Posts Tagged Under: uc&c

Why ‘Agile’ Is the Perfect Recipe for Business

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87% of companies in a poll by BCS The Charted Institute for IT report that the ability to manage changing priorities was among the biggest benefits of jumping wholeheartedly into an agile business model, one that factors in technology and a flexible, modern culture to stay on top of the trends, give competitors a run for their money, and ultimately achieve a healthy bottom line.

Contrary to popular belief, in-person meetings aren’t all that useless (as long as the purpose of the meeting isn’t meeting itself). Data aggregated by Raconteur indicates that 80% of agility adopters have a daily stand-up meeting. This get-together makes communication go full-circle in a collaborative culture, as studies have shown that ‘digital’ cannot and should not replace the spoken word

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Security No Longer the ‘Top Worry’ in Cloud Computing

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Chief Technology Officers (CTO) and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in today’s competitive landscape are often faced with making the tough decision to move operations (partially or entirely) to the cloud. This means letting go of legacy infrastructures – such as on-premises PBX phone systems – and embracing the versatility of Internet-based solutions.

For most of its existence, the cloud – particularly business-oriented cloud solutions – has been plagued by one major concern: security. It’s understandable. Keeping your data locked in a room on your site offers a sense of control. But it’s no safer than in a data center managed by experts who make it their business to secure the data. Data centers are a solid investment today, and executives are beginning to wake up and smell the roses.

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UCaaS Beats Perpetual Licensing Any Day Of The Week

Cloud-reliant software and services have enabled a paradigm shift for developers and service providers alike. Once based on the buy-once-use-forever concept, the acquisition of software and services has gravitated towards a licensing business model that has proved to be far more lucrative for every party involved, from the people who code the solution to the end users.

A recent report by Nemertes Research indicates that Unified Communications (UC) solutions, or Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), are selling much better as subscription bundles, as opposed to perpetual licensing which involves a large upfront investment. And it’s hardly a surprise.

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

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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

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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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Communication & Collaboration: Arts That Leaders Need to Master

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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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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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How To Get Your End-Users To Hop Aboard The UC Bandwagon

Planning to sell Unified Communications (UC) to your end users? Don’t expect them to get too excited right away. Moving them from traditional voice systems to the world of IP may be exciting for you, but the basic components of voice gateways, core processing servers, and IP phones do not, in and of themselves, offer value to your employees. So, what’s the key to revving up your employees and ensuring optimal buy-in?

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Technology To The Rescue! Inefficient Collaboration Can (and Will) Endanger Your Business

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Lately, everybody speaks about how you can increase productivity with better collaboration. Let’s think about how we are used to work together: in-person meetings, one-on-one discussions, phone calls that never end etc. Remember those days when, if you stepped away from your desk phone for just a few minutes, you had every chance to miss a business opportunity, or play phone tag for the remainder of the day?! Well, not anymore.

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