Have Your Cake And Eat It Too With UC

May 9, 2013
Sander Biehn

The dizzying pace of today's business world holds the promise of propelling ideas into concrete reality in shorter cycles than ever. Real-time communications is the mother of lightning fast innovation, and innovation is heavily prized by geographically dispersed enterprise businesses.  Allow me to illustrate....

Get The Most From Your IT Dollars

Allyson Fralish

Many small business owners know how critical technology is to their success. Recent research shows that those who embrace it grow their companies faster, but keeping up with the latest tools can be a challenge. As you maneuver your company through the still-turbulent economy, how can you get the most from your IT...

Building A Case For Real-Time Collaboration

April 30, 2013
Cara Knight

Today, collaboration means more than sending emails or leaving voice messages for co-workers, putting decisions and projects on hold while you wait for their replies. Now, tools like audio, video, and web conferences are enabling real-time interactions between employees, partners, suppliers, and even customers....

Don’t Be Blindfolded In Business Meetings

April 12, 2013
Lisanne Powers

Grasping a big idea without a visual aid is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. It’s extremely difficult (unless you’re a master magician, of course). At work, it’s a task that can put you in a really tough spot—one that we like to call the blindfold bind....

Trend Alert: Passing Notes During Business Calls

April 5, 2013
Lisanne Powers

Have you ever been in a conference call and wanted to say something discreetly—like “you need to mute your microphone,” or “be sure not to share that that email,” and an opportunity to privately communicate a message is nowhere to be found?...

Stock Market Highs Make This A Good Time To Invest In UC

March 22, 2013
Robert Lamb

Our AT&T consultants are seeing a growing trend of companies interpreting the recent stock market surge as a sign to focus on customer acquisition and thereby a call to upgrade their contact center technology.  With most contact centers still on obsolete TDM transport and antiquated integration technology, now is an opportune time for many companies to take advantage of the efficiency and customer experience enhancements that today’s...

5 Keys To Innovation Your Business Needs To Succeed

March 20, 2013
Norbert Sluzewski

Most organizations recognize the importance of innovation in advancing their competitive position or improving their business processes. However, many may not recognize that successful innovation is built on a framework of component functions, each of which is critical to the overall efficacy of the program. These functions, known as innovation framework components, individually define specific characteristics of the program and...

Can Your VPN Perform These 3 Tricks?

March 19, 2013
Sander Biehn

Yahoo sure has been in the headlines lately. The interesting part of the story for me has been the spotlight on extracting worker productivity from the VPN logs. For a great synopsis and commentary, check out InfoWorld's blog by Ted Samson. Ted makes some great points about the dangers of using a single set of analytics to derive employee value. For example, not all work functions require constant VPN consumption. On the other end of the...

“Step Out” Of The Conference To Avoid A Pickle

March 7, 2013
Lisanne Powers

We’re not referring to the classic sandwich sidekick. We’re talking about “being in a pickle”—a tough situation. And just like the fermented fruit, the situational pickle comes in as many varieties as there are shades of green. However, there’s one particularly nerve-racking type to watch out for: the Web conference pickle....

Putting The Power In Health Information Exchange

March 6, 2013
Andrew Biviano

What comes to mind when you hear the term “Health Information Exchange (HIE)?”  For me, it means an opportunity for better care coordination -- which ultimately results in better outcomes, improved clinical and administrative efficiency, and reduced costs.  But I’ve been around healthcare long enough to recognize that...

10 Little-Known Conferencing Features That Offer Big Productivity Gains

February 12, 2013
Lisanne Powers

Ah…the requirements for success in our increasingly competitive business environment…continually seek productivity gains, cost savings, and employee satisfaction by enabling the ability to work wherever you need to be.  Web conferencing offers accessibility, reliability, and scalability.   With an integrated...

Are You Connecting “In The Now”?

February 11, 2013
Eric Sineath

The evolution of mobile unified collaboration (UC) is putting increasing pressure on IT organizations to align their UC, collaboration and mobility strategies immediately to take advantage of the connected enterprise. According to The August, 2011 report by Forrester Research, Inc. entitled" The Forrester Wave™: Mobile Collaboration Q3 2011," we are now living in a "work anywhere" world;...

Let’s Make 2013 The Year Of Putting Patients First In Healthcare

February 1, 2013
Barb White

With the passage of the Affordable Care Act behind us, we’re focused on the future of healthcare: a new era where we put patients at the center of care. Providers’ focus is shifting from productivity and efficiency toward positive patient experiences and delivering the highest quality of care. Meanwhile, insurers are being pressed to design health plans that serve consumers, instead of...

Spontaneous Micro-Innovation

January 31, 2013
Norbert Sluzewski

Traditionally, enterprise innovation occurs as part of a structured effort to address targeted and well-defined organizational objectives. Companies challenged to transform an ineffective business model, increase sales, catch up with competition, or establish a market leading position will often turn to formal new idea creation initiatives to execute these objectives. At AT&T, we’ve built a highly successful crowdsourcing engine...

Best Practices For Meeting The BYOD Challenge

January 17, 2013
Cara Knight

With the current “Bring your Own Device” (BYOD) to work trend, employees are shifting away from accessing corporate applications and data via mobile devices sanctioned by IT. Now, they are using their own personal devices to access corporate resources and software, including applications for unified communications (UC). Outside the visibility and control of your IT department,...

If You’re Thinking Cloud For UC, Think Hybrid

January 4, 2013
Cara Knight

Why jam more servers into a data center when you can get the UC and telephony tools you need in the cloud? That’s a question large companies are asking today in the “build it” vs. “buy it” decision process....

New Year’s Resolution: 3 Reasons To Stop Avoiding Voice Transformation

January 3, 2013
Sander Biehn

My buddy Jason Rumsey, who works in the waste business in Philadelphia, called the other day. He wanted to know what I thought about a voice over IP system for his small business. Their current PBX had not bitten the dust, but the one and only technician who could maintain it was retiring to spend time with his grand kids, along with his favorable hourly rates....

The 4 Things SaaS Will Fix Today

December 11, 2012
Jeff Morgan

I start every day the same; I rise at 5:00 AM, make coffee, and retire to my office for exercise and meditation. It prepares me for the challenges of the day and sets my mood to 11 out of 10. But no matter how hard I prepare, I can’t affect the road ahead of me. As I sit in morning traffic watching people host conference calls, text coworkers, or email clients I wonder if we’re all struggling with the same issues....

The Future of Video

December 7, 2012
ATT

End users are rapidly switching from scheduled, immersive videoconferencing to more personal devices and on-demand meetings. How are you planning to support this move to pervasive video? Tackle the answers with Gartner analyst Scott Morrison in...

Syncing Up With The Power Of Lync

November 28, 2012
Larry Katz

Many people are aware of Microsoft Lync as a business tool for instant messaging, presence display, and web conferencing.  In addition to these, one of its more powerful features is making a “soft-phone” out of the client software installed on your PC by hooking it up to your firm’s telephone services.   Microsoft calls this feature Enterprise Voice. With this feature you have the ability to make outbound calls, and access to an...

How Do I Manage All Those Cans and Strings? The Office Has Officially Evolved

November 12, 2012
Lon Hickman

Hello and welcome back to our ongoing blog series on “How do I Manage all Those Cans and Strings?” The feedback and comments have been great as we continue to explore a non-technical approach to technology. Specifically, we’re focused on moving from managing multiple disparate networks to one converged network with MPLS....