Posted on Thu, Apr 05, 2012 @ 07:20 AM
Last week, I published an article on Computer Technology Review titled, Reality Check: Busting Through Cloud Computing Myths.
In the article, I cover the top 10 cloud myths we hear at MCPc—and bust them with a dose of reality.
If you’re interested in integrating cloud services in your environment, but are unsure about issues such as security, reliability, data management, application deployment, or other common concerns, I encourage you to read it.
As I mention over at CTR (paraphrased here):
The key to finding success in the cloud is to to find the solution that supports the needs specific to your business—from access, to security and compliance, and everywhere in between.
In this age of IT Consumerization and mobility—not to mention the impact of social media and the expectation for instant on, always available collaboration—having an effective cloud strategy is no longer a nicety. It is a business requirement! And, as the article alludes to, a properly executed cloud strategy can be a business differentiator and a competitive advantage.
Click here to learn how to bust the cloud myths that dwell within your organization.
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Andy Jones is Senior Vice President of Sales. He has more than 15 years of IT industry experience, and is an expert on cloud, virtualization and managed services solutions. Connect with Andy on LinkedIn.
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Posted on Fri, Feb 10, 2012 @ 01:44 PM
On a flight to Denver recently, I was thinking about the world we live in; the world that I consult in. It is a world that is inherently more mobile, social and visual than the world of only a few years past.
I believe that Charles Darwin foreshadowed this more than 150 years ago in his well-known description of natural selection: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives; nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
When I think of our current business world, I think about adapting to change much like the species Darwin so meticulously studied. Today’s business models are adapting at an unheard-of rate of change, with social and mobile technologies leading the charge. A few stats to ponder:
Times, They Are A’Changin’
If you don't believe that we are living in the post-PC world, you’re wrong. If you believe that tablets, social media, and video are fads, you’re wrong. If you don't begin to embrace these technologies, learn to be nimble, and be willing to adapt to change, chances are your company won't be around (or at least won’t be growing) by the time I write my next blog post.
As business leaders, we are constantly under pressure to learn new concepts and adapt to change.
As a member of Generation X, my career has constantly been in flux. I have been an accountant, actuarian, consultant, IT director, e-strategist, researcher, CIO, CFO, small business owner, president of a business unit, and now the CTO here at MCPc. I have worked for a big company, a non-profit, a global organization, privately held companies, my own company, and consulted in the energy, technology, manufacturing and airline industries.
And guess what? Those changes were not over the course of a 40-year career; they occurred over a period of 16 years. Why the volatility? Because I, like many of my peers, have an insatiable appetite to learn and grow, and experience all I can in this world.
And here’s the scary part: the generations coming behind mine are even more unsettled and less tolerant of the status quo of a static, 40-year career.
They want to embrace an experience, feel it out, and move on to the next opportunity that invigorates them. They yearn to use mobile and social technologies. They value connectivity over traditional benefits and higher salaries.
My 5-year-old daughter already deems a restaurant or hotel as sub-standard if there is no wireless network for her to connect her iPad to! How are we going to support her generation? One that, even in kindergarten, understands: email, texting, being constantly connected, how to communicate via video, Facebook, and new content delivery methods such as Netflix.
What Are You Doing About It?
So, with this tsunami of change, how is your company embracing mobile, social, and video technologies? I would love to hear your thoughts on these, and how your organization is adapting to change. Please share your comments below.
If you’re interested, we can also discuss how MCPc Collaborative Consulting Services can help you navigate these treacherous waters.
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Darin Haines is Group President of MCPc's Advanced Technology Group, focusing on solution delivery, and has over 16 years of experience in leading the technology function in mid-sized and enterprise-level organizations. Connect with Darin on LinkedIn.
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image credit: erix!
Posted on Fri, Jan 13, 2012 @ 01:58 PM
I love my iPad. It goes everywhere with me. Sees me through everything. Client presentations, email, calendar, client proposals, movies, music, photos, virtual desktop, functions as my phone—you name it. In fact, as my previous blog posts have outlined, my iPad replaced my laptop. But I just felt that there was something else out there. And boy was I right!
The Tension Builds…
It started innocently enough.
An email or text here and there announcing her presence to me. Some with a flirtatious undertone, just teasing me of what was to come. I had seen her once or twice at demos, and man, was she sexy.
Then it happened: We met in person.
She was sleek and new. Smaller than my iPad. Enchanting. Pure enterprise grade. The Cisco Cius!
Yes, I have been cheating on my iPad with the Cius.
