Where's the Payback From Conferencing, Travel?

The traditional argument made by communications industry professionals is that conferencing techniques of various types provide a payback by reducing travel costs. But a new study by Oxford Economics suggests the reverse is true.

"For every dollar invested in business travel, businesses experience an average $12.50 in increased revenue and $3.80 in new profits," analysts say.

One is tempted to argue that the truth lies somewhere in between, given the obvious implications each argument has for each industry's health. Some travel investments boost sales, but some collaboration sessions likely are just as effective using communication tools.

“This study shows that not all spending cuts are smart cuts,” says Adam Sacks, managing director of Oxford Economics. “When companies cut their travel budgets, there are negative consequences that we can now quantify, in terms of lost revenue and profit growth, and in terms of giving competitors a distinct advantage.”

The study found that curbing business travel can have a strong negative impact on corporate profits. The average business in the U.S. would forfeit 15 percent of its profits in the first year of eliminating business travel, and it would take more than three years for profits to recover.

In the first six months of 2009, U.S. business travel is down by 12.5 percent, the study suggests. One suspects that is a conservative figure.

The study itself also reports data from a February 2009 survey of 400 corporate executives suggesting that 51 percent have decreased the amount of business travel in recent months. Those who have made cuts have reduced their budgets by an average 35 percent.

Roughly 40 percent of prospective customers are converted to new customers with an in-person meeting, compared to 16 percent without such a meeting. More than half of business travelers stated that five percent to 20 percent of a company’s new customers were the result of trade show participation.

Executives interviewed cited customer meetings as having the greatest returns, approximately $15-$19.99 per dollar invested, with conference and trade show participation returns ranging from $4-$5.99 per dollar invested.

Respondents suggested that customer meetings represent 34 percent of travel budgets, conferences 10 percent, trade shows 10 percent, incentive travel for sales personnel five percent and "other" purposes 42 percent of budgets.

One suspects any rational organization therefore would substitute conferencing alternatives for internal meetings, which represent 42 percent of travel spending. Indeed, respondents suggested they would be hiking visits to customer offices by 19 percent, and increasing customer meetings by three percent.

In contrast, respondents suggested they would trim travel for internal training by 22 percent, external conferences by 20 percent, internal meetings by 14 percent and external trade shows by 10 percent.

7 Useful Medical Vertical IP Telephony Apps

Some IP telephony suppliers, as well as many larger system integration companies, focus on the health care vertical. How to pitch IP telephony value to medical vertical buyers isn't so obvious to many retailers, though.

But here are seven concrete features medical vertical users might appreciate. Patient screen-pops can be used when a patient calls, providing a dashboard with general demographics, appointments and recent encounter summaries, says Houston Neal, of Software Advice.

IP faxing through the IP-PBX can be useful for primary care physicians sending a patient record to a specialist.

Appointment reminders that automatically call the patient to remind them of an upcoming appointment or the need to schedule an appointment are other examples.

Find me, follow me can be used to prioritize after-hours calls based on the urgency of the situation. Emergencies could be immediately forwarded to 911. Calls from patients that recently had an ambulatory procedure might be forwarded to the physician’s mobile phone. All others might receive voicemail or the answering service.

How to assess "urgency" is an issue, of course, but perhaps some combination of user input or recency of content or types of procedures can be part of the algorithm. A patient that recently had surgery likely is a higher priority than a call from a patient who has not had a history of severe or serious illness, or who hasn't been seen very recently.

Automated collections messages are a touchy but sometimes necessary business function for any medical practice.

Routine authorization of on-going prescriptions might be another application. Patients might call a specific number, then interact with an interactive voice response system to refill a routine prescription.

Patient-specific voice messages also are conceivable, allowing existing patients to access customized scripts related to billing, appointments or other information.

Business PCs: 43% Mobile by 2012, Study Says

A Microsoft-commissioned study conducted by Forrester Research suggests that worker mobility and office decentralization will become key issues for the enterprise and small- to medium-sized businesses in coming years, as worker mobility increases.

The report, "The Costs and Challenges Associated With Supporting Today's Informational Workers," suggests that mobile PCs will constitute some 43 percent of corporate PCs by 2012, an 11 percent increase over the current situation. That also suggests the number of desktop PCs will decline to 57 percent in three years’ time, down from 68 percent today.

Other parts of the study found that workers within the enterprise and SMBs have become increasingly decentralized, with 29 percent working out of branch or remote offices, five percent out of external worksites, four percent out of home offices, and six percent “mostly mobile.”

The report found that only 30 percent of firms were highly centralized in “one or a few offices,” though that number was expected to increase marginally to 34 percent by 2012.

Avaya Buys Nortel Enterprise Solutions

Avaya is acquiring Nortel Enterprise Solutions for $900 million in proceeds to Nortel and an additional pool of $15 million reserved for an employee retention program.

The deal vaults Avaya clearly into the number one position in the enterprise telephony market, with a combined market share of 25 percent. Cisco, after battling Avaya for years for enterprise telephony leadership, now finds itself number two with 16 percent in market share, and facing a significantly more challenging competitor with the combined Avaya-Nortel, says the Yankee Group.

