Author Archive: Melanie Turek
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Nov 18th, 2008 | Melanie Turek
At least, you are according to the most popular entry in a contest sponsored by Plantronics to find a term to replace the so-20th century “telecommuter.” According to a survey also conducted by the vendor, there are a lot of us cloudworkers out there–more than half of respondents said they work from home at least one day a week–and half of them say they are more productive when they do so. Also, 36% of knowledge workers say they’re traveling less, and 40% are spending more time in teleconferences (cloudconferences?).
This morning, the big news out of VoiceCon (news on the last day… yay!) was IBM and Microsoft’s promise to achieve true federation between OCS and Sametime. That’s good news for unified communications (although I have to side with the folks who wonder why “federation” is an acceptable solution, when “open-standrads-based interoperability” is really what’s needed). But it’s not news to enterprise 2.0 vendors and users, for whom open, shared access is table stakes. Think about it: When it comes to communication and collaboration, you can’t know in advance who you need to work with; you need to know that at any given time, you can work with anyone you choose.
Aspect has announced that the upcoming GA release of Aspect Unified IP 6.6, scheduled for December 12. The news software will include many new UC-capable features, including integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to support “ask-the-expert” capabilities outside the contact center and within the enterprise itself.
I joined an analyst call with the folks from Verizon today, in which they updated us on their approach to–and services for–UC. Here are a few higlights:
- Verizon sees a lot of interest in UC (thousands of customers are evaluating it), but says that most of them don’t have the technical expertise needed to implement a truly unified infrastrucutre (enter Verizon’s professonal services).
- Verizon believes the high-profile nature of UC deployments also makes failure a scary proposition for IT proponents; as a result, they’re taking their planning and evaluations very carefully.
- Verizon is making a lot of noise around embedding UC into business processes.
- One customer, with 14,000 employees, has dropped its use of Cisco Personal Communicator and is instead relying on OCS and Verizon’s services.
- Cost savings has and continues to be a huge motivator for Verizon’s UC customers.
Earlier, I posted on Plantronics’ contest to find a new name for “telecommuting.” The submissions were plentiful and varied, and the panel of judges has narrowed them to 10 candidates. Vote for your favorite between now and November 7!
IBM just announced that Global Hyatt Corporation will standardize on Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime for unified communications and collaboration. The company, which operates in more than 45 countries, intends to offer the software to thousands of employees as well as all 365 managed, operated and franchised hotels.
Siemens has enhanced its OpenScale Security Services offering to better cover critical areas around UC: business continuity, compliance, identity and privacy, threat mitigation and data security. If security is paramount for other IT applications, it should be so for unified communications, which converges a variety of corporate data and users on a single platform.
Making sure users can access their communications in an emergency (or even a simple Internet outage) ensures your company can still do business even as the network, or access to it, fails. Complying with regulatory mandates is not negotiable when it comes to e-mail today; expect not just IM, but VoIP, conferencing and social networking to follow. And of course, defining approved users and profiles around access is critical, especially as companies open their UC doors to partners and customers.
If you’re deploying IC, are you paying enough attention to security?
As companies deploy (or simply allow) Web 2.0 tools in their organizations, they often forget the need for enterprise content management. But as employees use and contribute to wikis, blogs and social networking tools, they create a lot of content–and that content needs to be secured, compliant, and accessible to others within the organization. For more on this topic, check out this podcast, and post your comments below.
I had the opportunity to speak to an audience of IT executives today, hosted by InformationWeek Events and Siemens Communications. As part of the morning’s presentations, Michael Lewis, Siemens VP and Area GM, Federal Solutions Business Unit, made some remarks—and they were refreshing, coming from a provider in the UC space. Here are a few highlights:
Siemens Enterprised Communications has annnounced its mobile UC client for Blackberry, Simbian and Windows Mobile Device users. Unlike other solutions that purport to be “mobile UC,” but which really deliver only fixed-mobile convergence, OpenScape Mobility offers users all UC capabilities from their mobile devices. Whether they take advantage of mobile video and web conferencing remains to be seen, but presence, chat and telephony are key capabilities in the mobile UC world.
