If you hear the word "convergence," the odds are you will think of network convergence. So would most people, certainly the average Seamless Enterprise reader. But that's only one aspect of convergence, particularly when you're talking about today's communications.

In a new white paper, Michael Suby of Frost & Sullivan denotes three types of convergence, and says it takes all three coming together to get the desired result. That result is a high degree of "information velocity," (watch the video) or information that is moving fast enough to get you what you need, when you need it, wherever you are. More...

Although it's almost always cost savings that ends up in the leading role, sometimes it's a supporting player that steals the show.

That was the case for Paul Seibert, who heads network operations for Snelling (the staffing people) and Intrepid USA Healthcare. Even though executives almost always look first at what implementing Unified Communications might save the company, that's not a concern for Seibert. More...

Before you can make an informed decision about return on investment (ROI) for a Unified Communications implementation, it is essential to know the scope of that investment. Obviously, it is more than just the up-front cost of the equipment you buy for a premises-based solution, or the ongoing cost of a hosted solution. More...

I have spent a lot of time talking about Unified Communications presence in this blog. Recently, I have been looking at the interoperability between Cisco and Microsoft deployments. At a high level, there is interoperability between the two platforms, with more to come for sure. More...

Enterprises more than doubled their SIP trunking investments in 2011 compared with 2010, but the room for further growth is almost unlimited.

According to the industry analyst firm Infonetics Research, SIP spending was up 128 percent last year, making it one of the fastest-growing telecom services in North America. But even with that kind of growth, SIP Trunking accounted for only one of 10 trunks deployed here. 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...

In David Hirschman’s post, “Why Do We Check In?,” he quotes the tweet of a social media professional: “I did not want to be mayor of my dentist’s office. Why did I even check in?” I have been trying to figure that out myself over the past year.

Last fall, I drafted a post about “checking in” that I never published here, as I just couldn't tie it in sufficiently.  But now I have a little better perspective on where the link is between “check-ins” and Unified Communications. Basically, a “check-in” is a piece of  presence information and is clearly part of the UC paradigm (yes, that is my smiling face on the Wikipedia page for “presence”). More...

Does it surprise you as much as it does us that nearly one-fifth of enterprises are not even considering Unified Communications and collaboration technology now, or planning to in the next three years?

That data point leaped out at us in a piece that Melanie Turek of Frost & Sullivan wrote over at NoJitter, based on a survey that her organization did of 200 top executives. Nineteen percent of the respondents said they aren’t considering UC at all and have no plans to deploy it in the next three years. More...

One of the most underappreciated aspects of smartphones is the benefit of having a tool for both business and entertainment. In the early years, a dual enterprise/personal device was seen as a liability. Many companies even locked down business devices to prevent them from being used as entertainment devices. Today, however, companies have been forced by sheer momentum to integrate popular business/personal devices based on iOS and Android into their infrastructure. More...

On the heels of our Sprint Complete Collaboration announcement last week, a top industry analyst group has come out with a memorandum on hosted collaboration that tells the strategic story concisely and thoroughly.

Titled Top 10 Reasons for Hosted Collaboration, the Yankee Group document is in the form of a presentation. It's really worth a few minutes of your time to take a look. More...