« December 2007 | Main | February 2008 »

January 23, 2008

Business Technology Trends For 2008

Post by Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, Webex
Executives looking for some prescriptive recommendations on business ideas for 2008 should look at Eight Business Technology Trends to Watch (registration required) from McKinsey Quarterly. These aren't '08 specific, each idea includes examples of how it has been put into practice by innovators, in some cases for several years. Actually the title doesn't do the the topic justice -- my recommendation: no watching, just doing.

The authors tackle co-creation with the first two topics, and even that might not give the topic it's due. Often times co-creation involves clearing a significant hurdle, "not invented here" syndrome. The authors point out the significant downside of loss of control of innovation and intellectual property, but developing that intellectual property costs time and money. Sometimes making use of another organization's expertise makes for a winning go to market strategy.

Another downside the authors noted, competing for the attention of the best and brightest contributors, isn't just a problem when working with partners. That can strike internal projects as well, particularly at large organizations. That problem also falls into the "two-way street" category, partners aren't the only ones that get distracted by other projects.

Posted by Cisco PR at 11:21 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 16, 2008

Reducing Human Latency in the Human Network

Part 2 of 2

In my prior Collaboration blog entry, I reflected on the shift to rich media – how it enriches Unified Communications (UC) and heralds a shift back to more natural forms of interactions among people. Today I am thinking about undiscovered territory: cross-company, secure and flexible forms of communication, which, we believe, will unlock a new wave of productivity gains through reduction of “human latency.”

In looking at most UC productivity systems, traditionally the focus has been on intra-company communications. In the flat world, however, competitive advantage is created not only in how companies work inside, but how well they work outside – with customers, partners, suppliers, and, even competitors. In the world where command and control over one’s business is giving way to various forms of collaboration – albeit some that are only sustained for a few transactions – it is essential to look at the workforce and the workspace differently. Indeed we are caught between two paradigms:

• Traditional messaging and voice systems are not designed for inter-company ucommunications. There are a host of inhibitors in the way, including lack of adherence to standards or more significantly, security limitations
• Emerging Web 2.0 Collaboration technologies such as Facebook or video technologies are compelling, but cannot provide the compliance, auditing and security requirements that business requires?

This leaves innovative, fast-moving businesses caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of flexibility with security when trying to accelerate integration and collaboration outside of the enterprise.

The next frontier for UC is providing for a context-aware approach to entitlement and security that allows companies to collaborate across various borders in real-time. New policy capabilities that are provided by our Securent acquisition provide scalable, distributed policy platform that allow enterprises to administer, enforce, and audit access to data, communications, and applications in heterogeneous IT application environments. Said simpler, policy capabilities now can make inter-company communications safe, granular and fluid.

Traditional identity access management solutions have succeeded at the perimeter level (i.e., authenticating "who" is allowed inside) but once someone has been granted general access organizations do not have effective tools with which to manage access at the application level for fine-grained security controls (“what” is allowed). These fine-grained security policies must then be dealt with on a per-application basis. Think about it as a series of doors, each of which must be opened one at time. If one key is lost, transit is blocked.

Practical applications of this concept…situations in an investment bank, where stock analysts can instant message with each other but are prevented from doing so with stock brokers. And, an audit trail is created. Or, M&A teams from two companies, discretely working on a merger.

Now we have the ability to further dissolve the barriers and delays of cross-company, even cross-border and communications and information flows. By being able to embed policy by user, application, and role – to name a few approaches – we can unlock even greater productivity for business and support the increasing regulation and compliance requirements of the information economy. It’s now about asking the question, ‘What new things could I do if I could do them securely?’

The old adage goes, “time is money,” thus delay builds cost - an ancient paradigm made new by security issues of the Web 2.0 world. Perhaps Hamlet would have survived, had not the most procrastinator in literature spent nearly the entire play crippled by delay:

“For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.”

Posted by Alan Cohen at 11:19 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 14, 2008

Mac’s Coming to an Enterprise Near You

Post by M. Michael Acosta, Manager, Engineering

Mac users everywhere are eagerly anticipating the upcoming Macworld Expo. As a prelude, this week Macworld.com published their set of predictions for 2008. One prediction in particular resonated with what I’m seeing at some of our customers and within Cisco. MacWorld senior editor Dan Frakes wrote:

"A new Mac market: The debut of Leopard, along with a general dissatisfaction with Windows Vista, will open doors for the Mac in the enterprise market. In fact, we’ll see a few major U.S. companies switch to the Mac platform—some gradually, but at least a couple in a major public migration. We’ll also see a resurgence of the Mac platform in higher education."

Just a few years ago within Cisco, Macs were conspicuous mostly in their absence. Today, it is not unusual to find an increasing number of Apple logos across from me in meetings. For the first time in quite a while, Macs are again an orderable laptop option for Cisco employees.

Given this, it should come as no surprise that Cisco has invested significantly in supporting the Mac in the enterprise with our products. Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, our next-generation unified communications client, was developed in parallel on both Mac and Windows. It is a fully native Mac application with a user-interface developed specifically for the platform. By the time Steve Jobs takes that stage to introduce the next insanely great Apple product, news of the release of the latest version of Personal Communicator should have hit the wires bringing full localization on both platforms and support for Leopard.