Cisco Cius: Background and Basics
The Cius was announced in June 2010, and recently hit the market. I’ve had mine for about four weeks now.
Has it fully replaced my iPad? No. But it has become an amazing secondary device, and there are several features that have the potential to make it a serious competitor to the iPad:
- Seamless integration to the Cisco Collaboration suite—Jabber, video, presence, WebE, and Quad.
- A docking station that contains USB and HDMI ports.
- A micro SD card slot.
- Built-in micro USB and micro HDMI ports.
- The ability to connect a mouse and keyboard.
- Cisco Telepresence and endpoint interoperability.
- Cisco Communications Manager serves as the Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform.
The Bottom Line: iPad vs. Cius
For the first generation of the device, the Cius isn’t bad. I love the Cisco Telepresence integration, USB ports, and ability to use Communications Manager as the MDM.
If your organization has invested heavily in the Cisco ecosystem (voice, collaboration, video) and you’re considering a thin client for VDI deployment, then the Cius warrants a look. Or, if you’re considering purchasing the Cisco 9971 video phone, I would strongly consider the Cius instead.
However, do not kid yourself that the Cius is the iPad. In my opinion, Android is inferior to IOS as a mobile operating system.
In terms of pure tablet functionality in the post-PC world, the iPad trumps the Cius. Cisco is quick to point out, however, that the Cius is not intended to compete directly with the iPad. The Cius is a pure enterprise play, not a consumer play. It’s a video endpoint that also brings the benefits of enhanced security and VDI to the table.
So where will I end up? I believe that I will find a way to have the iPad and Cius coexist. Because at this point, I can’t live without either of them!
Do you have any questions about the Cius, and how it compares to the iPad? Fire away in the comments below.
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Darin Haines is Group President of MCPc's Advanced Technology Group, focusing on solution delivery, and has over 16 years of experience in leading the technology function in mid-sized and enterprise-level organizations. Connect with Darin on LinkedIn.
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Posted on Fri, Oct 14, 2011 @ 10:05 AM
Like me, my 5-year-old daughter, Grace, is an iPhone and iPad owner.
When touring her new school’s computer lab, Grace asked the principal, “if this is the computer lab, where’s the iPad lab?” She continued, “I’m used to touch—that’s how I use technology. Where’s the iPad lab?”
Grace’s questions are already a reality for today’s IT managers. Multigenerational and global workforces demand seamless collaboration technology—apps and services that connect employees, clients and others together no matter their device preference or physical presence.
Intuitive collaboration merges video, voice, presence, instant messaging and email so employees can access information at any time, from any location, and from any application or device. A virtual connection between you and the people you work with lets you collaborate on the projects that drive business growth, often faster and with more agility than competitors.
In our most recent Modern Technology Lesson roundtable discussion, Northeast Ohio business technology leaders agreed on the value intuitive collaboration can have in the workplace, and also agreed on its main challenges: buy-in, finding the right technology and adoption. Let’s walk through these challenges, and how to overcome them.
Secure company-wide support.
How do you gain buy-in for the big-picture impacts intuitive collaboration can have within your organization?
One of the more common challenges felt by our crowd was knowing who to talk to about actually bringing intuitive collaboration technology to their organizations. Todd Freefield of Cisco told the crowd that for the first time, CEOs are coming in to his office along with IT managers to discuss collaboration. CEOs see the value in understanding how collaboration technology directly enables businesses to be more productive, efficient and successful.
The best way to gain buy-in: have your C-suite actually experience the possibilities of collaboration technology. Hold a videoconference among geographically dispersed offices, video-chat with research and development, instant-message with staff, or see if his or her VP of sales is in a meeting but available to communicate via text message if needed, or sample something that would be uniquely valuable to your organization.
Employees are likely already using collaboration—think Skype, Facebook chat and other accessible solutions—so providing an approved platform to merge and manage collaboration is where you can make a strong business impact.
“If you don’t already have a collaboration strategy, you need one. Otherwise, your people will go rogue and create their own.”
– Todd Freefield, Cisco
Choose the right collaboration technology.
Another common question throughout roundtable discussions: How will I know which technology should we use?
There’s no one right or wrong answer to this question. It’s a crowded marketplace, full of products from Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Apple, Oracle, Adobe and more. The first step in finding the right solution for your organization is to do a network assessment.
What are your organization’s edge devices, bandwidths, refresh timelines, etc.? Take a hard look at your network to make sure that you can support the technologies you want to implement, and maintain—or even improve—quality of service (QoS).
