IT Roadmap

Collaboration is the New Normal for Business

Dynamic collaboration across enterprise and inter-enterprise boundaries represents "the new normal." Organizations are now challenged to work closely with suppliers, partners and contractors to deliver their offerings in today's high velocity markets.

"Web 2.0 tools such as video portals, podcasts, blogs, wikis, and discussion forums are changing the way in which information is created, published, managed, and consumed," according to a recent report from Cisco. "Technology advances and the need to work outside of normal business hours and locations fosters an increasingly mobile and distributed workforce. A flood of new devices and applications is entering the corporate IT environment as employees elect to merge consumer-based tools with standardized communications."

As organizations grapple with global value chains, information overload, and more mobile workforces, they are challenged to embrace and integrate new collaboration capabilities.

"As the number of intra- and intercompany stakeholders increases, the number of collaborative tools and communication formats increases," states the report. "In other words, the scope of collaboration must be broadened. It must combine document- and text-centric collaboration — such as email messaging, instant messaging (IM), team workspaces, and conferencing — with voice, video, and context to fully support the needs of the business."

Cisco contends that enterprises will need to recognize several key principles as they implement collaboration technology and infrastructure in the coming years. Among them:

• An interoperable, open architecture: As collaboration increasingly occurs across organizations and with people on the move, it is no longer a given that IT can control the devices and applications used in collaborative sessions. Today’s environment requires an interoperable, open architecture that allows for any device or application to use a core set of collaborative services.


• Secure inter-company collaboration: Organizations will increasingly move from collaboration within functions to intra-company collaboration to inter-company collaboration. In this environment, securely enabling collaboration with partners, suppliers, and customers as if they were behind the firewall is fundamental.


• Flexible deployment models: IT requires the flexibility to adjust to a dynamically changing business and technology environment. Enterprise and IT architects do not make decisions in the context of on-premises versus on-demand, but seek to couple the robustness, security, and performance of the enterprise network with the openness and flexibility of collaboration through the cloud.

Strategic planners in IT need to ensure they construct a core foundation that supports a rapidly evolving set of applications — one that also optimizes the various media types that comprise today’s collaborative experience. They'll need an open architecture that secures collaboration and supports multiple approaches to deployment.

Is Your Network Ready to Enable the Virtual Office?

Teleworking is on the rise, creating new challenges and opportunities for enterprises committed to the promise of borderless networks.

Consider a few projections and estimates:

• Number of teleworkers by 2011: 112 million
• Percentage of employees that work outside the corporate HQ: 90%
• Average amount saved per year on fuel by employees who work one day at home: $500
• Average commercial real estate savings per year for a full time teleworker: $22,000 

Considering the challenges of the current down economy and the clear savings associated with telework, it seems likely that teleworking will become an attractive approach for more and more organizations in the coming years. It’s certainly attractive to workers seeking schedule flexibility and better work-life balance.  They want to save time and costs on commuting.

While there may have been concerns in the past about the ability of teleworkers to build trust with their colleagues and effectively collaborate, the maturing of technology over the years has addressed many of these concerns. Rich communication and collaboration capabilities – matched with convenience and cost savings – have dramatically shifted the equation in favor of telework.

The question is: What will it take to successfully implement, manage and secure robust networks and IT resources that will support the move to a virtual office environment?

 

One thing that’s clear is that teleworkers, full- and part-time home office workers, mobile contractors, and executives will expect the same rich array of network services – including data, voice, video and various applications – they could expect to access at a corporate office. 

But that won’t be enough. New telework solutions must also meet the requirements of IT. They must simplify the process of providing rich network services to remote locations.  Deployment and integration must be simple as well, making it easy to scale with the demands of the enterprise. Moreover, security must be uncompromising, ensuring traffic controls and identity management can be strictly enforced.

Finally, it’s critical to ensure the business objectives of the organization are addressed. Solutions must drive measurable productivity gains and cost reductions while facilitating greater agility.

Telework has been called a “quiet revolution,” but it’s clear it won’t remain quiet much longer.

Unified Communications Generates Rapid Returns

Did you know that enterprises are realizing 40-50% savings on their investments in Unified Communications as they lay the foundations for advanced collaboration?

