Posts in Category: industry

UC Mobility – An Opportunity to Tap Today

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Calculating the true size of the Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) market has never been easy as many organizations are still operating a multi-vendor mix of communication and collaboration solutions, and so the data is scattered all over the place. However, there is one key area of UC&C that has shown steady growth over the years, and it’s poised to grow even more in the coming years.

IDC forecasts that UC&C services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are set to rise from $7.7 billion in 2012 to $11.7 billion in 2016, but more importantly that the main driver for this growth is mobile UC. Most other think tanks agree that mobility is arguably the fastest-growing component of UC&C. IDC, for its part, has calculated a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32% per year. However, the mobile UC ecosystem is still a fountain that sits largely untapped

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7 Factors to Consider when Choosing a UC&C Vendor

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Most small-to-medium businesses (SMB) don’t have legacy UC&C software to grapple with, making them more likely than enterprises to move to pure cloud-based UC&C services, according to data gauged by IDG Enterprise. The ratio is 20% versus 7%, respectively.

In its 2015 Unified Communications & Collaboration Survey, IDG uncovered that 33% of IT leaders plan to increase spending in Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C), both hosted and hybrid – a combination of hosted and on-premise services. Spending will increase by an average of 9% through 2016, while enterprises currently lavish an average of $8.1 million on UC&C products and / or services alone. In 2012, a similar survey uncovered that 49% of respondents still used on-premises solutions. That number has only slightly increased to 51% so far, but things are about to change

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The Biggest IT Trend Still In Ascension As We Step Into 2016

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As we close the books on 2015, tech industry watchers are opening a new chapter full of exciting predictions for the future. Cloud computing is helping organizations big and small meet their business objectives now more than ever, especially in emerging markets. Additionally, IT shops will have more than half of their operations hosted in the cloud by the end of 2016.

Data from IDG Enterprise indicates that 56% of a company’s IT environment will be hosted in the cloud by the end of next year (up from 44% today). 8% of the 962 IT decision makers interviewed for the study said their entire IT environment was in the cloud. Companies use a mix of public, private and hybrid cloud services, with the private model being mostly preferred by enterprises. Now, here’s what we think sounds particularly interesting, not just for hot shot enterprises but for medium-sized players as well

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Hyperloop to Enter Its Biggest Testing Phase Yet

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We’ve been keeping a close eye on one of Elon Musk’s more down-to-earth concepts, the Hyperloop. Our excitement levels reached new heights when we learned that the next-gen transportation system was about to enter its first real-life testing phase in Apex Industrial Park in the City of North Las Vegas, Nevada next year.

This week, Hyperloop Technologies confirmed that the company has entered into an agreement to locate its Propulsion Open Air Test (POAT) on a 50 acre site in the scorching hot location

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UC – Your Green Card for Business Communication

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Communication is one of the major challenges to tackle when you’re in the public sector doing business with partners, trying to grow a customer base, etc. Being able to take orders, answer questions, close deals and, most importantly just be there for your partners and clients in a timely manner is essential for growing a reputation as a trusty player in your field. To fulfill today’s growing demands and avoid being crushed by competitors, leaving the past behind is a good way to cement your business and assist your growth plan.

Private branch exchange (PBX) has come a long way since its inception in the early ’90s, when operators had to manage switchboards manually, using cord circuits

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Big Data As The New Fuel for Business

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The say the future of business is in the cloud. 72% of organizations today have at least one application in the cloud, and spending in this area continues to be on the rise. Cost efficiency, agility and speed to-market are just some of the undeniable advantages that cloud computing services have to offer. But there is another “big” area of interest that’s about to become one of the largest business opportunities of the century.

Big data is the new oil according to Jer Thorp, co-founder of the Office for Creative Research, a multi-disciplinary research group. And according to Foursquare’s Andreq Hogue, for every two degrees that go up, check-ins at ice cream shops also go up by 2%. That’s the power of

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5 Tips to Make Your Customers Love You

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A happy customer is a returning customer. Brand loyalty is when your users have the opportunity and good reason to choose another brand, and yet they choose to stick with you. Maybe it’s how your brand looks. Maybe it’s how it sounds, tastes, or feels. Whatever it is, something clicked with them and they clicked with you.

If your product sells today, that’s no guarantee it will sell tomorrow, or a year from now. Unless you’re giving away free cash bundles, holding on to a user base is no walk in the park. Some companies use surveys to see how consumers view their brand and how they stack against their competitors, and they adjust their practices based on the feedback. Others prefer to pour all their resources into building trust, quality and value, without asking too much around. But most don’t bother to do any of these things. And that’s no way to obtain loyalty

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Why Is Design So Dang Important?

Envisioning the world of tomorrow is not enough to make it. Our society is heavily reliant on execution, and that means equal parts of form and function. Design makes all the difference in how we perceive the world, how we choose to buy a certain something over something else, but also how technology makes its way into our hearts (and homes). Where form meets function, our world isn’t just more appealing, it’s also more efficient.

In this discourse we will focus on three areas where design enhances our perception of the world, turns computers into companions, and makes us truly feel at home in our homes.

Art, meet marketing

There’s bad marketing, there’s good marketing, and then there’s really great marketing. I’ll let you guess which category this falls into

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3 Ways Technology Made Communication Possible Where It Wasn’t

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They say technology dehumanizes us. But not everyone buys it. It changes us, granted, but does it strip us of what makes us human – that is, exercise our intellect? As onlookers of the food chain, humans have the luxurious ability to imagine and then create a tool for just about anything. So it would appear that technology not only doesn’t dehumanize us, it defines us.

Having more options never hurt anyone. Professor Stephen Hawking surely agrees. He’d find it very hard (harder than it already is) to bless the scientific community with his ideas without the assistive technology that enables him to speak. A stranded person would give an arm and a leg for a radio. A long-distance relationship would be hard to bear without instant messaging. And so on, and so forth. Communication has benefited immensely from technological feats like the telephone, the radio, and the Internet. Below, we will focus on three often-overlooked scenarios where communication, in the absence of technology, can be a serious burden

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Unified Communications to Gain Serious Traction by 2019

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Despite increased awareness about Unified Communications (UC) solutions, many businesses are slow to upgrade, or downright reluctant to do so. Reportlinker shares some numbers as part of a recent market analysis, and predicts a serious uptick in adoption over the next three years.

Compared to 2014, UC adoption in 2015 has not been considerably higher. In fact, some parts of the globe have fallen short of expectations, according to various market researchers, including the fine gents at IDC. But Reportlinker is optimistic about the next few years, projecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.42 per cent for the global UC 2.0 services market over the period 2015-2019

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