Screen to screen salesman: Utilizing video conferencing to improve enterprise efficiency

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For years, salespeople had to travel all across the country to create new contacts and grow business – a time consuming and expensive undertaking. With the advent of the Internet, this endless travel was dramatically reduced. But meetings with clients and vendors are still necessary and some things are better discussed face-to-face. Luckily, enterprises can now take advantage of video conferencing to schedule meetings with anyone in any place.

The ability to conference enables organizations to have face-to-face meetings with clients without physically having to be together, providing the necessary personal touch while dramatically reducing the cost of travel. Video conferencing also provides operational efficiencies within an enterprise as well. Remote workers and employees located in different offices can all come together easily through the use of video conferencing and company-wide meetings can be offered through an existing unified communications platform to provide a streamlined user experience.

Video conferencing offers organizations the ability to rapidly communicate with necessary parties. In the current fast-paced business environment, sometimes even just a few minutes can give a company a competitive advantage. If one organization can communicate important information to their team quicker than another, the fast enterprise will come out on top.

Utilizing video conferencing not only increases the speed of business communication, it also improves the efficiency and effectiveness of those messages. Emails can often be misinterpreted and take additional, unnecessary steps to arrive at a conclusion. Video conferencing provides the straightforward aspects of a phone call with the visual capabilities of an email to create a clear and streamlined communication tool.

Through the use of other modern UC features that utilize desktop virtualization, like screen sharing, video conferencing can become a completely interactive resource that increases the productivity, collaboration and innovation of a company.

Winter is coming – Time to think about disaster recovery

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As the weather begins to turn colder and the snow and ice of winter starts to creep closer, it’s important for enterprises to think about their disaster recovery solutions before severe weather and downed power lines cause serious network outages. Last year’s polar vortex brought with it record snowfalls and massive disruptions, leaving people without power for days at a time. Modern businesses can’t afford to be offline for even a few hours, let alone days. This is where a cloud disaster recovery solution comes in. By hosting duplicate information in the cloud, organizations can still make the necessary networks and systems available even if their primary facility is experiencing downtime. Cloud-based disaster recovery solutions are useful to companies of all sizes, and capacity can easily be scaled up or down to meet an organization’s changing needs.

There are a variety of cloud-based technologies that can assist businesses in their disaster recovery operations. Cloud storage services have made great advances in recent years, allowing enterprises to duplicate sensitive data, control multitenancy operations and improve the speed of site-to-site replication. Virtualization is also a helpful tool for companies looking to enhance a disaster recovery solution. Through the use of virtualization, organizations are able to share, replicate and back up sensitive data, which can span global data centers if necessary.

Utilizing third-party DR services
Disaster recovery-as-a-service is another option available to companies, in which a cloud service provider will maintain and operate an enterprise DR solution. This option, along with other types of cloud-based disaster recovery services, is extremely cost-effective. Instead of organizations having to invest heavily in hardware and maintenance of a private data center, information is stored in the cloud and maintained by a third-party provider. Hosting disaster recovery operations in the cloud also enables enterprises to frequently test their backup systems without disrupting regular business processes, ensuring backup operations will work properly when they are needed.

Despite the increasing use of cloud services among enterprise clients, some organizations still have concerns about information security in the cloud. However, the cloud is actually one of the safer places a company could store its data. Cloud service providers treat security as one of their core competencies, and are tasked solely with maintaining and securing the data they host. Any organization that keeps its information in house will not be as prepared to defend against a cyberattack as a provider that has data protection as a main focus.

Employees looking for social media within enterprise UC

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As employees become increasingly tech-savvy and begin to use a growing number of online applications and services to communicate on their own time, many workers are becoming more interested in integrating these tools into their organizations’ unified communications strategies.

According to a recently-released report by Source for Consulting, a majority of employees in the U.K. support integrating social media with back-office solutions in order to improve their work environments. The study, conducted in partnership with Advanced Business Solutions, surveyed finance, IT and HR staff from 160 mid-market firms in the U.K. Nearly 80 percent of employees from those organizations believe social media adoption will improve productivity, increase collaboration between employees and enhance supplier engagement.

The study found that 86 percent of organizations used social media for external purposes like marketing and client feedback, but only 17 percent used the technology for internal communication. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed felt their companies should be more concerned with internal collaboration.

“Although social media is widely used for sales, marketing and client services, it is not as well established as a means of optimizing productivity by improving employee collaboration,” said ABS managing director Simon Fowler in an interview with ITProPortal. “People are an organization’s most valuable asset and social technologies enable them to collaborate and share their knowledge quickly and easily from wherever they are working. This technology is ideal for bringing disparate teams closer together, enabling them to share their expertise and build on their combined knowledge.”

