We're living in very tough yet exciting times. On one side, the global
recession is making mince meat out of business profitability, while on the
other, organizations are seeing a change in work culture. Enough has been said
about the global meltdown and its impact on travel and other budgets, so let's
instead concentrate on the other aspect. The biggest change that's happening in
organizations is a rapidly growing mobile work force. There are more people with
laptops, mobile phones, PDAs, and Blackberries. This is changing the way people
work in organizations. They're no longer physically required in the office all
the time. So these 'virtual' workers are out there, working from airports, hotel
rooms, homes, and wherever else they might be. So the biggest learning for
organizations is that today, it's not about where you work from, but how you
work and what you deliver in the end. For this, it's essential that every mobile
employee remains connected. This is creating a requirement for real-time
communication in organizations, and today's tough times are adding fuel to the
fire. Because, every single customer order is important, no matter how small it
is. To bag an order, lots of discussions, approvals, and information is
required. Even in office, meetings are important, but with steep cuts in travel
budgets, it's becoming difficult to conduct them. So how do people sitting in
office communicate with the outside world? That's where a robust communication
system becomes important.
There are several communication technologies leading the way to deliver the
desired results. Our story this time is to understand those technologies and how
they can be used to save costs. The prominent ones that we'll be focusing on are
Unified Communication, Tele-Presence, and VoIP. We'll delve into the reasons for
choosing them, the sort of ROI they can deliver, and even some hands-on
deployment scenarios for some of the solutions out there. We'll focus on some
commercial as well as Open Source solutions for UC and VoIP. Plus, we also have
some live user experiences to share on some of the technologies, along with
security issues in IP communication and how to tackle them. Lastly, we'll end
the story with an overview of some Telepresence solutions.
It's quite an action packed story we bring you this time, complete with
technologies, trends, cost savings, deployment scenarios, and solutions. So go
on, and may the communication be with you!
United We Stand How Unified Communication technologies can help you get the ROI from multiple communication channels used in your office |
Tele-Presence: Pre-requisites, RoI and More How do enterprises ensure life-size, high-def video conferencing and collaboration amongst employees and cut travel costs at the same time? Well, Telepresence might just be the answer |
Deploying Asterisk-based VoIP Solution In this article we show how you can deploy a free VoIP solution in your enterprise to lower your conferencing and travel costs between various branches |
An Open Source UC Solution Integration of all communication channles makes it easier to communicate with customers and associates. We will show how you can implement UC from two different solutions in your organization |
Bandwidth for Video Communications While Video conferencing is a great tool for cutting travel costs, it has a fair share of bandwidth requirements. Let's check some of those. |
IP Communication: The Risks Involved Several communication channels that work on IP are also not without risks. Here, we look at how these IP communication channels can be compromised and you can protect yourself from such attacks |
Saving Cost the Star Way Cost saving is the most important factor driving deployment of Unified Communication solutions. Here's how Star India cut down its travel and telephone expenses by using MS OCS |