% growth over this year. IDC predicts most growth will come from India and China, although all countries are expected to experience varying degrees of growth. "While budgets are still tight, and the buying patterns may have changed irrevocably from what the ICT industry has been accustomed to, the fact remains that there is cautious optimism in the market with some interesting pockets of surprising growth," said Simon Piff, Head of IDC's Asia-Pacific Predictions Committee for 2010. The net result of the economic slowdown has been an overarching change in how and why companies make new business technology investments. Proven Technol...

Do you know, is there a better way for businesses to meet online, present projects, and share calendars and ideas anytime, from anywhere? Are you ready to share your experience? Small- and medium-sized business owners can compete for a chance to win up to $2,000 in a reward card and a free consultation with marketing expert Guy Kawasaki -- by entering The Better Way Challenge . The challenge, a video contest presented by Verizon and Cisco, is designed to encourage businesses to use new collaborative tools to maintain their competitive edge in a fast-changing environment. "Innovation and technology will power us out of this recession," said Kawasaki. "The Better Way Challenge enables entrepreneurs to share their victories and defeats, tips and tricks, joys and pains of running a business. Online collaboration and social media can generate business, and these videos will accelerate the learning process for entrepreneurs and business owners." Entering the Contest is ...

As 2009 comes to a close, a recent editorial in CIO magazine sums-up a nagging issue -- "Despite the emergence of improved IT management tools over the past decade, CIOs continue to grapple with the same IT challenges they dealt with five and even 10 years ago. Which can make a CEO wonder: when are we going to get there?" Forrester Research believes that CIOs have typically run "the tech factory" for their firms -- responding to business needs with solutions and operations from both internal and external sources. These IT leaders have pursued operational maturity to optimize solution delivery. Forrester says that CIOs won't ever get away from delivering on operational maturity. But as technology becomes pervasive -- more stable, standardized, and available as a business-centric service -- it's inevitable that business executives will take greater direct control over technology investment decisions. Forrester calls this evolutionary transition the shift from...

Disaster strikes. Your primary place of business is destroyed by a fire tomorrow, are you prepared to recover? According to the historical statistics, fires permanently close 44 percent of the businesses that are affected. Business continuity planning is the creation and validation of a practiced logistical plan for how an organization will restore interrupted critical functions within a predetermined time after a disaster or extended disruption. Business Technology survivability is an imperative for many organizations that operate in the global networked economy, yet some are unprepared for a natural disaster. Cisco recently shared the results of an insightful nationwide survey. Informed, but Otherwise Unprepared The market study uncovered that while many organizations appreciate the increased employee productivity and other benefits offered by laptop computers, smart phones and virtual private networks, they may be unprepared to enable the majority of their employees to effectively t...

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...

The accelerating Organic IT phenomenon is being driven by executive frustration that today's business technology demands are not being fully met by their internal support organization. Some IT teams, however, have taken decisive action to free-up time to become more responsive to their savvy user's requests for new capabilities. Perhaps that's a key leading indicator why remote managed services have emerged as a rare growth area within this tough economic environment. Clearly, proactively increasing business process agility and cutting operational costs has never been more popular. As a result, annual spending on remote managed IT services by the North American Small and Medium Business (SMB) sector is expected to increase 3.3 times in the next five years. That represents a compounded annual growth rate of 28 percent, according to the latest market study by AMI-Partners . Extracting Value from Business Technology "While SMBs have been steadily increasing their relian...

Worldwide spending on data center technology infrastructure and services exceeds $350 billion annually, according to McKinsey and Company estimates, with half of that spent on capital expenses and half on operating expenses. Further, an estimated 70 percent or more of those costs are expended to maintain existing infrastructures, leaving 30 percent or less for new technology initiatives and applications that can provide breakthrough differentiation for businesses. It is also estimated that approximately $85 billion, or 20 percent of this total market, can be addressed with data center virtualization and private cloud technology by 2015. Cisco and EMC , together with VMware , have introduced the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, an unprecedented collaboration of three information technology (IT) industry leaders. Virtual Computing Environment Coalition Charter The coalition has been created to accelerate customers' ability to increase business agility through greater IT inf...

The common best-practices associated with managed cloud service utilization are hard to find, since the early-adopters rarely share their insights. Of course, for all the other people that are still assessing the potential benefits, that guidance is truly invaluable. Therefore, it's very helpful that Forrester Research was able to interview more than 60 organizations that are currently leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud-based solutions within their business environment. Forrester defines public IaaS cloud computing as the delivery of compute (virtualized servers, storage, and networking) on-demand as a shared service. Based on their findings, they say that the evolving usage characteristics fall primarily into three emerging practices. Test and Development in the Cloud The most common practice they found among enterprise users of IaaS cloud platforms was to build and validate new apps. Cloud platforms provide relief for in-house test and development teams who fac...

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 ...

Security breaches or other unexpected interruptions can happen anytime to anyone -- whether you are a large enterprise or a small business. Fully maintaining communication network security is a demanding responsibility -- and typically not the best use of your limited IT resources, that would be better applied to delivering incremental new business technology benefits to your organization. Fortunately, there are alternatives to a do-it-yourself comprehensive security solution. Skilled managed service providers continue to enhance their network security offerings. AT&T announced the availability of Security Event and Threat Analysis and Security Device Management, two new managed security services available for businesses of all sizes. Customized to Your Unique Business Needs The services enable you to engage AT&T security professionals selectively and simply to provide customized security support. Services range from security event analysis and threat management analysis to ...

