I was recently thinking about how each and every year, the number of people working in purely “digital jobs” continues to increase.  It made me think of the basic economic premise of Star Trek: When Gene Roddenberry created that series, he envisioned a world where the basic needs of people were satisfied with an unlimited supply of raw materials, allowing folks to focus all of their energy on knowledge and exploration. One embodiment of this unlimited supply idea was Star Trek’s “replicator,” which materialized any food that was in its vast database. While a “replicator” is entirely fictional, over the past 100 years or so, the percentage of people working in agriculture has indeed gone from about 75 percent down to three percent—so the rise of the digital job could be a logical corollary of that trend of more abundant supply.More...

I have a new IP deskphone connected to a cloud-based PBX. It’s been years since I have had a deskphone. The device is not (and likely will never be) fully unified with instant messaging and presence information. As I stare at this thing, my brain struggles with how and why I would use it. In a UC world, using a deskphone (even an IP one) is not like riding a bike.  More...

We’ve talked here many times about the reasons to move to Unified Communications and leverage the benefits of collaboration. But are there wrong reasons to make this move? More...

AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management, has put out an interesting report, looking at the future of enterprise IT in light of the ways that social media have turned business upside down in just the past few years. More...

This year, you can be sure that enterprises will continue to focus on ROI. The new ROI, especially for Unified Communications, will manifest itself in several ways, and Frost & Sullivan articulates four. More...

When I think of Silver, Gold or Platinum, I think of categories of frequent fliers--but that nomenclature has made its way into networking as well, as a way for carriers to describe the class of service assigned to MPLS traffic. More...

2011 could be the year of simplification for Unified Communications, enabled by the cloud, interoperability, and integration of business applications and devices. Also, look for consumers to be driving many of the Unified Communications (UC) trends impacting enterprises this year. More...

There’s a bit of good news for the Unified Communications market and, hopefully, the economy as a whole. Dell’Oro Group, the analyst organization that tracks networking and telecom markets, says that in the third quarter of 2010, the UC market expanded to its highest level since 2008. More...

The promises of SIP Trunking are many: cost savings, simplicity, and improved communications systems.  As projected by ABI Research’s Enterprise Communications Research Group, VoIP-based enterprise communications platforms and services will generate more than $4 billion in revenue by 2015 and this is largely due to the wide adoption of SIP Trunking. More...

This Thursday, December 16, you can learn about the hottest topic in enterprise communications - SIP Trunking - without having to leave your desk. Join us for the Enterprise Connect "Realizing the Benefits of SIP Trunking for Your Enterprise" virtual event from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET, featuring webinar-style sessions by industry leaders such as Sprint. More...