According to the report, implementing internal social media networks can help to increase productivity by reducing other time-consuming forms of communication. For example, 69 percent of participants reported social networks helping to cut down on unnecessary email.

Enterprise social media offers improved engagement
While just 13 percent of respondents said their organizations used social media solutions to engage suppliers, more than half felt their firms should be doing so in order to detect and leverage mutually beneficial opportunities and stay on top of potential supply chain issues.

Only 21 percent of organizations surveyed reported using social media for recruitment purposes, but this number will likely grow as companies realize the benefits of reaching out to a wider audience. Utilizing enterprise social media can be advantageous for groups interested in growing their staffs, as potential employees can be provided with specialized online recruitment solutions to manage their applications and engage more directly with the company.

Is your BYOD policy ready for the wearables boom?

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While its only the beginning of November, Christmas is in full swing for retailers, and this year's hottest gifts are wearable devices. More money is expected to be spent on wearable technology like the Fitbit and the Apple Watch this holiday season than in any previous year. New research by Samsung, which itself is about to debut a new smartwatch, projects spending on such devices will increase 182 percent this year compared to 2013.

Tech giants like Google are increasingly creating standalone wearable products as opposed to those made as accessories for smartphones, driving the popularity of the devices. The Samsung study found that fitness and activity tracking technology will be the most popular this year, as users further appreciate the health benefits of the devices. According to the report, almost $1.5 billion will be spent on activity monitors and smartwatches by the end of 2014.

"The wearables market has exploded over the past 12 to 18 months with some incredibly exciting and innovative products entering the market," said Samsung U.K. and Ireland president Andy Griffith. "As the benefits wearable technology can offer become better understood, it is natural that the sales within this sector will grow and we are delighted to see predictions of 121 percent growth and sales reaching €395 million ($495 million) in the U.K. alone by the end of this year."

As wearables take hold, data safety at risk 
London's Imperial College Business School and communications firm Zeno also conducted research into the area, which revealed that consumers are increasingly willing to put their fears about data privacy aside in order to access better features and benefits from their wearable technology. Half of respondents said they would be willing to share personal information in exchange for a reward. The study also discovered that 6 million people in the U.K. will own a wearable device by September 2015, despite the fact that 55 percent of those surveyed reported not wanting third-parties to be able to collect information gathered by their devices.

As wearable devices continue to grow in popularity, workers will be increasingly interested in using these products at work in the same way they do at home. Enterprises will need to begin incorporating wearables like smartwatches into their BYOD policies in order to protect company networks from their employees' lack of safety precautions.

Data center downtime can cost companies millions

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As computing power and information storage grow increasingly necessary for businesses, data centers will become even more important in the coming years. The use of cloud computing and virtualization has caused a rise in data center use, but has also created new challenges that can cause downtime to occur, which can be disastrous for enterprises.

According to a data center industry study, each month, one-third of websites experience downtime and 90 percent of organizations have experienced an unexpected loss of access to their critical systems, CloudTweaks reported. Modern businesses are highly reliant on connectivity, making outages a costly occurrence for organizations that are unprepared to mitigate the effects. The report found that the average North American website outage lasts nearly eight hours, while European outages last an average of 10.3 hours, meaning an entire day’s business can be lost simply due to downtime.

Security, revenue lost due to downtime
Productivity also decreases when downtime effects enterprise systems, dropping between 33 and 43 percent depending on the size of the company. According to the report, employees often resort to the use of USB drives and other commercial storage devices, putting organizations at risk for malware and infection and the possibility of lost files. Almost two-thirds of employees surveyed in the study reported utilized such storage solutions, greatly increasing the threat environment for their firms.

Perhaps the most costly part of experiencing downtime is loss of revenue. According to the report, one in six enterprises lose $1 million for each hour of downtime that takes place. In order to offset the effects of downtime and system outages, organizations must implement data center  monitoring and visibility in order to determine threat vulnerabilities, understand the user experience and maximize data center performance. Implementing these systems also serve to lower the total cost of managing a data center, as processes can be automated and the disruptions associated with downtime are eliminated.

Organizations looking to implement more reliable and consistent data center services, ISG offers a network of Midwest regional data centers with the ability to support the business and performance objectives of each client. ISG is a single-source supplier of essential enterprise cloud-computing equipment, putting them in a better position than any other provider to offer organizations continuous, harmonious operations while also enabling firms to experience the most possible benefits from their data center infrastructure.