Here’s how.  When they migrate from traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM) to new Unified Communications platforms, they are embracing a number of capabilities that deliver accelerated ROI.  According to Cisco, there are five core capabilities delivering these impressive gains. They include:

• Full IP telephony deployment: You can achieve TCO savings of 15 to 25 percent by moving site-to-site voice traffic from the costly public switched telephone network (PSTN) to the internal data network (toll bypass). The savings stem from lower operating costs, toll bypass, and the introduction of least-cost routing.


• SIP trunking: Additional TCO savings of up to 12 to 26 percent are enabled by lowering local voice connectivity costs—achieved by eliminating multiple dedicated voice lines in favor of provisioning approximately 80-percent fewer SIP voice channels to handle the concurrent sessions. The high end of the savings range can be realized for very distributed companies such as retailers, retail banks, and other companies with multiple branch-office locations.


• Intercompany media routing: This capability can drive incremental 5- to 10-percent TCO savings by routing business-to-business calls – including rich media collaboration -- over the Internet in a secure, high quality fashion.


• Session management: Enterprises can realize an additional 4- to 8- percent TCO reduction through centralized routing and VOIP management. For a relatively low initial investment, enterprises can capture savings from existing telephony assets and achieve a rapid ROI. When combined with migration to full unified communications, session management solutions deliver even greater savings.


• Mobility:  New mobility capabilities tied to Unified Communication solutions can save enterprises 13 to 20 percent on rapidly rising mobile costs. These solutions reduce airtime charges, lower roaming costs with single number reach, and enable easier dialing and lower costs for international calls.

Given the challenging demands associated with today’s economy, enterprises of all kinds are under pressure to drive out costs and drive up efficiencies. They also are seeking ways to enable collaboration that will enhance agility and deliver a competitive advantage. What’s clear is that these gains are now within reach. To learn more about how Cisco is delivering on this promise, download this white paper.

Conferencing and Collaboration: 5 Examples of Business Impact

Companies are seeking to provide better service, reach new geographies, and develop new products at the same time they seek cost savings. Here are some examples of how online meeting and collaboration tools can meet the challenge:

1. Sales teams use web presentations during conferencing to better qualify leads before spending the time and resources to visit new clients.


2. Trainers increase reach and quality of training by changing the focus from arranging schedules and travel plans for a series of on-site classes to creating learning modules that can be accessed on demand and re-used.


3. HR departments help attract and retain talent through remote interview sessions, accessible training modules that help employees get on board quickly, and by providing a variety of opportunities and modes for feedback.


4. Engineers working from several different locations can’t meet their deadline if they take time out to travel to a joint meeting location. Collaboration services enable them to have ad hoc meetings in unified workspaces when they need to fix a design flaw and to provide regular updates during development.


5. IT departments deploy services more quickly, can re-use training information due to ease of updating, and can maintain a stable, secure environment using a Web-based server that doesn’t require additional software or knowledge by the user.

Many of these initiatives are successful because they remove restrictions of location and time. But they also work because they allow professionals to take their focus away from things like physical logistics and focus on core tasks.

Communication is the New Killer App

Communication technology can be a game-changing differentiator for companies. What makes this so is the way communications technology is applied to improve the techniques for exchanging information that drives business results. Rather than selecting technology first, companies must determine which capabilities are needed to improve business transactions and then apply technology as a means to deliver those abilities.

Some examples include:

• If your leaders are road warriors who need to connect into conference calls via their smart phones, making sure your video conferencing platform enables mobile connectivity should be on your list.


• When speeding time to market for new products is hindered by distributed teams, providing the capability of a unified workspace for project collaboration over changes to product design in real time will deliver a quantifiable return on investment—despite different locations or time zones.


• When customers ask your service reps for technical information beyond their expertise level, presence enables the rep access to a specialist to get the information needed to facilitate higher first-call resolution—not to mention increased satisfaction.

Once you’ve established your communications capability needs and backed that list into functionality requirements, you’ll want to seek some expertise to help you determine whether on premise, or off is the best choice. Phasing in the changes incrementally can also aid in driving user adoption by focusing on the people with the most need for the capabilities.

Additionally, the functionality should be implemented to work together, not as siloed tools. It’s also just as important to ensure that you’re prepared to evolve in parallel with the technologies, because they certainly will evolve—likely faster than you think.

Integrating communications capabilities with business applications and processes is what puts the “killer” in their application to achieve business objectives.