There has been a major movement towards moving business communications services to the proverbial cloud over the past year, for several reasons, not the least of which is cost. But, despite the fact that so many people have been using cloudbased communications services in the personal lives, there remains as much confusion around the cloud as ever. Much of it comes from the simple fact that you can’t actually see the cloud – you can’t walk into your data center or communications closet and see it, as you could a traditional PBX. But it’s also a question of definition. As with many new communications, specific definitions are at the mercy of specific vendors, who naturally define services in relation to their own strengths.

In many ways, the introduction of cloud services runs parallel to first VoIP, then Unified Communications. This session is designed to cut through the haze and get to the basics of defining the cloud as a delivery model for the same communications services businesses have traditionally deployed and managed onpremises.

What is the cloud and what isn’t? How are communications services delivered via the cloud? How does cloud differ from hosted? What do businesses need in order to start using cloudbased communications services?

Recent initiatives from vendors and service providers to deliver various communications services via the latest trend – the cloud – to market, are designed to help businesses become more agile and more competitive, while helping increase operational efficiency. But for all the features and benefits that all seem to benefit businesses in their efforts to operate more effectively, businesses considering cloudbased communications services are still faced with the same challenges they always have, and must present a solid business case.

This session will discuss the benefits of cloud communications and how its features and the capabilities it delivers in terms of hard savings as well as soft benefits, and how both can be translated into an achievable ROI, so that businesses are able to provide the necessary justifications for migrating from tried and tested technologies to this new phenomenon.

While companies are increasingly attracted to the potential benefits of cloud services, such as the capital equipment and operational cost savings, they also want to keep abreast of all of the latest technological advances. And they want to do so on their terms, naturally, using as much of their current investment in infrastructure as possible, and without any disruptions to operations.

The complexities of migrating from what they have to where they want to be, while increasing their reach to new mobile platforms, can be daunting without the proper information. This session will discuss the alternatives businesses can employ to leverage the cloud without sacrificing existing investments or features, capabilities, performance, security, along with defining an evolutionary path to complete migration to the cloud.

Each year brings with it a new set of naturally occurring incidents that challenge the communications infrastructure businesses have built. During a twomonth span earlier this year, many parts of the Northeast felt the effects of an unlikely trio of natural events – Hurricane Irene, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake, and a highly destructive early winter storm – each of which left countless businesses without power and communications for more than a week in many cases.

Factoring in natural with other disaster and connectivitybreaking scenarios, any smart business will realize the only viable option is to have business continuity plans in place, including ways to restore communications capabilities.

Backup systems and redundant systems are an option, but not always the most cost effective – and not always reliable, depending on circumstances.

The cloud, by nature, offers a means for businesses to ensure communications continuity in many situations where their primary facilities or systems go offline. This session focuses on how cloud – which is already being considered as an alternative for traditional communications systems – can double as a BC/DR solution, allowing businesses to return to normal or nearnormal operations rapidly, reducing downtime and lost revenues.

Michael A. Rouleau serves as Senior Vice President – Business Development and Strategy and has been with tw telecom since November 1999. His extensive experience in the telecom and data communications industries resulted in the successful implementation and delivery of many advanced and innovative products. In his current position, Mr. Rouleau is responsible for developing tw telecom’s strategic direction and integrating new services and technologies over the next several years. Prior to joining the company, he spent 15 years with US WEST where he was responsible for the development, deployment and management of data, Internet, and DSL businesses.

The cloud as a means of deploying and delivering communications services continues to gain momentum, thanks to the cost savings it delivers, the speed with which services can be deployed, and the operational efficiencies it engenders.

But questions remain, slowing adoption. Specifically, because migrating to a cloud model requires giving up much of the control and management of the communications infrastructure, and because it also necessitates external links to communications systems – where traditionally those connections were all made within enterprise walls – one of the key questions is security. Are my communications secure in the cloud? What steps must I take to ensure maximum security? How sure can I be my cloud provider is implementing appropriate security policies, and what can I do to support those policies?

This session will answer those questions and others related to security of communications via the cloud, both for businesses considering or developing a migration strategy, and those that have already begun to leverage cloud services. Attendees will understand the benefits and challenges of cloud security, now to integrate cloud security with traditional models, and what security considerations are vital to a successful cloud migration.

Most businesses won’t admit to having fallen victim to telecom fraud. Many simply choose to sweep cases quietly under the rug to avoid embarrassment and customer concern. But many others fail to identify instances of fraud.

The fact is that telecom fraud can happen to any business from small homebased businesses to multinational corporations and government entities. Often, they start as small cases, but can quickly balloon to six and seven figure losses. Despite the risks, few businesses have provisioned against them, leaving their communications infrastructure vulnerable to criminal enterprises.