Schools increase student engagement, understanding with video conferencing

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With the increasing abundance of technology available to schools, classrooms are beginning to implement video conferencing to improve student engagement and enhance curriculum. Schools take advantage of video conferencing to expose students to people and places they may never have been able to see otherwise. Graphics and videos can be easily integrated into lectures to allow for a more comprehensive lesson that helps kids absorb material better. Related technology, like desktop virtualization, allows guest lecturers to share information on students’ computers or tablets to enhance the lesson.

“Children need to have an emotional connection with what they’re learning in order to commit that to long term memory and when you’re learning out of a textbook, that emotional connection isn’t there,” explained teacher Michael Soskil in an interview with New York News 1. “Using technology in this transformative way allows kids to be inspired and it allows that deep learning to take place.”

Improving the classroom experience
A common use of educational video conferencing is to connect students with experts who can give better context to the material being covered in class. Allowing students to directly communicate with someone with special knowledge of a subject can help to create a connection between what’s being taught and how it’s relevant in the real world. This connection helps material to be better absorbed by students and increases the overall value of the lesson.

“Studies show that when students see the connection between what they are learning and its real-world use case, their motivation soars, and so does their learning,” explained a spokesperson for Blue Jean Networks, an educational video conferencing service. “One of the best, and most popular, ways to make that connection is by introducing subject matter experts into education.”

One of the most beneficial uses of video conferencing in classrooms is the ability to offer rural schools access to courses and teachers they may not have otherwise been able to have. Schools with limited resources or in rural locations may not be able to hire teachers knowledgeable in all of the subjects they want to teach, but by implementing video conferencing, students can have access to almost any course they are interested in.

Video conferencing also allows students in classrooms from around the world to connect with one another. This global connection offers students the chance to exchange educational and cultural views, which gives them the chance to see things from a different perspective and create new ideas. Virtual field trips are also made possible by utilizing video conferencing. Just as students can connect with other classrooms overseas, foreign locations can also be visited. Teachers can show their classes historic landmarks and important cultural locations, all by a video conference connection.

IT pros encourage desktop virtualization for improved mobility

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A recently released Forrester report has found that 63 percent of IT professionals believe competitive advantage can be improved by companies increasing focus on employee mobility. Those surveyed suggested it could help employees respond quicker to client needs and provide more effective service. When asked how to improve employee mobility, more than half of the respondents said organizations should implement desktop virtualization within the organization.

As the consumerization of IT gains strength, employees have more opportunities than ever to choose their own applications, devices and even operating systems.

“The consumerization of IT has enabled workers the freedom to choose their own devices,” says Paul Parke, vice president of product and corporate marketing at 1E, a specialist in IT operations management tools and solutions. “IT needs to become more user-centric in order to embrace users that really have gotten rather indifferent to the services and technology provided by IT.”

Because of this, a rising number of organizations are enabling their workers to participate in bring your own device, or even bring your own PC, programs. As this trend grows, desktop virtualization is gaining new adherents.

Improve BYOD, remote workers with virtualization‘s mobility
Virtualization provides employees with mobility as well as seamless access to their office desktop, which allows businesses to adopt BYOD programs while still ensuring data security. Through the use of virtualization, a desktop can be manifested on any endpoint while reducing operational costs and the complexity of managing traditional desktop hardware.

Among the respondents of the Forrester survey, local desktop virtualization, or client-hosted virtualization, seemed to be the most popular option. When using local desktop virtualization, an entire desktop environment is hosted within a protected system on an employee’s device, allowing programs to operate without relying on a high-performance network. Utilizing this type of virtualization enables workers to run business applications from an existing operating system, providing them with the flexibility to work anywhere while still offering a secure way to access sensitive data and personal files.

“IT can fully manage and secure the data and applications using the same policies that govern physical devices, making it easier to manage and support frequently traveling employees or those who work offline,” explained CIO contributor Thor Olavsrud.

Businesses are also able to be more agile when hiring new employees by utilizing virtual desktops, as new hires can be added to networks with just the click of a button, reducing the hassle of creating a new environment. New applications can also be provided to all employees with the same ease as they are part of a centralized management interface.

As well as offering greater mobility and agility, virtual desktops also provide cost-effective disaster recovery solutions that can be employed quickly and easily. Implementing this type of technology gives companies built-in resiliency at every level of the enterprise and ensures that business-critical systems and data are protected and will keep working if a data center is compromised.

Department of Defense pursues cloud storage options for classified documents

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The Department of Defense has announced its intention to store sensitive documents in the cloud, and is in the process of vetting service providers interested in supporting the agency's platform. The DoD currently utilizes cloud services to store low-level documents, but this marks the first time cloud storage has been proposed for highly classified files. The information suggested for storage in the cloud is labeled Level 6, which is assessed as information that could put people in grave danger.