Terry Stein of Microsoft joined our discussion via videoconference, showcasing collaboration technology in action. He noted that it’s not always about which technology you choose, but the fact that the chosen technology is interoperable with the existing technology at your organization.
“It’s not about the technology, it’s about driving business outcomes and making people more productive from any location and device.”
— Terry Stein, Microsoft
Promote company-wide adoption.
Multigenerational workforces mean a diverse range of technology adoption. While providing the best and newest tools can retain the best and brightest talent, it may also stand as a learning curve for more seasoned professionals.
Gain buy-in and test the waters within your organization with focus groups. A few organizations at the event noted that test groups with a range of employees provide a good gauge on adoption rate, user challenges and IT management warning signs. It’s also a good method to build ambassadorship and adoption of new technology and processes.
From here, open and continual training sessions will give staff opportunities to ask questions, resolve individual issues, and continue best practices in using intuitive collaboration technology to improve workflow, company culture and business performance.
Final Thoughts
How have you seen intuitive collaboration technology drive business growth, and what were your challenges along the road to adoption? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
If you’re interested in experiencing collaboration technologies for yourself, please feel free to reach out to your MCPc account representative, or myself, to set up a time to come to our office, experience the technology, and plot out a roadmap for your organization.
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Darin Haines is Group President of MCPc's Advanced Technology Group, focusing on solution delivery, and has over 16 years of experience in leading the technology function in mid-sized and enterprise-level organizations. Connect with Darin on LinkedIn.
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Stay Connected with MCPc: Subscribe to the blog; follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
image credit: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Posted on Wed, Sep 21, 2011 @ 10:22 AM
Collaboration is driving the next wave of business growth, innovation and productivity. By deploying secure, inter-company collaboration solutions—across video, voice, presence, instant messaging and email—employees can access information from any application or device, at any time and from any location.
Examples of specific applications that make up the collaboration suite include: conferencing, enterprise social networking, telepresence, messaging, mobile applications, video and IP communications.
At MCPc, we believe that collaboration needs to become intuitive—an engrained element of business technology and operations—for companies to compete and thrive in the modern business world.
The Driving Need for Change
A new collaboration experience is needed to address today’s business complexities. Consider the following trends:
- Globalization—No matter what size, almost all businesses work with outside suppliers, partners, clients or contractors across the country or globe. This has forced a shift in where, when and how people work.
- Influx of data—Information comes from multiple sources, devices and applications, often in real time. Employees increasingly need help sifting through this information to find what’s relevant to them.
- Worker mobility—With technology advances, distributed workforces and flex schedules, not all workers come into the office any longer, demanding more robust collaboration functionality.
- Consumerization—Employees continue to bring new devices and applications, such as smartphones and Facebook, into the workplace.
As these trends continue to impact organizations, they will make the workplace more:
- Visual—Inherently video based.
- Virtual—Converged with VDI/virtualized endpoints.
- Mobile—Requiring a consistent user experience across devices and locations.
- Social—Leveraging social networking principles in enterprise settings.
The result is that organizations will need to deploy solutions that bridge communications-centric systems, web 2.0 capabilities and today’s text and document-centric systems to make the user experience consistent and transparent across platforms.
Developing a Collaboration Strategy
The key to creating any collaboration strategy is to focus on the user experience. In doing so, some factors to keep in mind include:
- Open architecture—By creating an open, interoperable infrastructure, all devices and applications can utilize the same collaborative services.
- Inter-company collaboration—Organizations need to be able to work with partners, suppliers, customers and others outside the firewall. Collaboration tools should enable this, securely.
- Video communications—Video is becoming a transformative element that will permeate the entire business world.
- Enterprise social networking—Fluid, ad-hoc communities will evolve the way people work and interact within organizations, as they offer ease of use, speed and ubiquity.
- Flexible deployment models—Both the enterprise network and the cloud will play key roles in enabling a comprehensive collaboration platform. Companies should blend the best of both worlds.
Collaboration Business Benefits
With a collaboration strategy, businesses can experience a range of benefits, including:
- Reduced travel, saving time and money.
- Increased speed to market, as partners, suppliers, customers and others can work together in real time to finalize products, business direction, plans and more.
- Reduced energy consumption, supporting green initiatives.
- Improved customer service through faster response times and greater accessibility, using the customers’ preferred communication methods.
- Better productivity and efficiency as people will have access to the information they need when they need it.
- Improved knowledge sharing and training.
