Company, Calls, Texts
Unifying Communications to Weather The Economic Storm
The point is about figuring out how best to communicate with the people that interact with your organisation on a non-voice basis. Sometimes other forms of communication can be more powerful than voice for example, one insurance company found it gets more calls back from younger people it texts than calls. [...] Our strategy is built around the user, who will have 'one experience' with UC, he continued. With one number to call, you can reach wherever I am and on whatever device I'm using soft phone, laptop, the fixed-line extension in the office or the mobile. You can have as many as seven different endpoints to a person, but then that's with the understanding of what the convergence of voice, video and data convergence can do for you today. [...] That way, the network can accept that mobile phone even if it's provided as the employee's personal device. So many companies are trying to rule over corporate mobile phone use, when it would so be much easier not to have to demand which OS their people's mobiles use, so they can just plug them into their PCs and go. [...]
Shoretel: Unified Communications Is Real At Last
The CIO might not be driven to make his users' lives easier, Combs concedes (such a goal is pretty low on the list of many CIOs we have met), but controlling users' mobile numbers is also good, to keep company phone calls in the company when any staff member leaves, he points out. [...] The client also offers a visual list of voicemail - and previews them, playing a short clip which is enough for a family member to say Help, I'm stuck on the motorway, or a colleague waiting for a meeting to say Where are you And because the outgoing number is your single company phone number, it can be used by people who work at home but don't want clients to have their home phone number - Combs mentions a Texas charity working with disturbed children, as a situation where this is a requirement. [...] Using a cloud-based version of the service is even better, he says, suggesting that telecoms switching outside the premises can be located somewhere where power is optimised and technical support is available 24 hours a day. Yhis can be in a company's existing remote or cloud-based data centre, just by adding rack-space there for telephony. [...]
Green is The Colour of Money, Too
Dave Cox has the fervour and bright eyes of a convert - as the senior VP in charge of operations at network security company Blue Coat Systems, he is a convert to a new corporate operating philosophy that he calls lean-and-green'. [...] That convinced me to try focus groups around the company, and ask people how important the environment is to them. We'd meet with 10, and two or three would say, If you start an environmental initiative, I want to be part of it.' . [...] Cox says that while the company knew it needed to do something - if only to meets the demands of regulations including the EU WEEE Directive and RoHS Directive - the idea that going green could also make it more efficient and save money seemed pretty unbelievable at first. [...]
Brocade Calls Cisco On Efficiency
He's also keen to mention backward compatibility - or not requiring users to rip out and replace their network kit. [...] It is impressive how Mr. Phillips turns his company's weaknesses into strengths. He claims, they're telling users to swap out their MDS and Catalyst 6500 switches . I would wonder, how long Mr. Phillips has been with the industry, as for the last 7 years we have seen 4 generations of Brocade SAN switches, each of them requiring fork-lift upgrade, and that is not counting platforms from their acquisitions they have obliterated almost immediately thereafter (CNT, McDATA, etc. [...] Phillips normally hesitates to mention the name Cisco , preferring our competitor , but he gets down to specifics readily enough with increased competition in the offing, slating the giant for hurting users with rip-and-replace upgrade policies ( they're telling users to swap out their MDS and Catalyst 6500 switches ) and taxing resellers with narrow margins. [...]
Shoretel: Unified Communications Is Real At Last
Now's a good time for Shoretel to be pitching to the CIO of the company, he says, because many of these people have just won a battle with the old telecoms manager, to win control of the phone system. You've been crowned the winnner of the battle between data and voice communications, he says. [...] Voicemail is still mostly useless, emails are fiddly, and most of us juggle multiple phones, missing calls on one while we field the others. This week in London, there's UC Expo, a big unified communication show, and a chance to hear the hype all over again. [...] Company Information Data / Phones Voice Applications / Video conferencing Green Travel Costs st. [...]
Open Source Flies In A Recession, Says Ingres
A recession calls for leadership, said Burkhardt. The easy thing is to cut people. Expecting a short recession, IT managers can simply lay off staff and struggle along, but if the recession goes on longer, it means they no longer have the talent to innovate. [...] But when open source software emerged as a viable business model, CA re-launched Ingres r3 as an open source product, and spun off Ingres as a new company, which has won some major contracts, trading on Ingres' historic strength as well as the open source business model. [...] The original source code of the Ingres database has always been available under the BSD open source licence, and is at the heart of other products including Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server. The Ingres company gave Oracle a good fight in the early 1980s, but lost share, and was swallowed by first ASK, and finally in 1994 went to the software elephants' graveyard, Computer Associates (CA). [...]
Ballmer: Windows 7 Will Save £100 A Year
The audience got most excited by some critical questioning about licence fees, with Ballmer admitting that the company does include gotchas in the small print, and dashing any hopes that the licences could be simplified. Other topics included the cloud, new user interfaces, and the advantages of Windows 7. [...] [Business advisors] Baker Tilly are saving £100 per PC in helpdesk calls, with Windows 7, said Ballmer, adding that the government of the Isle of Man is saving £120 per desk through streamlining management. BT also has a massive deployment of Windows 7, he said. [...] There are 8 million beta users of Windows 700.000 of whom are in the UK, Ballmer told the assembled audience. Those users are getting savings of up to £120 a year per desktop, Ballmer claimed. [...]
IT: Part of the Problem, or Part of the Solution?
Estimates show that ICT could cut global emissions by 30 to 40 percent, says Dr Hamadoun Touré. It's a tool to reduce consumption elsewhere, he argues. people can cut back on travel to save budgets and reduce their environmental impact, but they need to replace those trips with phone calls, emails and video conferences. [...] IT managers already know that cutting our companies' environmental impact needs greater efficiency - and that needs good communications. But Dr Touré sees this on a global scale. He's head of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nations body that oversees telecoms. [...] Our computers and telecoms make as much pollution as all the world's aeroplanes - but unlike aviation, IT has a vital role in putting the whole planet on a greener track, the Secretary-General of the ITU will tell the networking world at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona in February. [...]
Sustainable IT Holds Opportunities For The UK
Professor Hopper has emerged as a green IT advocate, but is we3ll remembered by network nerds and PC enthusiasts alike, for his long-term involvement in Cambridge IT circles. A co-founder of the British micro-computer company Acorn and a co-inventor of the Cambridge Ring network system (eventually the basis of ATM), he is now professor of Computer Technology at the Cambridge University, and head of the Computer Laboratory there. [...] Sustainable computing struck him as a research opportunity several years ago, around 2000, he says. It is relevant and not well understood. At that point the field was too fragmented, but when he became professor in 2004, he made what he calls computing for the future of the planet a major theme of the department. [...] The US has led a big shift towards green IT since the arrival of the Obama administration, says Professor Andy Hopper of Cambridge University. But there are lessons to be learnt from Africa and elsewhere. And UK companies still have an opportunity to lead the way - if we are not afraid to accept big changes in our lifestyles. [...]
Shoretel: Unified Communications Is Real At Last
But supposing I'd had the Shoretel system in place. When the meeting was due to start, my phone would have gone silent, and all my calls would have gone to voicemail. I would never have got that important call from the PR, which would have redirected me. I'd still be waiting there. [...]
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