We talk a lot here about collaboration, of course, and how Unified Communications technologies make that possible. We’re all pretty much in agreement that collaboration is a good thing.

But it is possible to emphasize collaboration too much, and that’s the point of an interesting column at NoJitter by Melanie Turek of Frost & Sullivan. Think of it this way: let’s say you love strawberry ice cream, as some of us do. But instead of simply enjoying that delightful post-dinner bowl of sweet, creamy heaven each evening, you decide to have strawberry ice cream at every meal. That wouldn’t work for more reasons than we can begin to list. More...

Whatever the root cause of our fascination with “Top 10” lists, we can’t seem to get away from them these days. Frankly, we’ve come to ignore most of them … until, that is, we saw one about the “Top 10 Reasons Why Unified Communications Implementations Fail.”

Well, you can imagine that one caught our attention. The “list” is somewhat more than a list, frankly. It’s in the form of a white paper that tops 2,000 words, and you can go here (registration required) if you want to read the whole thing. The white paper is produced by a maker of enterprise UC equipment, and is probably worth your time to read end-to-end. More...

I feel UC technology will be crossing a threshold of intuition in 2012. Tablet computers, spacious touch-screen smartphones and deskphones with dynamic color displays will help users understand how to use their new technology on a just-in-time basis. Given how busy everyone is today, technology will fail if everyone has to read a user’s manual just to use the basic features of a virtual phone—no matter how integrated and functional the phone may actually be for a well-trained user. More...

One of the biggest drivers of bandwidth on the network today is multimedia. While the consumer market often moves first to take advantage of new technologies in this space, there are key learnings that we can take away as we think about enterprise strategy. Web media guru Liz Shannon Miller recently asked her GigaOm audience “Is Facebook the way to go for new web originals?” My vote is yes, as the Facebook API allows content creators to know more about who their audience is than they have ever been able to before. In fact, the power of video entertainment will help those who never understood “this Facebook thing” to have their “eureka” moment. More...

In a recent survey, 36 percent of companies say they have deployed or are utilizing Unified Communications. So what about the other 64 percent? It’s time to take the leap; companies will simply have to deploy mobile UC to be competitive. More than a nice-to-have, it is a must-have. The list here explains why and serves as a checklist to help your enterprise move into 2012.More...

We talked the other day about how we disagreed with an analyst’s blog headline that suggested Unified Communications was “failing.” Now we offer Exhibit B, a survey of enterprise IT organizations that reveals some pretty ambitious plans to implement various UC applications not only on desktop and notebook computers, but on mobile devices as well. More...

If you’re lucky, the frenzied pace of business finally starts to drop off about this time of year, and it gives you a rare opportunity to think. Maybe you can finally read that book/e-book you bought/downloaded months ago. Or do some planning for 2012 without as many interruptions. More...

There are some interesting findings in a new “Benchmark Report” on Unified Communications from Nemertes Research, especially relative to return on investment and mobility. The report (registration required) is based on interviews with 240 IT leaders, so this is front-line intelligence. More...

While the New York Times has a trademark on the term “All The News That’s Fit To Print,” getting a story printed will be less than half the battle going forward. In the future, getting a story read will be the focus of media outlets. The Washington Post recently released a Facebook application it calls a “social reader.” After using it for a while, it is pretty clear that social reading is the wave of the future. More...

Five years ago, Time Magazine named “You” as its Person of the Year. Shortly thereafter, I started writing an internal blog at Sprint called “CG’s Soapbox.” The blog’s title paid homage to the days when a person would literally grab a wooden box, plop it down on a local street corner and start speaking freely.More...