To address security fears, the agency is pursuing two methods of keeping documents protected. The first involves the DoD leasing floor space to vendors who would then install an on-site system. The second would see cloud providers send the agency server equipment that the DoD would set up and manage. The latter method calls for a cloud vendor to create a bespoke data center within a standard shipping container. The container would be outfitted with all the necessary equipment and then sent to the DoD, where it would be installed and provided with power and cooling capabilities.

Whichever method the agency follows through with, it will involve creating a physical connection to a government data server instead of sending encrypted documents over the Internet. While the DoD is employing a private cloud solution and is suggesting some unusual methods, the proposal to store highly sensitive federal documents in the cloud points to a change in view on the security of cloud computing.

The agency has clearly embraced the technology as not only efficient and convenient, but also safe and secure. By utilizing a cloud-based storage service, the DoD will be able to reduce costs dramatically. Everything will be kept in a central location and physical documents can be removed, saving valuable building space and lower the amount of money spent on paper and ink.

African economies experience boost from free Wi-Fi initiatives

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Internet users in Africa are experiencing a new drive by service providers to increase the availability of free Wi-Fi access across the continent in an effort to grow economic activity and improve education.

Countries all over the continent are benefiting from the trend. Rwanda's Smart Kigali initiative is creating free Wi-Fi hotspots around the capital to provide residents and visitors with more information. The Kenyan county of Nakuru, through a partnership with the State House digital team and county government, is offering residents free access. Enterprises are also able to take advantage of Nakuru's program in order to conduct business, according to State House director of digital media Dennis Itumbi, and students can use it to easily study and complete assignments from anywhere.

Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, provides visitors to its airport with free Wi-Fi access through a public-private partnership. Because of the level of Internet service at Lagos' Murtala Muhammad Airport Two, it is the only airport in Africa with the ability to display real-time arrivals and departures online, according to Steve Omolale-Ajulo, spokesman for Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited.

While projects in other areas are growing, South Africa has the largest free Wi-Fi program in the region, with both the public and private sectors in the country launching initiatives to provide hotspots. In fact, there are now so many access points in South Africa that a website was created to provide users with a way to find the spot closest to them.

Greater access to Wi-Fi offers increased opportunities
Alan Knott-Craig Jr., whose non-profit Project Isizwe has Wi-Fi deployments in three South African municipalities service 1.5 million people, says the reason countries across Africa are rolling out these programs is clear.

"The World Bank says that for every 10 percent of broadband penetration a country's GDP grows by 1.28 percent,"said Knott-Craig in an interview with The Next Web. "More tangibly, free Wi-Fi in townships allows the unemployed to look for jobs online and email CVs. Education is obviously the other major benefit of free Wi-Fi, as kids and older students can study online, download textbooks, and generally access information about the world."

Global management consulting firm McKinsey and Company has projected that increased Internet penetration in the region could contribute up to $300 billion to the economy by 2025 if the market grows in a similar fashion as mobile phones did.

California breach report highlights need for secure data storage

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The California attorney general, Kamala D. Harris, recently released a study revealing the state’s current cyberthreat landscape.

According to the investigation, 167 data breaches were reported in California last year, jumping 28 percent from 2012. Those breaches exposed the information of more than 18.5 million residents, significantly more than the 2.5 million compromised in 2012.

The retail industry appears to have borne the brunt of the damage last year. Breaches targeting retail companies affected 84 percent of the total records compromised in 2013. The financial services sector came in a distant second, accounting for 20 percent of total breaches.

Theft of payment card and Social Security information also increased this year, resulting in financial losses for victims. While the report did not provide exact numbers on how much California residents have lost or what number have experienced fraud as a result of a breach, it did cite a Javelin Strategy and Research study that estimates more than one-third of breach victims will suffer financial fraud as a result.

In an interview with The New York Times, Harris said that 2014 is shaping up to be even worse for client data than last year, as breaches have already increased 30 percent in the first 10 months.

“We are increasingly adopting technology that is putting our data in systems that are ripe for penetration,”said Harris. “We have not sufficiently inoculated ourselves. The bad guys have figured out where the vulnerabilities are and learned there is much to be profited and gained from exploiting them.”

Organizations looking to protect sensitive personal information stored on their servers can implement cloud storage services to keep privileged data secure and private. Records kept within a cloud environment can be easily encrypted and kept off enterprise networks, increasing security and reducing the risk of hackers discovering sensitive data during a breach of a company system. Cloud services also provide organizations with enhanced business continuity, as records kept in the cloud are safe in case of a disaster or network outage.