New York-based JetBlue Airways created an airline focused on value, service and style. They've proven to be a trailblazer in the U.S. airline industry. They're also a communication technology early-adopter. JetBlue introduced complimentary in-flight e-mail and instant messaging services on their aircraft -- a first among U.S. domestic airlines. However, their core competency is centered upon air travel. They out-task the rest to service providers, wherever possible. JetBlue signed a new, six-year strategic agreement with Verizon Business to manage the airline's information technology ( IT) data center and communications network needs, as well as provide security and IT consulting services. Built on an IP Network Foundation Verizon Business will design and manage the transition of JetBlue's existing systems to a new global IT network infrastructure. The newly built Internet-protocol-based (IP) voice and data network will support state-of-the-art airport kiosks, wireles...

How can your company get started with cloud computing? Well, consider following the market leaders. With a few more months of client experience, Forrester Research recently addressed the major questions that executives have about the adoption of cloud services. The key benefits that most early adopters report do not start with costs -- but rather with business flexibility. According to those that have deployed it, the benefits of cloud computing, in order of importance, are: 1. Improving time-to-application deployment. Cloud platforms give you the option of developing and deploying new applications on existing infrastructure as quickly as desired. Traditional platforms can take up to three or four months to procure, install, and configure, stalling the application deployment process. 2. Aligning IT budgets with application demand. How many Web applications does your organization deploy without exactly knowing how popular they’ll be or how much capacity you’ll need to accommodate tha...

Cisco conducted one of the first comprehensive studies of the factors associated with successful adoption of network-based collaboration solutions . You can use the study results to maximize your return on investment from today's online collaboration tools. One way is to implement business practices shown to lead to more enthusiastic collaboration. Another is to identify and then actively support the employees who are most likely to benefit. Twenty First Century Collaboration Collaboration is a process that brings people and information together to accomplish a common goal. What's new today is that in a connected world, people no longer have to be in the same location, time zone, or culture to collaborate. Tools such as videoconferencing (or TelePresence ) and web sharing enable real-time collaboration across distance. Blogs, wikis, and shared workspaces enable online collaboration across time boundaries. Cisco conducted the first formal segmentation study of collaboration tool...

A West Chester, PA-based company was searching for IT help, to more effectively and securely distribute confidential and proprietary content to its customers. Enter Verizon Business, with its managed cloud service offering. Modevity, LLC will use Verizon Computing as a Service (CaaS), an on-demand, flexible solution that allows businesses to harness cloud computing to better manage IT resources and deliver performance and security that supports their growth. Better Alignment of Financial and Human Capital In addition to these benefits, Modevity expects to see a significant positive impact on the company's bottom line as a result of embracing this managed cloud service offering. "We are focused on continuing to grow Modevity in a smart way by making key resource decisions in terms of capital and staffing expenditures," said Tom J. Canova, co-founder and chief marketing officer for Modevity. "Moving to a virtual environment with Verizon Business allows us to consoli...

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...

Virtualization uses technology to remove the physical barriers associated with computer servers and applications -- enabling the consolidation or replacement of servers, storage, network and other physical devices. As a result, your business can better use computing capacity and drive more value from IT resources as well as consolidate data centers and significantly lower energy consumption. For companies who need guidance on a virtualization project, Verizon Business offers these five tips -- culled from the company's years of experience handling complex IT installations and expertise in implementing and managing virtual environments: Make sure you're looking at the big picture: A business should first complete a thorough assessment of its current IT environment and computing resources, including a full review of all servers. Once the enterprise has a better understanding of its infrastructure, it is easier to determine which computing resources, such as servers and...

Cloud computing is all about new technology, right? Well, perhaps that depends upon your point of view -- as an application developer, or a business decision maker. Private Cloud development will grow during the coming year, with 48.9% of developers expecting to deploy applications (via their on-site data center), according to a survey of 500 software developers by Evans Data Corp . Their survey showed that 29.7% are currently working on applications destined for a private cloud environment, while an additional 19.2% expect to enter development within the next 12 months. Taking Baby Steps with Cloud Computing "Software developers are finding many reasons to develop software for the cloud, whether for a private cloud or public cloud," said John Andrews, President and CEO of Evans Data. "Not surprising, while developers want to take advantage of the cloud, our research indicates a strong preference for them to favor a cloud related development environment to simply extend ...

Reports of network attacks and stolen data are commonplace. Consumers routinely undergo the stress of fraudulent charges or compromised credit cards. Computer hacker terms like "botnet" are becoming a part of our everyday vocabulary. As a result, enterprise security and risk professionals find themselves on a never-ending quest to maintain the integrity of their communication networks, according to the latest study by Forrester Research. Fortunately, managed service providers offer solutions to help relieve the burden. In its latest initiative to help businesses protect their vital assets from cyber threats and other online attacks, Verizon Business is now offering its next-generation managed security services (MSS) platform, complete with new options. This enhanced platform is designed to safeguard corporate networks by proactively identifying vulnerabilities and prioritizing threats across the extended enterprise -- resulting in better visibility, enhanced security and re...