Definitions, Benefits & ROI

Strategic Path - New channels, new risks

When it comes to handling customers, not everybody has the same ideas. Marketing people may want to launch an exciting promotion to bring in new customers, but the likely flood of calls to the company contact centre requires close co-ordination with th...

UniComm - Working smarter, together

Collaboration – working together with information and ideas to create new knowledge, concepts, products, solutions and other business value – is a powerful, central force in the information age. Collaboration is prominent in enterprise valu...

Springboard - Why working together is working

Interest in collaboration is rising rapidly in Australia. This is abundantly reflected in Australian organisations’ increasing engagement with all kinds of collaboration tools and technologies, and the tools’ growing use in business. Access...

CIO Institute - A Killer app lies in wait

OK you IT dudes out there – I have a prediction and a challenge for you. The next big thing in IT is… productivity Mark II – connected communities. This revolution will feature executive and professional productivity driven throug...

Strategic Path - Does the future of technology require IT?

Convergence is reforming the way we conduct business and transforming our daily lives. The now clichéd “blurring” of traditional roles through modern methods is creating paradigm shifts such as that of content between user and publis...

IBRS - You can’t buy collaboration

Collaboration is not something you can buy. It is not a product. It is not even a solution. It is an approach to doing business. As such, collaboration initiatives must be viewed more as a transformative business project with IT support. Large-scale, m...

LearnTel - Microblogging

Saying it in 140 characters is becoming popular among those with too little time and too many emails. Web 2.0 enables unprecedented opportunities to share yourself with the world. The latest way to do this is through microblogging – where you hav...

UniComm - Beyond the contact centre…

In 1995, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema wrote The Discipline of Market Leaders. In it, they describe three strategic pathways that enterprises can take in order to achieve market dominance. These pathways are operational excellence, product leadershi...

SIP Forum - SIPconnect and the rationale for widespread adoption of SIP trunking

Making the most of VoIP IP PBXs are starting to dominate the enterprise equipment market. But TDM trunking remains the norm, unnecessarily limiting the advantages business customers can realise from IP voice in both capabilities and cost. The answer...

Ovum - Spreadsheeets, 2.0

Spreadsheets have always been the true loners of the corporate IT desktop. The software has been designed as a personal productivity desktop application — with “personal” being the operative word. Despite their wide-scale use across t...

Ovum - The move by vendors into managed telepresence

Fast forward for videoconferencing Back in March we commented on the move by telcos into managed telepresence and high-definition videoconferencing. Now it is the turn of the vendor to be making noise in this fast-developing market. At this month&rs...

Wainhouse Research - A case study on deploying a VNOC

An Example of a Video Managed Services / VNOC Offering This section provides information about the services included within the VNOC / video managed services offering from the sponsor of this white paper, York Telecom Corporation (YTC).  YTC&rs...

CIO Institute - Convincing Company Leaders to Invest in Unified Communications

The old business management paradigm is dead. Continue operating to it and you will go down at the helm of the ship – either you won’t get projects up, or your projects will die in the field says Danny Davis, Executive Director, CIO Institu...

Wainhouse - Understanding & deploying a conferencing VNOC

Making the most of video By Ira M. Weinstein, Senior Analyst and Partner at Wainhouse Research Visual communications and videoconferencing are entering the mainstream as companies seek more cost-effective, efficient ways to conduct business. As a...

Learntel - It's virtual meeting time!

Telepresence revisited By Carol Daunt Skyring It seems to have become ‘official’ since I wrote the last article on telepresence 10 months ago: telepresence equals videoconferencing! In a recent white paper, Telepresence on a Videoconf...

Ovum - New Knowledge Frontiers

How the internet is pushing out and opening up the frontiers of organisational knowledge Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Public Sector Research Director, Ovum Frontiers are interesting places: historically, the buffer zone between civilisation and wilderne...

Frost & Sullivan - Redefining the rules of customer service in the Web 2.0 era

An evolving landscape in which customers are being exposed to a variety of communication channels is pushing contact centres to reinvent themselves By Audrey WILLIAMS, Frost & Sullivan Web 2.0 represents a new phase of collaborating, sharing ...

