November 23-26 is the weekend retailers and consumers waited for all year. Black Friday – traditionally the biggest brick and mortar shopping day of the whole year; Small Business Saturday – an attempt to draw attention and sales to local retail shops; and Cyber Monday – the beckoning day of record-breaking sales online.

These consumer events are landmarks for the holiday season. Everyone has been blogging, tweeting, Facebook posting, pinning, and chatting about the statistics – and of course the great deals too. These things reveal the condition of our economy; they represent trends; and they are a reflection of our society. But why should enterprises pay attention? More...

Digital natives are the generation of young workers who grew up with digital technology as an integral part of their daily lives. They are inspired by their interests in entertainment (such as video games and movies), online social media networks, and content sharing such as video and blogs; they are extreme multi-taskers and thrive in dynamic environments.  More...

Many things contribute to a successful Unified Communications deployment. Engaging end users and business leaders up front in the planning process is important. So is following through with these same people post-deployment, to ensure users know how to use and maximize the solution. Considering the dynamics between legacy and new equipment is yet another element. 

When it comes to UC, however, it is easy to forget that it is the network that makes it all possible. More...

Unified Communications is a reality in more than half of companies with annual revenues of $100M to over $1 billion, says the 2012 survey by IDG Enterprise. What is interesting, however, is that the employees or end users don’t know it. By this I mean, in the IT world, UC is a known factor – it has been talked about, tried, and proven true for years now. Ask an end user what UC means to them, and you are likely to receive a silent response with a furrowed brow. More...

Business professionals and IT see things differently. Some say they each speak their own language. Priorities are often different. 

Here’s an example. In Gartner’s CIO Survey 2012, the technology priorities of CIOs were revealed. In order, they are:
1. Analytics and Business Intelligence
2. Mobile Technologies
3. Cloud Computing
4. Collaboration
5. Virtualization More...

There may be more in common than one thinks between enterprise IT and Facebook. And it has everything and nothing to do with social media. To start, consumers upload 300 million pictures each day to Facebook, and this number is only growing. In addition, this rate is seasonal says Facebook as the company anticipates up to 2 billion photos on Halloween alone.  

Enterprise organizations, like Facebook, understand the demand for network and storage requirements. Traffic spikes, usage of network collaboration tools, and availability of critical data on the spot – all increase the need for more bandwidth and network intelligence. There may be a lesson in the way the company addresses these challenges:More...

Facebook just reached its billionth customer, and the resounding focus for the next billion is mobile, says CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It’s no surprise that more people every day are communicating and conducting business on smartphones and tablets.

Already, more mobile phones are being shipped around the world than computers. In fact, based on sheer numbers alone, almost everyone in the world has a mobile phone. There were one billion active subscribers in 2000, and almost six billion today. With a  world population of just over seven billion, the business opportunity for mobile is big. More...

It’s impossible not to notice the changing role of enterprise IT. While there continues to be a need for network management and expertise, IT is being called both to do more and to do things differently. How we live and work has fundamentally changed; for IT, these changes amount to a 180-degree turn in how they support and lead their organizations.

First, there is no perimeter to protect anymore. It wasn’t long ago that security was all about protecting the perimeter, limiting Internet access, and restricting mobile devices to an exclusive few. The thinking was that if IT could just guard the network perimeter and limit access, the company and its intellectual assets would be safe. More...

In a recent webinar, Gartner identified what it considers the most hyped emerging technologies for the coming year. Innovative and trendy for sure, this annual disclosure can give pause to even the most cutting edge IT groups. And that’s the point. More...

Gartner calls it the Nexus of Forces – the synergy of four platforms or movements that are happening all at once and depend on one another – Mobile, Social Media, Cloud, and Information. These forces are the future and the focus on which IT would be wise to devote resources and strategic thought.More...