Cisco also offers SSL and IPSec VPN clients for the Mac OS, as well as our MeetingPlace and WebEx web conferencing solutions. And, much to the delight of Cisco’s own Mac users, Apple has also made support for EAP-FAST a native part of OS X.

These successes are valuable to Apple as a way to reinforce the use of Macs in the enterprise, but they also help Cisco by tangibly validating our cross-platform philosophy. Even if a customer has no Macs today, or the Macs are currently only in the “creative” department, it looks like there’s an increasing chance that Mac use will grow in the future. Just the possibility means that Mac support is more likely to be an important part of our customer’s needs. Much more broadly, it is in all our interests to encourage innovative and exciting devices and applications. Healthy competition is great for that.

I look forward to enabling all users to communicate as richly and naturally as face-to-face – regardless of their choice of operating system, device, or platform.

Posted by Cisco PR at 12:40 PM Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

January 10, 2008

Resolve to Help Your Co-workers Stay Organized in 2008

Post by Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx

Most businesses have wrapped up setting 2008 business goals and the methods and plans necessary to achieve those goals. For those that will spend the last couple weeks of the year wrapping up expenses and planning purchases, this time of year can also provide an opportunity to think about new work habits that will help reach those goals.

Last year Butler Group authored a study on worker time spent searching for information. Per this Network World article about the study, Butler Group found the cost of searching for information in lost productivity to be equivalent to 10% of a worker's salary. So reflecting on the day-to-day reality of 2007 can help identify and put in perspective where workers burn more cycles than they need to, including time spent searching in email for files coworkers sent.

Most people would find a good deal of that wasted time could be recovered if they had good tools at hand to help to stay on the same page. But even organizational tools that allow teams to share documents, such as WebOffice, aren't enough. Workers need the will as well as the way, and that's the second part of a resolution to be more organized in 2008. Managers and team members need to work together to stay organized.

With one of the teams I contribute to, when any of the team members author content for a project, we store it on our WebOffice. When I report my weekly accomplishments to that team's manager, I have to include links to the documents I've created. If I don't include the link, I can't claim credit.

This requirement reinforces the habit of putting knowledge in a central, easily accessible place accompanied with a good description of the document. It doesn't seem onerous knowing that coworkers can easily access the information and won't spend time on fruitless searches or recreating the content. The team actually polices itself, when contributors send an email that includes content worth sharing, other team members ask the sender to post it online.

The real value is in knowing that when everyone contributes in this effort, it ultimately saves you time. So the next time someone emails around a file for everyone to look at, have that person post it in a shared place and send the link instead. Then it is up to you to start thinking the first place to look is the shared resource, and not your inbox.

Posted by Cisco PR at 12:20 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

January 07, 2008

Is Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) part of your Unified Communications strategy?

Post by Priten Gandecha, Solutions Marketing Manager for Cisco Unified Communications

Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) brings together wired and wireless technologies in The Workspace. For industry constituents who are enthusiastic about FMC technologies and its promise, it stirs up a great deal of excitement and is a topic of spirited debates amongst advocates of different FMC technology approaches.

Customers interested in the promise of FMC have the opportunity to evaluate multiple options and choose a strategy best suited for their current and future business needs. A European Fixed Mobile Convergence survey conducted by Yankee Group found that customers have not shown dominant procurement preference amongst various FMC infrastructure or hardware vendors, application or independent software vendors, mobile carriers, fixed carriers, device vendors, or system integrators.

One possible explanation could be that the “one size fits all” approach does not fit everyone and building a FMC strategy on one technology component is potentially incomplete. A comprehensive FMC strategy requires coherent evaluation of multiple wireless and wired workspaces.

However, developing a comprehensive FMC strategy may be daunting and overwhelming for some. Which business applications (customer relationship management, employee resource planning, custom industry applications, business intelligence, desktop productivity, or unified communications) should be mobilized first to have the greatest top and bottom line business impact? Which FMC approach provides greatest flexibility to seamlessly transition between the wired and wireless networks most commonly used by different worker types in a business? Which approach to FMC provides workers with the flexibility to continue working with preferred mobile devices or the operating systems suited for their job function or region?

For many businesses, mobilizing unified communications (UC) applications first has the potential to make the highest positive business impact. Unlike previously mentioned applications that may be used by one or a handful of functional groups, everyone in a business can benefit from UC applications. For businesses primarily made up of “road-warriors”, teleworkers, and mobile professionals, the integrated presence, messaging, and conferencing capabilities found on UC applications for mobile phones and laptops would enable more streamlined and collaborative communications. Similarly, mobile workers in retail, manufacturing, or healthcare organizatio, for example, would be more reachable and productive with simultaneous ringing and consolidated voicemail boxes between wired phones scattered in their workspace and rugged mobile devices used on the go.

Additionally, a network-centric approach to UC enables businesses to anchor communications in the corporate network while simultaneously connecting workers -- independent of wired or wireless networks. This approach also gives businesses the flexibility to support their choice of mobile devices and operating systems in order to meet functional or regional requirements.

Are you considering FMC as part of your network-centric UC strategy? If your business is in the process of developing an FMC strategy and you already have UC applications (or will soon be implementing them) consider mobilizing UC applications first to maximize business top and bottom line impact.

Posted by Cisco PR at 02:51 PM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)