Human beings and they way they work and think are changing.  For example, my children have been conditioned to rapid response due to their early interactions with information systems. As their brains continue to develop, they will be able to multitask in a parallel processing fashion that is far different than what I am able to do.  What this means is that the circuitry of the human brain of this next generation is going to be different than anything that existed in the past—so Unified Communications is not a choice in the long run, it is an imperative. More...

Andy McLoughlin at GigaOm recently asked the question, “Are Workers Really Not Ready for Desktop Videoconferencing?” In his blog, he cited a recent Forrester report that concluded that a majority of workers don’t want to use desktop videoconferencing tools and don’t have access to them. That will soon change. 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...

Lisa Banks at Computerworld Australia recently blogged that a Gartner analyst called Unified Communications the “greatest scam since Ponzi” because the technology had no clear definition. Gartner’s Nick Jones went on to say, “I'll give you the real definition: Unified Communications is the bundle of things a vendor wants to sell you.”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...

Joe McKendrick over at ZDNet recently blogged about how cloud computing will impact outsourcing. I think it will take another decade or so before the cloud is so efficient and ironed out that companies can start eliminating IT staff. That will mostly happen because the PC itself will become more of a dinosaur, and that's where a lot of your IT budget goes: maintaining end-user devices with absurdly large and complex operating systems (that end users keep finding ways to install "browser helper objects" on that install malware on the machine.) More...

Olafur Ingthorsson at cloudcomputingtopics.com recently asked the question, "Are telcos not finding their cloud computing niche?" In his view, "it seems that many telcos have had a difficult time in positioning themselves in the cloud ecosphere or even deciding what cloud services to offer." In general, I don't see telcos competing with this next generation of cloud computing companies, I see them collaborating with all of them.  More...

It is almost October, when my beloved Minnesota Twins shall attempt again to do what they did in 1987 and 1991. This morning, my mother mentioned that a complete recording of a 1960's era World Series was found among the many video recordings in Bing Crosby's collection (I assumed it was on videotape, since his company, Bing Crosby Enterprises, was instrumental in the invention of videotape). So I pulled up Wikipedia, read about the history of videotape, recalled with fondness the Beta vs. VHS war of the 1980s, and then recalled a more recent "format war" from about 10 years ago. It was all about MPLS.More...

I just read the Network World column by Rick Broida, E-Mail Photos From Your Camera, in which he declares “If there's a bigger computing hassle than sharing photos from your camera, I haven't found it.” More...

Joe Panettieri at MSPMentor.net had an interesting blog about Three Basic Social Media Goals for Managed Services Providers. In his post, Joe shares some of his discussion with Dell's Cloud Computing Evangelist, Barton George. More...