Posts in Category: industry

Closures in JavaScript

Vladut, once our intern now a permanent member of our software engineering team, wanted to share his experience on closures in JavaScript in the hope that it would help other developers understand them better. This article is the first in a series dedicated to use cases of various programming problems, concepts, and methods.

Closures are powerful JavaScript tools that many developers tend to ignore. Understanding closures may seem difficult at first, but it’s all about the principles behind them.

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Cloud Set To Massively Transform The Way We Work

The beginning of every year is marked by predictions and attempts at assessing the future. 2016 is no different, and this time we’re taking a close look at how our digital lives will improve in the upcoming years.

An infographic from Raconteur ranks the top 10 drivers leading to digital transformation for businesses, pointing out the factors with the greatest influence on the way we’ll work in the years to come. The global tech forecast anticipates a massive expansion of digital technologies among businesses of all sizes.

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A Match Made in Heaven – Why Call Centers and UC Go Hand in Hand

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Metaphorically speaking, Unified Communications (UC) solution vendors walk around carrying a long list of benefits for service providers who want to offer UC services for SMBs and other organizations (i.e. upgrade their business communication channels). The are many reasons and truth is this crusade against old technology is very justified. Any way you look at it, UC services, especially when hosted in the Cloud, knock the socks off any legacy phone network.

A call center is, in and of itself, a network of phones. Much of UC’s functionality actually originated in call centers. The only difference is that unifying these features enables Service Providers (SP) to take better advantage of resources with the end goal of increasing productivity and improving the customer service. So what better business to target with UC if not contact centers? And although every feature counts, it’s those that touch the customer directly that weigh the most

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Girls Today Are More Interested in STEM Careers Than Boys Are

What did you want to become when you were a child? A doctor? A ballerina? An engineer? An astronaut? As we reach adulthood, few of us land a dream job. But if a recent survey is any indication, the next generation will be filled with scientists and engineers. And we have girls to thank for that.

STEM (previously SMET) is an acronym that refers to the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It’s a pool of careers where you’re likely to find more men than women, but according to data unearthed by Fatherly, things are about to change really soon

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UC&C Is Headed to the Cloud

Photo by Jonathan Simcoe on Unsplash

Success in business depends as much on innovation as it does on adaptability, strategy, marketing, and of course solid investments. The evidence in favor of digital investments as a key driver is overwhelming. In the not too distant future, a company’s communication and collaboration efforts will be inherently reliant on cloud technology. And the reason is simple: everybody’s doing it, and he who doesn’t falls behind in reach, discoverability, customer satisfaction and many other areas that make or break a business.

Fierce competition, but also the always-on nature of cloud solutions, forcefully dictate the need to incorporate technology as a business strategy. Research conducted by IDG Enterprise gives us a bird’s eye view of the direction of spending, areas of investment and drivers, with a focus on the communication tools employed (or soon-to-be-employed) at large companies

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Research Shows How Our Computer Mice Are Betraying Our Feelings

Photo by Alberto Tolentino on Unsplash

A friendly interface goes a long way, but building software with the entire User Experience (UX) in mind helps achieve a more straightforward path to the ultimate goal of usability. Researchers at Brigham Young University want to open a new chapter in UX by determining exactly what people are feeling when they are sitting in front of their computers – all through mouse movement interpretation.

The research, Inferring Negative Emotion from Mouse Cursor Movements, reveals how “attention control theory” can leverage our trusty point-and-click devices as real-time indicators of negative emotions. When people experience anger or frustration

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UC Mobility – An Opportunity to Tap Today

Photo by Cara Fuller on Unsplash

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

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

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

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

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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