IBRS - Unified Communications: Justifications and predictions

Looking to the future Building a business case for unified communications is currently more of an art than a science. Traditional return on investment (ROI) models are now inapplicable unless arbitrary values are placed on intangible benefits. However...

SIP Forum - Standardising SIP

Strategic Path talks to Marc Robins, President of SIP Forum LLC SP: Can you describe briefly the role of the SI P Forum and your position within it? MR: The SIP Forum was founded eight years ago as a non-profit IP communications industry associat...

Strategic Path - IT theory of everything

The Web Oriented Architecture revolution By Sheldon Dyer, IT Manager, Cricket Australia If CIOs were to compile a wish list of key goals of their infrastructure and solutions, surely the list would look a lot like this: • Minimal TCO and ...

Ovum - Branching Out

Telcos broaden the range for Managed Telepresence By David Molony This year is set to be the year of telepresence as a managed service. There’s still argument about whether telepresence is high-end HD videoconferencing, or something quite n...

Strategic Path - The 2.0 Age Cometh

Assessing the impact of blogs and wikis on a new generation of business users By Beverley Head, National IT Guru From the Bronze Age to the Industrial Era historians have always wanted to label periods of time. Technologists really aren’t tha...

AIIA - Engaging ideas in business: Web 2.0 and the new economy by Sheryle Moon CEO of AIIA

Web 2.0 and the New Economy By Sheryle Moon, CEO, Australian Information Industry Association People are the most important part of any business, and whether or not you are an active supporter of the emerging technologies loosely referred to as Web...

Learntel - Counting the costs,and benefits, of social networking by Carol Daunt Skyring, Founder & CEO of Learn Tel

Have you been Nudged Today? Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are in vogue at the moment. They have become established forums for keeping in contact with old acquaintances and meeting new ones, but do they have a place in th...

Strategic Path - Closing the collaboration loop

Closing the collaboration loop Quick quiz: Do your employees work better when they’re emailing each other, calling each other, instant messaging each other, or working together in an online document sharing system? If your company is like ...

CIO Institute - CIOs Harnessing the Hype

CIOs Harnessing the Hype CIOs can rise above the avalanche of misinformation in today's market by working out where their organisation stands on the path to IT maturity. Anyone who has encountered IT vendors' more hyped claims – such as, f...

Learntel - eCollaboration: What is it and how can it be used?

eCollaboration: What is it and how can it be used? eCollaboration means many things to many people so let's try and define what it is. Type the term into Google and you'll get 105,000 entries. These range from a site that says 'Learning by Web' to ...

CS - The 5 Stages in Collaborative Technology Adoption in the Enterprise

The 5 Stages in Collaborative Technology Adoption in the Enterprise Most organizations today already have some collaboration tools in place. They usually have e-mail throughout the organization, and have groups or departments that are using IM (...

CS - The Third Bubble: How Web-based Collaboration Will Cause the Next Big Economic Expansion

The Third Bubble: How Web-based Collaboration Will Cause the Next Big Economic Expansion Disintermediation is defined by Wikipedia (which disintermediated paper-based encyclopedias) as “The term was originally applied to the banking indust...

Cisco - Networkers highlights the Power of Collaboration

Cisco’s annual Networkers conference in Brisbane let networking and IT experts from around the country learn about the latest technological developments, and how they can be harnessed to deliver collaborative solutions that offer real business be...

Nortel - Do UC what I see?

Philip Goldie, Director, Enterprise Product Marketing, Nortel, Asia answers our questions SP: A lot of terms are now being brought to market – and with them some confusion – does Nortel see a difference between unified communications a...

Nortel - The Hyperconnected - here they come! A white paper by IDC

A Global Look at the Exploding ‘Culture of Connectivity’ and Its Impact on the Enterprise Romina Aducci Pim Bilderbeek Holly Brown Seana Dowling Nora Freedman John Gantz Abner Germanow Takashi Manabe Alex Manfrediz Shalini Verma...

Nortel - How to evaluate Business Value for Unified Communications by Forrester Research

Unified Communications Support Multiple Business Process Improvements by Elizabeth Herrell with Brownlee Thomas, Ph. D. and Rachel Batiancila for IT Infrastructure & Operations Professionals Executive Summary Unified communications (UC) ...

