UC MAGAZINE — August 2011

Social Networks Become Tools for Network Management, Car Care

Enabling companies to leverage these kinds of platforms to manage their networks ties into the communications megatrends of not only social networking, but also of cloud computing and mobility, says Vala Afshar, chief customer officer of Enterasys Networks. Introducing the machine world to the social enterprise lets businesses be more productive, have more real-time access, and better understand their connected machines, he says....

COVER STORY PACKAGE

Salesforce.com Chatters on Social Media in the Enterprisee
Salesforce.com has been on the speaking circuit lately talking a lot about social networking. And in May the company announced it had completed the acquisition of Radian6, whose social media monitoring platform is used by more than half of Fortune 100 companies to monitor, analyze and engage in social media conversations. Unified Communications Magazine recently spoke with Gordon Evans, senior director of product marketing at Salesforce.com, about the deal and the CRM company's efforts around social networking.

Interactive Intelligence Expands Its Social Networking Strategy
Interactive Intelligence has been a leader in promoting the importance of social media as it relates to business, and how organizations can and should respond to and interact with prospects and customers in this new world of social networking.

Feature Articles

Building the Channel for UC: Growing Spending Means New Sales Opportunities, But Value Selling Remains a Challenge
Forty nine percent of organizations the IT research firm recently surveyed say their UC investments will increase faster than their overall IT budgets in the months ahead. Firms with 500 or more workers are much more likely to increase their UC spends than smaller outfits, probably because these larger organizations are more in need of solutions that simplify their more complex and far-flung communications requirements, CompTIA says.

Adding Video Surveillance Thwarts Theft, Secures Business
Today's business means doing more with less. For businesses, large or small, maximizing profits with less expenditure means there are more resources available to invest in future growth. VoIP has hands down delivered on its promise that networked voice and data improves communication and productivity, simplifies maintenance, and reduces equipment/monthly recurring costs.

Enterprise Headsets Become Integral Part of UC Solutions
Unified communications means a lot of things to a lot of people, but everyone who is selling, using or considering UC seems to understand the need for solutions that are simple to implement, easy to use, and address the new trend toward wireless communications. Enterprise headsets are increasingly part of these solutions.

Five Obstacles to Growth in Videoconferencing
Why does an industry that delivers so much in the way of value through reduced travel expenses, increased productivity and greater communication efficiency have such a difficult time gaining wide spread usage? Even in the most innovative organizations, there are underlying issues that hinder the adoption of videoconferencing. These problems range from the highly technical to basic user perception. But in reality, the answer is quite simple: Anyone must be able to conference anywhere.

Top UC Security Issues and Steps to Mitigate Your Enterprise Risk
Collaboration demands, prevalence of handheld devices and increased communication flexibility within enterprises are driving the adoption of unified communications as the main strategy to manage effectively the integration of real-time multimedia communications. Since the benefits of UC are well recognized in the industry, the focus is shifting to a more critical mandate: protection directives that arm the enterprise with countermeasures to limit the threat of failure or a security breach.

Hosted or PBX? How about a Blend of Both?
Buyers considering a migration to VoIP often hit a wall at the very first turn in the decision tree: Hosted or on-premises? Now, buyers have a third alternative - blended architecture systems - that combine the best elements of both, while eliminating the downsides of each.

The Role of the Interconnect Network in Enabling HD Voice Communications
VoIP traffic has been growing exponentially in recent years in both fixed and mobile networks, as both enterprises and consumers seek to improve efficiency and reduce costs by increasing their adoption of IP services. At the same time, the emergence of HD voice promises to deliver on the true potential of VoIP by offering clear and life-like reproduction of audio.