Today, we’re featuring a guest post from Eric Schoch, senior director for hosted collaboration  in Cisco’s Collaboration organization. Eric is responsible for hosted and “as a service” solutions, strategic pricing and licensing, and business development.

There is simply no denying the increasing importance of being connected. Generation Y in particular, who grew up with mobile devices affixed almost permanently to their hands, views connectivity as one of life’s fundamental resources.

The newest addition to the workforce considers their mobile devices as an essential workplace tool to managing their workload and connecting with their colleagues on the go. While sitting in a meeting or having lunch in the break room, you can almost visualize the text bubbles hovering over crowds of this generation of workers as fingers hammer away at phones and tablets, eyes glued to the shiny screens in their hands. BYOD

But this trend goes far beyond lunch hours and happy hours. As proven by Chapter Two of the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report, the next-generation workforce is demanding flexibility in their choice of devices in both the workplace and remote-work options, illustrating the importance of the Internet in workforce culture. Social media freedom, device flexibility, and work mobility, in the case of 30% of the study’s respondents, are more important when accepting a job than a higher salary.

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Tags: byod, Cisco, Cisco Connected World Technology Report, cloud, collaboration, collaboration summit, college, facebook, hosted collaboration, HR, millennials, mobility, newspapers, routing, security, survey, switching, tablet, twitter, unified communications, wireless, workforce, workspace

Enterprise video is experiencing tremendous change in terms of adoption, traffic growth, business model evolution, and technology innovation.

We recently undertook an extensive study to uncover key insights about the use of business video in U.S. enterprises. The survey is part of the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group’s Horizons program, which combines multimodal research and analysis to identify business transformation opportunities fueled by technology innovation.

Since the purpose of this study was to understand how the use of video is evolving in the enterprise, we chose to seek insight from executives at enterprises with at least 1,000 employees, from across the United States.  For this study, we recruited more than 450 enterprises from more than 20 industries across the United States, including both Cisco customers and non-Cisco customers.

Because we wanted to understand both end-user and IT perspectives on business video, participants included both business executives (i.e., from non-IT functions such as sales, marketing, finance, and engineering), and IT executives.

Our research uncovered several key findings:

#1: Business Video is already widespread throughout the enterprise.

• We discovered that business video is already well entrenched in the enterprise. More than three out of four business executives said they use either one-way video or two-way video—or both—at least once a week.
• This trend is growing: more than 70 percent of respondents said they will increase their use of business video in the next two years.

#2: A majority of executives are active in both recording videos and viewing employee-created videos, and they plan to do more of both.

• More than 70 percent of corporate executives expect their use of one-way and two-way video to grow over the next two years. Currently, 34 percent of business executives record business videos on a daily basis, and 62 percent of business executives watch employee-created videos at least once a week. Read More »

Tags: business video, Cisco IBSG, collaboration, enterprise video, Horizons, mobile computing, mobility, network, research, study, survey, video

If you manage social media engagement for your company or group, you have probably received questions about the role of social in IT purchasing decisions and/or have been asked to prove that IT managers do engage in social media. You’ve probably also been asked to tie social activities directly to new leads and revenues. While it is possible to trace new leads and revenues back to social media, not every social activity you do may have a direct impact on revenues. And it may not always be your goal either. But social media does have a place in your relationship toolbox and in the IT buying cycle which can directly or indirectly impact your bottom line.

According to a global survey by Toolbox.com (an online IT community) on IT Purchasing, social media has a growing impact on how IT professionals make decisions. Did you know that the #1 reason IT professionals contribute Read More »

Tags: IT, IT managers, research, survey

There are many blogs and opinions floating around regarding the Google+ versus Facebook debate and by no means do I want to offer my own analysis here. Other people – much smarter than me – said it all. I’m sure you’ve also seen the infographics showing the explosion in Google+ account registrations. But, are people really using this site or did they just open an account?  

For this post, I want to do something different. I would love to hear from you…ABOUT YOU. A few days ago, I tweeted a question and asked some of my fellow practitioners about  Read More »

Tags: facebook, Google, research, social media, survey

As NRF wrapped up it’ s 100^th annual convention in New York City, there was a lot of talk around the topic of how to “save the retail store.” Accelerating use of technology by consumers is shaping their behavior and expectations in store.  These changes, in turn, are challenging the sales and margins of retailers.

To determine how retailers can embrace this “technology-shaped shoppers,” the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) surveyed 1,000 shoppers from the United States and United Kingdom. It found that consumers want a new way to shop.  This new shopping experience is called “mashops.” It combines web-like experiences with the shopping experience in stores, creating a “Mash up” of the physical and virtual worlds.

In addition, the research also revealed that retailers should pay attention to two key customer segments: calculating shoppers (56 percent of the general population) and extreme shoppers (11 percent of the general population, with a high representation from Generation Y). And while extreme shoppers receive the most attention, calculating shoppers have the greatest impact on retailers’ revenues and margins.

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Tags: IBSG, mashops, NRF, retail, survey