Posts in Category: industry

UC&C Hits Mass Adoption in North America, Vendors Now Focused On Quality

Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash

Who says Unified Communications is slow to take off? In an analysis of the North American hosted IP telephony and UC&C services market, Frost & Sullivan reports that 2014 saw 8 million installed users, with a projection of 41.9 million users installed by 2021. That number will be mostly small and medium businesses (SMBs). Next in line will be large, distributed organizations looking to streamline their communications infrastructure and IT operations, while managing a remote workforce.

As it transitions from the early-adopter to mass-adoption stage, the North American hosted Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) services market is seeing growth rates accelerating. This is mainly due to an increase in customer awareness of cloud communications benefits. Providers are now compelled to differentiate their products through innovative features as scrutiny of service quality and reliability has increased. Vendors’ focus is gradually switching to refining their UC offerings, after successfully convincing SMBs to adopt the technology.

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When Blocking Communications Is Actually A Good Idea for Business

Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash

We love it when communication flows. Everything we do at 4PSA revolves around communication and collaboration, so we believe strongly in the power of using these as tools for building teams and businesses. But sometimes, shutting up can help too.

According to a study published in the Journal Of Social & Personal Relationships, blocking communications with negative people can increase your productivity and even boost your IQ. It’s the kind of research that seems to reach an obvious conclusion, but most of us are oblivious to these teachings our entire lives.

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Fear Is The #1 Obstacle In Deploying UC&C

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Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) as a technology has unquestionable perks for productivity. In some cases, a good UC&C implementation leads to new revenue streams, a goal that sits high on every CEO’s agenda, yet many are reluctant to take the plunge. The reason itself is surprising.

Business leaders are regarded as anything but fearsome, but when it comes to investing in new technologies, many executives start to get cold feet. In a whitepaper titled Build a Better Business Case for UC, research firm Forrester offers a list of fears reported by the C-suite at 133 enterprises across the US and Europe regarding implementing UC services. Here it is below (complete with our own observations):

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Entrepreneurship Comes From Money, Not Genes [Study]

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It’s upsetting to know that your jet-set friends will always have it better than you thanks to their wealthy families, but it’s a reality we have to accept. Many have made their fortunes through hard work, getting up at 5 and investing all their energy in changing paradigms. Who can argue, then, that their offspring received the best?

According to recent studies, it is this simple recipe that usually makes an entrepreneur: wealthy family (i.e. safety net) → great education → Mom & Dad supply capital after graduation → Mom & Dad’s connections pave the way to business-oriented future → business works thanks to positive attitude and risk taking.

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Remembering How President Obama Helped Save The Internet

President Barack Obama is photographed during a presidential portrait sitting for an official photo in the Oval Office, Dec. 6, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Today, Medium Daily Digest served me one of the best 5-minute reads available on the web: US President Barack Obama’s open letter to the FCC, twisting their arm to do the right thing and save the Internet from ISP monopoly. For those who haven’t read it, let’s recap and remember how The White House supported (and still supports) the notion of an open Internet, amid wireless carriers’ appeal to the FCC’s June ruling.

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Communication & Collaboration: Arts That Leaders Need to Master

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

I recently stumbled upon some lectures that talk about communication & collaboration in business, explaining its crucial role in leveling the field for executives and floor employees alike, driving successful operations across an entire organization. They were great reads and I want to lay out some bullet points for our readers. If you own a business, listen up!

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IDG: Demand For Collaboration Software Poised to Explode Within The Next Year

A few days ago, data group IDG Enterprise rolled out a lengthy report coupled with an infographic to show the state of UC&C (Unified Communications & Collaboration) today, with an eye on the next 12 months.

The research conducted by the enterprise technology media company revealed that data transformation continues to climb a steep hill, but that the UC&C sector in particular is making an innovative leap. Best of all, “organizations are recognizing the value that sits within these solutions,” according to Brian Glynn, chief revenue officer of IDG Enterprise.

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Dare To Disagree: When Contradiction Gives Birth To True Collaboration [Video]

When we designed Hubgets, we wanted not only to facilitate communication, but also to foster collaboration in all-new ways. We’re still ironing out some bugs, but already our newborn baby enables entire teams to send feedback back and forth, collaborate on projects, aggregate searchable data, and keep their peers in the loop even out of office.

In our awareness spree to make Hubgets known far and wide, we came across a TED talk by Margaret Effernan which speaks of the hidden power of contradiction as a crucial aspect of collaboration.

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Many Americans Still Think ‘The Cloud’ Is A Real Cloud

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

What was your reaction when you first heard of “the cloud?” Personally, I was a bit puzzled by the term: “what do clouds and computers have in common, anyway?” I kept thinking.

According to a study conducted in the United States, nearly a third of Americans are just as baffled by the concept, nearly two decades since we started using the term Specifically, 29% of the population thinks ‘the cloud’ is a real cloud. While I can relate to this demographic on some level, it’s also quite odd that many people still can’t fully grasp the idea of a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet.

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What Were The First Words Ever Spoken On The Telephone?

Photo by Tiko Giorgadze on Unsplash

Have you ever asked yourself who made the first-ever phone call? Or what that conversation was all about? If so, look no further. Here’s how it all went down.

To get one thing out of the way, it was the very person who invented the first practical telephone that also made the first phone call. His name was Alexander Graham Bell, and he was one of the foremost visionaries of his time. A Scottish-born scientist, inventor, and engineer, Bell’s work was profoundly influenced by his mother’s deafness, which led him to study acoustics, and elocution (formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone).

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