Your Thoughts?
Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
- Are you using intuitive collaboration solutions within your organization? Why or why not?
- What business benefits have you experienced?
- What challenges have you faced?
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Darin Haines is Group President of MCPc's Advanced Technology Group, focusing on solution delivery, and has over 16 years of experience in leading the technology function in mid-sized and enterprise-level organizations. Connect with Darin on LinkedIn.
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Stay Connected with MCPc: Subscribe to the blog; follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Posted on Mon, Oct 04, 2010 @ 09:51 AM
Two weeks ago, we hosted an event with Polycom at our corporate headquarters in Cleveland called Transformation to Visual Collaboration. A lot of great information was shared regarding the business drivers and benefits of telepresence solutions. In this blog post, we’re sharing the Cliff’s Notes version — key details and takeaways from the event.
What is Telepresence?
First and foremost, it may help to answer the question: What exactly are we referring to when talking about telepresence?
Videoconferencing, which is defined by Wikipedia as “a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously,” has been around in business IT for several years. Essentially, videoconferencing is simply the ability to include live video as an element of phone calls.
Telepresence, on the other hand, takes videoconferencing a bit further by integrating new technologies for a higher quality experience. With telepresence solutions, businesses can connect their employees, customers, vendors, prospects and other audiences via high-definition, high-speed connections. At its best, this can cause users to forget that a screen exists between themselves and the people with whom they are communicating. This highest level is sometimes referred to as immersive telepresence or visual collaboration.
Due to advances in technology and IT infrastructure, immersive telepresence is becoming a reality for many businesses. Though enterprise adoption is leading the pack, these solutions are becoming more affordable — and valuable — for smaller organizations as well.
Why Now?
A key support for telepresence is the convergence of voice, video and data networks within the IT environment. As the Converged Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) network has largely eliminated the need for separate audio-video, voice and data infrastructures, organizations have taken advantage of this framework to reduce staff overhead, network management and operating costs. It is this simplified infrastructure, with inherent priorities in place for different data package types, that lends itself well to support immersive-telepresence solutions.
In addition to this core infrastructure, Dan Lejeune, Regional Channel Member, Cincinnati area, Polycom, shared some additional advances that not only make telepresence possible, but make it a strong solution for businesses looking to advance their collaboration abilities and improve operational efficiency.
- Growth of unified communications portfolios and infrastructure
- Improved networks and availability of bandwidth
- Accessibility of telepresence within enterprise, SMB and service provider networks
- Mainstream acceptance of visual communications
- Advancements in high-definition voice and video technology
So, not only is the infrastructure in place to support telepresence solutions, but cultural and global expectations are further pushing the desire for these services. In essence, people’s comfort with using video to communicate — largely thanks to consumer software such as Skype — has made video phone calls a common activity for many, and thus a growing expectation in business settings.
Key Benefits
Thanks to this combination of technology support and end-user acceptance, we are at a point when telepresence solutions can truly be widely adopted by businesses to save time and costs in critical areas. As found in the July 2009 Wainhouse Research report, Benchmarking the Benefits of Videoconferencing Deployments, enterprises and SMBs alike see similar benefits from implementing videoconferencing solutions in six key areas:
- Travel: 30% cost savings
- Time-to-Market: 24% reduction
- End-User Downtime: 25-27%
- Training: 22-25% cost savings
- Recruitment: 15-19% reduction in time spent
- Sales-Related Costs: 24-26% reduction
Often, the first area identified — reducing travel costs — is the impetus behind organizations installing telepresence solutions. However, as shared by Brian Gilman, Global Director, Enterprise Solutions, Polycom: when asked how they want to further deploy, many IT directors will admit that though they’ve successfully reduced travel costs, they are only using their current system at 20 percent capacity and don’t see any additional uses.
Interesting note: Gilman’s entire segment of the day was delivered via Polycom’s HDX 4000, from his home office using a standard cable modem.
Optimizing Your Business with Telepresence
This is, as seen in the Wainhouse research, a somewhat shortsighted approach. According to Gilman, there are several stages in video deployment. As organizations move through the stages, additional benefits are realized until the true goal — achieving a collaboration culture at your organization, no matter the geographical location employees and audiences — is reached.
Image source: Polycom
Gilman shared several hypothetical situations to illustrate the benefits that organizations can realize through telepresence outside of travel cost savings. Consider how much time and money your organization could save in the following scenarios:
- Your organization allows employees to work from home and communicate via videoconference, thus reducing office space needs by10 percent.
