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...

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...

A few weeks ago I offered responses to questions that were raised during a recent webinar – Seven Ways to Deliver Value of UC – in which me and Nancee Ruzicka with Stratecast hosted. I wasn’t able to address all of the questions in my last post, so here’s my response to another group of questions. More...

Some head-to-head contests are close matches, and some are blowouts. Sprint’s win in the MPLS services category of the Nemertes 2009 Pilothouse Awards was a blowout. And we haven’t stopped smiling since the results were announced. More...

Most of us are very familiar with the large global brands – companies we see everyday on main street, television and those annoying pop-up’s on the net. These companies have massive global operations and significant telecommunications and IT requirements. Many global telecommunications carriers, including Sprint, target these companies as prized customers to serve them with their global telecommunications needs. More...

On Tuesday, September 15, I will give the keynote address at Frost & Sullivan’s Growth, Innovation, and Leadership conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. As a preview, I thought I’d share the high level outline for my talk and point you to additional resources behind the topics I’m covering (try clicking on the links throughout this piece). More...

Most mid-sized to larger organizations, according to one recent survey, will be moving to cloud computing the next couple of years. Keeping the “trust but verify” philosophy in mind, these companies say they will start with their non-mission-critical applications…and expand once they’ve proven it works.More...

Paget L. Alves is the President of the Business Markets Group (BMG) for Sprint Nextel and responsible for Sprint's sales and marketing to enterprise, general business and public sector customers, and oversees the development of strategic alliances for Sprint. The BMG's portfolio of services includes IP, international wireless and wireline and domestic 3G and 4G wireless. With more than 20 years of experience with technology companies, he has experienced a fair share of business cycles.

In the first of a Q&A series, he discusses some of Sprint’s challenges and opportunities in the current economic climate, and how the company is positioning for the changing environment. He also discusses key factors shaping the telecom industry and challenges enterprises and government agencies face in making the move to a new world of IP Convergence and Unified Communications. More...

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, brought to you by the National Cyber Security Alliance. Of course, you should be aware every month, because the Bad Guys are operating every day, 24 hours a day. That’s why in 2008 more than 1.6 million malicious codes were identified, or more than 4,000 a day, 182 every hour on average. The only good news, from a U.S. standpoint, is that while the U.S. was the top country of attack origin last year, accounting for 25 percent of worldwide activity, that share was down from 29 percent in 2007. More...