In case you missed them the first time around, a pair of Stratecast-Frost & Sullivan white papers focused on convergence are resurfacing for a second life.

The papers – Technology Convergence and Information Velocity: the Engines for Business Agility and Workforce Productivity and Simplification through Convergence: Reducing Cost and Complexities – were both sponsored by Sprint, which gave us the opportunity to highlight them before they were made available to the general public. More...

In case you missed them the first time around, a pair of Stratecast-Frost & Sullivan white papers focused on convergence are resurfacing for a second life.

The papers – Technology Convergence and Information Velocity: the Engines for Business Agility and Workforce Productivity and Simplification through Convergence: Reducing Cost and Complexities – were both sponsored by Sprint, which gave us the opportunity to highlight them before they were made available to the general public. More...

When your business depends on data and collaboration – and whose doesn't anymore? – it's understandable if you emphasize caution in how you change the way your people work with that data. That includes where it's kept, how you access it, and how you protect it.

So it's no surprise that a recent Forrester Wave white paper about cloud strategies found that even with online collaboration becoming much more appealing as business dynamics evolve, there is a certain amount of business customer uncertainty when it comes to committing to these collaboration solutions. More...

As the “cloud” concept arose, there was a lot of debate about whether cloud computing would really replace the client-server architectures of today’s enterprises. Now it’s clear that the answer is both “yes” and “no.”

Cloud computing isn’t an “either/or” proposition. What will happen at first is that CD and DVD-ROM drives on computers will start to disappear. “App stores” and the like are nothing more than cloud-based software management systems -- but they work really, really well. Few of the “apps” one downloads to a device or PC are actually cloud-based apps -- but as more and more applications are developed for cloud-based distribution, more and more cloud-based functionality is being written into these apps. More...

There is interest across most industries in hosted Unified Communications, but it is interesting that we at Cisco, as we work with Sprint in implementing these solutions, are seeing spikes of interest in certain vertical markets and sectors.

There is a high degree of interest in financial services and insurance, all professional services, manufacturing and packaged goods, and in every area of the public sector. Why these markets more than others? We think the answer is in a few key business and competitive pressures that seem to be more intense in these areas. Interest and activity will remain high here, while other verticals are quickly following this market transition. More...

Are CIOs and top IT executives hopping on the cloud bandwagon even more enthusiastically than their IT staffs? That appears to be what one of the latest surveys about cloud attitudes reveals.

In the survey, summarized in a CIO.com article, 92 percent of responding top IT decision makers (CIOs and other top IT execs) said they believe cloud technology is good for business. That's an impressive result, but even more so when you see that the same attitude was shared by just 81 percent of IT managers. In our experience, the CIOs usually require convincing by their managers and staffs when it comes to the newest technology approaches, so this is an interesting finding. More...

Two sizable obstacles get in the way of Unified Communications & Collaboration deployments, despite the undeniable benefits UC&C can bring in the form of lower costs, streamlined processes, and greater productivity.

One is the capital investment necessary for a premises-centric solution, which puts it out of reach for many organizations even in good economic times. The other is the deployment time involved and the associated challenges for organizations with limited IT resources. More...

Like a gathering storm, the cloud keeps getting fuller, more robust, and more capable with every passing week.

Back in March, we unveiled Sprint Complete Collaboration, the hosted, Unified-Communications-as-a-Service offering. Earlier this week, we announced a relationship with CSC that enables Sprint to offer CSC's Infrastructure-as-a-Service solutions to mid-sized and enterprise business customers throughout the U.S. More...

Coming at business, and life, from a technology perspective, we often fail to consider some of the non-technology issues surrounding adoption of any new way of doing business. Yes, if it was all just a matter of attaching connector A to port B and inserting tab C into slot D, it would be a piece of cake.

But as we all know, and as Gary Audin writes in a new Webtorials entry, it just isn't that neat and clean. Those pesky people always get in the way. Audin's latest thoughts look at some non-technical barriers to UC implementation, and while his original piece isn't all that long, we're going to brief it down even further, almost Tweet-like, for you. More...

Convergence, says Michael Suby of Frost & Sullivan, is about transformation and possibilities. A number of current technology trends leverage the power of convergence and point the way toward further possibilities in the future.

In the fourth in a series of Sprint-sponsored convergence white papers, Suby addresses three of those trends: Device proliferation and personalization, cloud computing, and social networking. More...