- A 3-day training program for 100 employees becomes a virtual event, rather than your organization paying for hotels, flights and daily cost-of-living for those individuals.
- Top candidate job interviews are completed via video and recorded for review by executives.
- Development time for a new product is reduced 10% by holding high-level feature/functionality review meetings over a telepresence system, rather than mailing samples back-and-forth or sending R&D personnel to manufacturing facilities.
- HR and sales trainings are recorded and saved on an employee intranet and viewed by employees within an allotted timeframe. Instructors are able to see who has completed trainings via a content management system.
So, at the end of the day, we learned that in addition to time- and cost-savings, telepresence solutions can provide organizations with a competitive edge in multiple areas, including:
- Ability to gain a competitive advantage over competitors through innovation and time to market
- Improvements in employee morale due to work/life balance options, which can reduce turnover and increase productivity
- Improved external communications, resulting in customer/partner satisfaction and long-distance trust building
- Social consciousness — environmental benefits are achieved through reduced travel, both long-distance and from work-at-home employees
Your Thoughts?
What telepresence solutions are you considering for your organization? What benefits do you hope to realize?
Are you a business leader in Northeast Ohio interested in learning more about collaboration, cloud computing and other advanced technologies for your organization? Join us for the Modern Technology Lessons Summer 2011 Roundtable Series. This three-session series includes Path to the Cloud (7/19), Mobile Device Explosion (8/10) and Intuitive Collaboration (9/29). All three events will take place at our future headquarters, 1801 Superior Ave. in downtown Cleveland. You can attend all three or any combination of sessions. Click here to learn more and register.
Posted on Sat, Jan 09, 2010 @ 03:33 PM
Author: Jason Taylor
As a sales professional, I regularly meet with customers to discuss how they are leveraging technology to create strategic benefit and competitive advantage. While most business professionals agree that effective collaboration increases organizational agility and efficiency, many are unclear what steps need to be taken to positively affect collaboration on a systemic basis.
Webster's Dictionary defines collaboration as "to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor." In today's global environment, the convergence of secure voice, data and video communications has been leveraged to accelerate sales and delivery cycles, regardless of time or geographic location. But it isn't simply about converged communications infrastructure, as collaboration is ultimately driven by your organization's corporate culture, management practices, business goals and values.
The Benefits of Collaboration are Clear
Organizations that successfully adopt new collaborative strategies:
- Move faster
- Make smarter decisions
- Draw from a deeper well of knowledge
- Operate more effectively across time and distance barriers
So, what other technologies represent collaboration? In fact, many of today's current technical hyperboles (cloud computing, social networking, crowd sourcing, workflow/document management, borderless infrastructure, mobile workforce, virtual presence) all have their roots in collaboration.
Taken individually, each of these technologies represents some limited value to an organization from a collaboration perspective. Taken as a group and coordinated to create a strategy, these technologies can be game changing for businesses that employ them properly.
According to a Q4/2008 Forrester research survey, 37% of enterprise and SMB organizations indicated they were working to develop a formal collaboration strategy in 2009. Twelve months have passed since this survey was preformed, and I still see many organizations operating without a collaboration strategy. It is the duty of IT professionals and corporate management to work together and understand how these new technologies can dramatically impact business profitability.
Resolve to Collaborate in the New Year
This takes hard work, as most of these technologies are relatively new and in many cases can be hard to measure from an ROI perspective. At the end of the day, there is an element of faith involved in the construction of a collaboration strategy. The belief that a well-coordinated collaboration infrastructure will empower an organization to run faster, better and cheaper goes a long way to making this technology effective.
Whether you have faith or not, most technology professionals believe that sometime in the near future, those organizations that proactively manage and synchronize the appropriate use of collaboration technologies with sound business practices will gain a competitive advantage over those who do not.
So... What is your collaboration strategy, and how is it working for your business?
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Jason Taylor is Senior Vice President of Sales Operations and in the past has served as an IT consultant for several major enterprise-level organizations throughout Northeast Ohio. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.
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Are you a business leader in Northeast Ohio interested in learning more about collaboration, cloud computing and other advanced technologies for your organization? Join us for the Modern Technology Lessons Summer 2011 Roundtable Series. This three-session series includes Path to the Cloud (7/19), Mobile Device Explosion (8/10) and Intuitive Collaboration (9/29). All three events will take place at our future headquarters, 1801 Superior Ave. in downtown Cleveland. You can attend all three or any combination of sessions. Click here to learn more and register.