I saw a reference online the other day to “hosted vs. on-premises UC.” Something about that bothered me, and I think it’s this: It positions this as an either/or, all-or-nothing scenario that doesn’t really reflect reality. Sort of like “Good vs. Evil,” which is fine in the abstract, but which gets sticky once you apply it to real life situations. There’s just a lot of gray in between the black and white of those two absolute choices. In fact, I kind of wonder if the whole way service providers, equipment vendors, VARs, etc. have been positioning this question is incorrect in the first place. More...

Rolling out UC to a company with 50,000 employees and contractors isn’t something you do overnight. Currently, we are almost 50% complete and it has been a very successful first year. More...

As with any technology investment, corporations are looking at Unified Communications with a keen eye toward how and when it will impact cash flow.  The biggest challenge with that approach is that in its broadest form, investments that unify communications impact the ROI of all other investments while simultaneously accelerating all business processes. This makes calculating a traditional ROI virtually impossible. More...

The initial phase of Sprint’s migration to UC leveraged what we learned from the early adopters, which we talked about in my last post. These people provided excellent feedback as to the quality of the communications tools and their ease of adoption. We learned a lot from our pilot group, everything from which headsets worked the best, to  optimal laptop settings and the best setup for home-based workers. This information helped us clean up our deployment processes and fill platform gaps. More...

Despite all the ways technology is changing the way we communicate, some of the basics are still as true today as they were a couple hundred years ago. Jeff Pulver, the social media guru, made that point in a conversation we had regarding my guest blog at his Pulver.com site. More...

Previously, we talked about why Sprint chose three years ago to make the move to Unified Communications, something that this company has fully embraced, and continues to aggressively roll out across the enterprise. This time, we want to talk about the planning involved in moving UC from a concept to a reality. More...

Infonetics Research, a well-respected analyst organization, publicized an interesting survey on SIP trunking a couple of weeks ago. They had surveyed 92 PBX-using organizations of more than 100 employees, asking them about their use of SIP trunks, how they blend them with their existing infrastructure, and what savings they are seeing from SIP trunking. The Infonetics folks have prepared a full report based on that survey, although they only skimmed the surface of it in their news announcement. More...

As any regular Seamless Enterprise reader knows, Sprint doesn’t just talk about Unified Communications, we use it. Various bloggers here have talked about the benefits Sprint has seen in cost savings, power savings, streamlined networking, reduced real estate needs, and employee mobility. More...

In a recent webinar, Nancee Ruzicka with Stratecast and I talked about the Seven Benefits of deploying UC. Unfortunately, time prohibited us from being able to answer all of the great questions we received during the session.More...

Nice post last week by Broadsoft's Alex Doyle, who discusses the evolution of SIP Trunking and why this is a big deal for business customers. He starts with a clever quote and description: Using an IP PBX with TDB PRI circuits was once "like driving a Ferrari on a dirt road." (CBeyond's CTO Chris Gatch).More...