Moving to a cloud model, many businesses might erroneously believe the risk and responsibility resides solely with the cloud provider. This session will discuss real examples of telecom fraud, and steps businesses can – and should – take to protect themselves from fraudulent activity and hacking as they receive their communications services from cloud and hosted providers.

Cloud services are growing in popularity, from utility computing to platformasa service to cloudbased enduser applications. Clouds provide the storage and resources required to execute many of the complex collaboration strategies and technologies being implemented today.

What are those collaboration services? This session will explore the next generation collaboration opportunities made possible by cloud computing. This includes not only voice and video, but document and application sharing, virtual meetings and conferences, and allinclusive applications and services.

Attendees will learn how the cloud is enabling easier and more flexible, yet more intensive, collaboration in a variety of scenarios for any number of users, allowing them to be more effective in their activities and even opening up new opportunities for business growth.

The massive growth of smartphone and tablet use by businesses and the rapid adoption of cloud services are revolutionizing the way companies operate on a daily basis.

IDC predicts that 75 percent of U.S. workers will be mobile by 2013. A recent survey by Broadsoft suggests that 44 percent of enterprises already have onequarter of their workforces operating solely by mobile devices.

This means only that more and more businesses will require mobility features as part of their communications solutions, enabling their mobile workers to remain as effective on the road as their colleagues in corporate facilities.

This session will discuss the very real mobile requirements of today’s businesses, and offer insight into how cloudbased communications platforms can help deliver on the promise of true mobile business communications.

Tightened travel budgets, telecommuting, and videoembedded devices designed to drive collaboration have accelerated the demand for a more affordable approach to enterprisegrade video communications. An increasingly common approach is to turn to the cloud, for solutions that not only don’t require the significant upfront expense and IT overhead of onpremises solutions, but offer simple deployment and ease of use.

This session discusses the opportunities and challenges of implementing a cloudbased video conferencing solution. Panelists will:

•Compare premisesbased video vs. cloud models for video conferencing
•Discuss obstacles facing organizations looking to implementing a cloud model for video
•Define when and under what conditions is cloud the appropriate model for video

What do you need to develop and produce a telephony system – be it an IVR, voice-broadcast or conferencing solution?

Back in the day it was all about computer telephony cards or installing telephony resources onto a host processor – up front investment, low-level programming languages, provisioning for peaks, ongoing management, maintenance and support costs. The new way is to use telephony resources in the cloud, which are managed by someone else as a true cloud–based platform-as-a-service. The platform of the future presents a high level API, supports multiple programming languages, enables you to test with a free account, access on–demand resources, and pay-for-what you use when you use it.

This session aims to look at the changing face of telephony platforms and how cloud or a combination of cloud and traditional platforms could be the right option for you.

Driven by VoIP, converged IP services are growing at an unprecedented rate, including the latest trend of exploring cloudbased Unified Communications as an alternative to traditional UC platforms. Among the drivers of increased business adoption of cloud are more efficiently use of existing resources and increased productivity and revenues.

Unified Communications as a Service will become nearly a $6 billion dollar market within the next few years. Traditional onpremises solutions will continue to be replaced by more modular and elastic services that can be provisioned, delivered, and monitored through multitenant infrastructures, to any user, and location, any device and at any time.

This session looks at the benefits of moving to a UC as a Service model, including comparisons with traditional models and integration legacy enterprise infrastructure, as well as proven migration or implementation strategies for cloudbased UC and .

Cloud computing and unified communications are two of the hottest topics in technology. For many businesses, implementation becomes a question of cobbling together traditionally disparate communications technologies and calling it “unified,” without a real understanding of how the right applications can be integrated into the business process to drive measurable process improvements.

This session will discuss the opportunity businesses have, thanks to cloud computing, to take traditional UC applications and integrate them with other business processes and thirdparty applications, to create more efficient and effective endtoend business process.

Social media needs no introduction. Facebook is quickly closing in on a billion users. Twitter users post about a billion tweets per week. Consequently, many businesses have sought to bring similar social features to their businesses – à la Salesforce Chatter and other similar enterprise social media applications.

Why? Because it’s convenient, it’s familiar, and many of the features of social networking can help drive business productivity and quality.

This session talks to the intersection of social media and enterprise productivity and teamwork, considering the various enterpriseapplicable features of social networking, and opportunities for businesses to leverage them for their own growth. From document sharing and group conversations to knowledge bases and brainstorming sessions, enterprise social media presents an opportunity for business growth utilizing concepts familiar to most users already.