In “multi-modal” communications, as well as “trans-modal” communications, individual users can dynamically change from their original form of contact to a mode of communication suitable to their immediate circumstantial needs.
Posted by Art Rosenberg, on July 06, 2010
Aastra's Solidus eCare offers a well-designed range of capabilities to meet a broad spectrum of enterprise requirements. In particular, Aastra’s design enables a “layering” approach to implementation – enabling enterprises to add capabilities and scale over time while building on existing infrastructure.
Posted by Don Van Doren, on June 29, 2010
Significant challenges in security, interoperability, service assurance and regulatory compliance emerge as contact centers begin migrating voice, conferencing and other real-time interactive services from TDM to IP networks.
Posted by Samantha Kane, on June 23, 2010
Recently, N.E.T. Federal (the Network Equipment Technologies subsidiary focused on government communications) sponsored and presented a webinar as part of the SIGNAL Webinar Series entitled, “Enabling Software Powered Unified Capabilities Over the IP Cloud.” This webinar and the associated whitepaper highlight the deep technical capabilities required of NET to support the Federal Government’s need for secure real-time communications over its network.
Posted by David Yedwab, on June 09, 2010
NEC believes that real value can be created by enabling businesses “to fully integrate employee roles with automated business processes, resulting in a unified organization.” What’s more, NEC has been taking action to make this possible.
Posted by Marty Parker, on May 25, 2010
Best-in-class organizations are increasingly deploying powerful tools for customer analytics—including tools for automated modeling, real-time scoring, interaction optimization, and incremental response modeling. So what does this have to do with Unified Communications? Everything! Achieving customer centricity requires a holistic, enterprise-wide view of the customer experience.
Posted by Samantha Kane, on May 19, 2010
Interactive Intelligence is doing a lot of things right, and we’re seeing evidence of this in both their overall performance and their latest CaaS enhancements. To get a better read on both, I briefed yesterday with their CaaS Product Manager, Roe Jones. Let’s start at the top and touch on some highlights that tell a strong growth story for ININ.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on May 18, 2010
In a world that seems to be experiencing change at a faster and faster rate, one constant remains...we generally don’t like change! How does this relate to unified communications tools that are being implemented at a growing rate in the business world? UC Solutions Integrators are finding that one of the primary challenges when implementing new UC “tools” is end-user adoption.
Posted by Pam Avila, on May 11, 2010
Unified Communications (UC) is a term that is displacing “business communications” because it is a concept and technology approach that integrates user interfaces to support all forms of real-time and asynchronous contact and interaction with people involved in a business process. It is slowly replacing stand-alone business telephony technologies, integrating voice and text-based information.
Posted by Art Rosenberg, on April 19, 2010
As line of business managers search for new ways to cope with the results of the “new” economy, unified communication solutions are becoming ever more important and of greater value. What is not so readily available, however, is the expertise to uncover those needs and the knowledge to design and implement a reasonable solution. In other words, integrators with the proper sales and technical skills are still not in great enough abundance to meet the needs of a growing number of customers.
Posted by Pam Avila, on April 06, 2010
An emerging category in the spectrum of unified communications, called UC analytics, harnesses customer and operational intelligence from all areas of the organization—from the contact center to the back office to branch/remote locations—and across all customer touch points and databases, blending workforce optimization tools and advanced customer interaction and desktop analytics, to improve business operations and customer engagement.
Posted by Nancy Jamison, on March 30, 2010
As enterprises move to unified communications, there will be two focal points for all of the user’s communications and collaboration activities – a desktop hard or softphone and an associated mobile device. Integrating those two interfaces will be key in ensuring that the user has access to the tools they need to remain accessible regardless of where they are located.
Posted by Michael F. Finneran, on March 18, 2010
Enterprise communications networks are evolving into business-critical resources delivering real-time, unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) services and applications. Enterprise UC&C infrastructure, services and applications must be protected both from deliberate attacks to steal sensitive information and/or disrupt UC&C services, as well as from non-malicious adverse events that can cripple these services. Take the contact center for example; here privacy is a significant issue due to regulatory constraints and/or the sensitive nature of some contact center communications (e.g., medical records, credit card numbers, etc.). As a result, contact centers will need to encrypt certain sessions (signaling, media or both) end-to-end, or at least the portions of a session that must traverse untrusted IP networks.
Posted by David Yedwab, on March 17, 2010
Many people have misconceptions about social software. It’s more than just chatting with friends or letting your “followers” know what you did over the weekend. Tools such as social bookmarking, content tagging, wikis, blogs, and microblogs let workers participate in communities where they can build expertise and share knowledge. Social networking and unified communications each have inherent value, but are even more powerful when we can blend social software nonsynchronous communication tools (such as wikis and blogs) with UC’s synchronous communications capabilities (such as click to connect). Integrating unified communications with social software lets workers better network with peers within the organization, identify and connect with experts within the company, collaborate on projects, and help workers feel connected.
Posted by Blair Pleasant, on March 10, 2010
Applications for unified communications can take many forms and support many kinds of employees. The popular vision of UC is the executive or knowledge worker on a desktop workstation developing business plans, collaborating on strategies, or creating proposals. However, the impact of these new networking technologies can be much broader, reaching into virtually every corner of the organization.
Posted by Michael F. Finneran, on March 04, 2010
Back in May of 2008, I briefly examined UC in the federal government in this article: UC in Government-A Walk on the Mild Side. It was referred to as a “walk on the mild side” since attitudes by key federal officials on VoIP remained somewhat skeptical at that time, hence casting doubt on potential UC uptake in the near-term. Recently, I re-encountered Doug Martinez, Director of Government Markets, NEC Corporation America. Doug is an old colleague and he brought me up-to-date on what NEC is learning and doing about the total government (local, state, federal) IT and communications landscape.
Posted by Jay Brandstadter, on February 23, 2010
Put your feet up on your desk, you just saved your employer 60% on long distance by implementing a SIP trunk telephony solution. A promotion must be imminent and obviously well earned. But the cigar isn't the only thing beckoning your attention - the call center manager is at your door. Evidently all incoming calls to the call center stopped. Then someone else reports that calls are coming in to the rest of the company - but it's a pre-recorded venomous message going to every phone or message-box in the firm from a former employee. Good news, a position has opened in the firm's Antarctic branch.
Posted by Dave Michels, on February 17, 2010
As recent studies have found, customer-service business processes are the top priority of enterprise organizations that have started implementing UC capabilities. Those applications account for over 90% of the highest priority responses in a study of business process applications that are primary targets for UC implementations. This means that communications involving either customer-facing staff or customers directly (self-services) are of most importance to the enterprise for UC flexibility benefits.
Posted by Art Rosenberg, on February 16, 2010
Here’s a rundown of some of the announcements and news from Lotusphere 2010.
Posted by Jim Burton, on February 03, 2010
When the economy is weak, the first thought is how to trim expenses and continue to provide the best customer experience possible. Many times capital investments are the first to go by the wayside. The question is whether this is penny wise and pound foolish. Will the impact on customers be more expensive than the cost of the investment? There is no easy answer. But, with communications as a service (CaaS) solutions, now there are better alternatives from which to choose.
Posted by Laura DiSciullo, on January 26, 2010