3D Networks - 10 Avoidable Mistakes in Delivering Business Benefits from UC

Sidestepping the pitfalls By Chris Luxford, CEO 3D Networks Unified Communications (UC) continues to be a heavily overused “buzz word” driven particularly by IT solution vendors.  Many industry reports, case studies and user impl...

ServicePoint - Video-as-a-Service: keeping it simple

Implementing videoconferencing can be a difficult task for many businesses, but by taking a serviceoriented approach, you can get all of the benefits without the cost and the complexity. ServicePoint’s Video-asa- Service (VaaS) offerings allow yo...

IBM - Let's Get Together

Strategic Path talks UC with IBM’s Craig Campbell SP: the UC pitch has evolved beyond ‘personal productivity’ to ‘integrating UC into the business process’. Can you explain what this actually is, and how it is done, for t...

IBM - The new collaboration: enabling innovation, changing the workplace

Introduction: the who, what, why of collaboration Remember bound volumes of reports in the company library? Secretaries who took the boss’s dictation? And smart people who shut their office doors and emerged with full blown ideas for business?...

NSC Group - Event Driven Architectures in the Responsive Enterprise

Section 1: Introduction To be competitive in today’s real-time world requires greater business agility than ever before. Organizations and their people are working faster, and have to respond ever more quickly and effectively to real-time busi...

IBM - Achieving tangible business benefits with social computing

Introduction In the age of Web 2.0, Internet users are rewriting the rules of social interaction by harnessing a range of new technologies to create and sustain virtual communities forged around common interests. Communications channels such as blog...

IBM - Beyond converged networks: driving user productivity through Unified Communications and Collaboration

Executive summary Unified communications and collaboration strategies can help organizations deliver a user experience that brings together communications and collaboration silos across and beyond traditional business boundaries. By providing users ...

IBM - Using collaboration to enable the innovators in your organization

Part of the CIO implications series Introduction More than ever, CIOs are being asked to contribute actively to business growth, competitive differentiation and innovation. With its central role in the organization, IT has the power to drive new ...

Aspect - An Evaluative Report of the Knowledge Worker's Role in the Contact Center, 2008

Unified Communications strategies are largely focused on improving employee productivity. The concept can be extended to encompass contact centers and customer-facing support functions across the enterprise to enhance communications between organizatio...

NSC Group - Maximizing Unified Communications for Your Business

Guidelines for Success in Deployment and Solution Optimization Section 1: Executive Summary Although Unified Communications (UC) is a term that’s frequently heard these days, finding clear – or even consistent – definitions can...

NEC - NEC's UNIVERGE(R) 360 - Enabling True Role-Based Services in Unified Business Communications

NEC’s UNIVERGE®360 - Enabling True Role-Based Services in Unified Business Communications Executive Summary Industry analyst research has revealed the top three issues on every executive’s mind – maintaining a competitive ad...

3Com - 3Com(R) Open Services Networking - Freedom to Innovate

3Com® Open Services Networking - Freedom to Innovate INTRODUCTION Imagine an open and customizable network infrastructure that delivers the freedom to innovate, differentiate services and simplify operations—a network that can reduce co...

Cisco - Making the most of Technology Now! Cisco's Sheila Jordan reveals how Cisco is Embracing Web 2.0

An insider’s view of how Cisco is embracing Web 2.0 for internal productivity gains and a richer employee experience Interview with Sheila Jordan, VP, Communication and Collaboration IT SP: What is the aim behind the Cisco “Communicatio...

ServicePoint - So what is collaboration?

So what is collaboration? Q&A with Brett Waldock, CEO ServicePoint Strategic Path (SP): In terms of associated security risks, what recent developments in Video Conferencing (VC) are making it a more viable option? Brett Waldock (BW): Th...

Broadreach - Unified Communications - A buyer's minefield?

Unified Communications – A buyer's minefield? The unified communications (UC) market is an emergent one and with that comes the gold rush for the high ground from many players in the market. The battle for mindshare and positioning in the...

NEC - Looking at collaboration with Mark Tatham-Thompson

One on one executive insight Looking at collaboration with Mark Tatham-Thompson SP: All enterprise desktops today have a phone and a computer. Three to five years from now, which device do you think knowledge workers will reach for when they go...