GigaOm recently released a free report, “Enterprise mobility perceptions among IT decision makers,” that examines cloud computing, big data, and enterprise mobility. The report highlights data collected by GigaOm from 304 enterprise IT decision makers.

The findings included an observation that, while 80 percent of all enterprises support mobile phones as part of their infrastructure, the size of the business seemed to have little impact on a company’s decision to support such mobility. The report also provides a glimpse into the market share for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows devices (I won’t spoil the suspense as I hope you’ll go grab your own copy of the report), as well as some insight into application support. More...

How do you know if you're a good fit for a hosted Unified Communications solution? Well, Michael Suby of Frost & Sullivan has half a dozen questions you can ask yourself about your company to find out.

Suby moderated last week's Sprint-sponsored webinar on hosted UC, which also featured Paul Seibert, who heads network operations for Snelling (the staffing people) and Intrepid USA Healthcare, and Craig Safir of Sprint. If you missed it, you can access the archived version. More...

For Paul Seibert, the cost savings that Sprint Complete Collaboration yields are welcome, but what matters to him most are the flexibility, scalability, and management capabilities that this hosted Unified Communications solution brings.

Seibert is Director of Network Operations for Intrepid USA Healthcare Services and Snelling Staffing, both based in Dallas. The companies are owned by Patriarch Partners and share a data center along with the network infrastructure support team headed by Seibert. Collectively, the two companies have more than 200 offices across the contiguous United States, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. More...

... Not in the future, that is. IT is about to go through a great transformation. It has to, given the velocity at which technology is evolving.  

IT expenditures will be happening more outside the traditional boundaries of corporate IT, says Gartner. Today, some enterprises already spend more than 50 percent of IT expenses outside of corporate IT. Business units often partner with third parties when they need a solution faster than corporate IT can deliver. Interestingly, it’s not about IT’s capability, rather it’s more about the innovations in the marketplace that are being created, affordable and easy to use. More...

If you hear the word "convergence," the odds are you will think of network convergence. So would most people, certainly the average Seamless Enterprise reader. But that's only one aspect of convergence, particularly when you're talking about today's communications.

In a new white paper, Michael Suby of Frost & Sullivan denotes three types of convergence, and says it takes all three coming together to get the desired result. That result is a high degree of "information velocity," (watch the video) or information that is moving fast enough to get you what you need, when you need it, wherever you are. More...

As much as I try to keep my blogs positive, I think I am entitled to a periodic rant once in a while. Today’s frustration is on the poor quality of what most online learning companies try to pass off as “computer-based training (CBT).”

I did a CCNA (Cisco-Certified Network Associate) self-study using CBT 10 years ago that was absolutely awesome. When I look at most of the CCNA self-study courses available today, they do not come close to the one I took a decade ago.  It is amazing that there are not more high-quality CBT programs for technology folks. While I understand that having an “expert” teaching in front of a whiteboard is the cheapest way to create CBT, the opportunity to massively increase the productivity of learning is totally missed by this approach.  More...

Although it's almost always cost savings that ends up in the leading role, sometimes it's a supporting player that steals the show.

That was the case for Paul Seibert, who heads network operations for Snelling (the staffing people) and Intrepid USA Healthcare. Even though executives almost always look first at what implementing Unified Communications might save the company, that's not a concern for Seibert. More...

Before you can make an informed decision about return on investment (ROI) for a Unified Communications implementation, it is essential to know the scope of that investment. Obviously, it is more than just the up-front cost of the equipment you buy for a premises-based solution, or the ongoing cost of a hosted solution. More...

In a recent webinar, Ten Changes to Maximize the Impact of Your Business Intelligence Strategy, Gartner presented some fresh ideas on how to approach the analysis of so much data, making it useful for the enterprise. There is no doubt an effective business intelligence (BI) strategy includes IT, but what else? Gartner says the secret can be found by asking three questions: More...

I have spent a lot of time talking about Unified Communications presence in this blog. Recently, I have been looking at the interoperability between Cisco and Microsoft deployments. At a high level, there is interoperability between the two platforms, with more to come for sure. More...