Well hey, it's 2013! The 20th anniversary year of Intel's Pentium chips and the first recorded incident of spamming. We've come a long way since then.

Now that everybody's all eager to get back to business after the holiday interlude, we want to take a second and anticipate what we'll be talking about this year in convergence, networking, and IT. More...

When it comes to leveraging the magic combination of Unified Communications and mobility – and you can't deny that UC isn't really unified until it is mobile, especially in today's environment – an enterprise does have to take a few things into consideration

The factors to consider are spelled out well in a recent Tech Notes article by Gary Audin. For instance, a typical IT organization is going to have to support four distinct mobile profiles. They are the road warrior, the person who's always on the road visiting customers, for example; the teleworker, the person who works most or all of the time at home; the campus roamer, who's always at a meeting somewhere or on his or her way to one; and the nomad, who works outside the office but typically at a specific location, such as a client site. More...

The need for small cells – those miniature cellular access points traditionally known as femtocells – typically arises because of coverage or capacity issues within a building. Small cells are a relatively new concept that works on an operator’s licensed frequency to extend the wireless network inside a building. These cells can be installed in a number of ways to accommodate different needs. More...

It probably comes as little surprise that most employees today expect on-the-spot mobile data accessibility and anywhere voice service to enhance their work productivity both at their desk and throughout an office. In response, IT teams are searching for the best approach to support this trend and provide the highest quality, in-building service available for a reasonable cost.  Small cells have emerged as a breakthrough solution. More...

It’s pretty clear that you can’t have truly Unified Communications without mobility. And let’s face it, if you don’t have ubiquitous coverage, you don’t really have mobility.

Now, you may be willing to accept the fact that if you’re hiking in Wyoming, or staying in a darling little bed and breakfast in very rural Maine, your coverage is not going to be sufficient to keep you fully connected to the office. But nowhere is it more frustrating to drop a call than when you’re on your own company’s campus, striding from one meeting to another or trying to use that spare couple of minutes to connect with a customer. More...

We’ve all heard it said many times that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. For that reason, even if no other, it pays to know where technology came from and the problems it was designed originally to solve.

But when Network World ran a recent series of posts on the history of Unified Communications and collaboration, we have to admit we were more interested in the series-ending conclusions and perspective on where we are now and where we are going than we were in the evolution. Especially since the author was Larry Hettick, the Current Analysis analyst. More...

I am hearing some cross-talk between a couple of my recent blogs. In "Single Number Reach," I was speculating as to what word we will use in the future for a Unified Communications identifier when phone numbers become obsolete. In "Perfect Storm of Security Threats," I speculated about the problems with today's common two-factor authentication approaches and how vulnerable they are. As social media changes the way we use the net, it looks like the two issues discussed in those articles will become more inter-twined. More...

Under the circumstances, you might call it the Ultimate Communications Machine. It’s Sprint Mobile Integration, and it is doing some very good things for BMW Manufacturing, the North American manufacturing arm of the famed German automaker. More...

What comes to mind when you hear "Unified Communications?" For many people, the image is fuzzy at best--and that's the problem. Technologies like UC have become a magnet for definitions and buzz words; the result is a lack of clarity. More...

Today's blog / blurb / column / commentary is a little less serious than usual. But it’s Friday, so we can loosen the collar a little bit. So we’re keeping it light in the following discourse / essay / feature / item / piece / story / theme / think-piece /  treatise / write-up. More...