To the extent that the "unified communications" market overlaps directly with the "business phone system" market, the deal also affects market shares for unified communications solutions as well.

Gmail User Engagement Seems Higher: Why?

Behavioral differences between users of similar products always are profoundly important, either because one provider has uncovered a better end user interface, better features, some unmet user need or because end user segments are revealed by their choices.

According to a new study by ChimpMail, which analyzed about 184 million email messages , when it comes to open rates, click rates, bounces and abuse complaints, there are distinct differences in recipients' engagement with email between major webmail services.

Open rates, for example, were highest among Gmail users (31 percent) and lowest among AOL users (20 percent). Gmail also ranked highest for click rate with 7.4 percent compared to Yahoo's lowest of 4.2 percent.

Messages sent to Gmail accounts also had the lowest hard bounce rate, though other data indicates Gmail’s spam protection may be so stringent that messages disappear without producing a bounce. A 2009 Return Path study, for example, found a 23 percent nondelivery rate for marketing messages sent to Gmail.

According to comScore, Gmail is the third-most-popular e-mail property among U.S. Internet users, though it posted the highest growth rate between July 2008 and July 2009. Unique visitors to the service rose 46 percent to nearly 37 million.

ChimpMail executives suspect the data show there is some demographic difference between Gmail and other Web-based email users that accounts for the higher engagement rates.

Some also think better junk mail filtering by Gmail accounts for the difference in engagement. Perhaps fewer messages, better tailored to actual end users, are being delivered to Gmail users. It is possible that this better matching of interests and messages is having an impact.

8x8 Adds Web Conferencing

8x8, has introduced new Web-based conferencing service to its existing portfolio of business communication offerings for small to medium sized businesses.

The first in a series of new unified communications services to be introduced over the coming months, the "8x8 Virtual Meeting" Web conferencing service is an online collaboration tool accessible instantly (no software download required) from any web browser and any computing platform.

Available as an add-on service for existing 8x8 customers or as a stand-alone offering for new subscribers, 8x8 Virtual Meeting lets users conduct centralized online meetings, complete with integrated voice conferencing (to and from any telephone or web browser platform), presentation slide sharing, desktop and application sharing, instant messaging, chair control, conference control and call recording, with up to 50 participants per conference.

5% of U.S. Universities, Colleges Have Deployed Unified Communications Campus-Wide

About five percent of U.S. university and college campuses already have deployed unified communications campus-wide, according to a recent survey by the Association for information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education. Another four percent of respondents say they have extensive deployments, but to a limited number of people.

About 44 percent report having limited deployments or trials underway. About 26 percent are in planning stages. About 20 percent have no UC projects or planning underway.

The survey featured responses from 103 institutions.

Enterprise C Suites Now are "Digital"

A generational shift is occurring in U.S. enterprise "C" title ranks, but one trend already is clear: the Internet has become the top information resource. Some 81 percent of respondents 50 or younger are on the Internet daily while 62 percent of executives older than that did so.

Also, most C-title executives at firms making more than $1 billion in annual revenue have shifted their information-gthering strategies away from traditional media and to Internet-based media.

When consuming "traditional media" at work, 70 percent of respondents say they get that information online. When consuming "traditional broadcast media" at work, 69 percent use the Internet.

C-suite executives do their own searches. That is a sharp break from the way most such executives probably worked decades ago, when "middle managers" gathered information and passed it up to the C suites. These days, the C suite knows it can get information directly, and does so.

Also, video and social communities are growing in importance, the survey reveals. About 33 percent of 50-and-under executives view work-related videos "daily," while 31 percent use a Web-enabled mobile device to search for information related to business.

The mean age of all executives taking this survey was 46.7 years. But there remains one glaring exception to the trend: only one percent of those over the age of 50 provide daily contributions to a work-related blog. Another four percent in this age group say they contribute several times a week, the Forbes Insights study found.

In contrast, 35 percent of executives ages 40 to 49 say they maintain a work-related blog daily. That figure increases to 56 percent of the executives under the age of 40.

That probably matches what you would have guessed: younger and "middle-aged" people have gotten comfortable with the new technologies while older people tend to resist. That same pattern was found for computer use, Internet use or email in the ealier days as well.

Overall, about three percent of surveyed executives over 50 participate in Twitter or another microblog. In contrast, 34 percent of the executives ages 40 to 49 participate. Among users under the age of 40, 56 percent of the executives under 40 participate.

The top three research topics that C-level executives seek are competitor analysis (53 percent), customer trends (41 percent), and corporate developments (39 percent).

Of those executives in sales and marketing, 76 percent say they seek customer trends. Of those executives in finance, 63 percent said they seek competitor analysis. Of those executives in IT, 59 percent seek technology trends.

The study, "The Rise of the Digital C-Suite," is based on a survey of 354 executives at U.S. companies with annual sales in excess of $1 billion. It also included one-on-interviews. Nearly half held C-level titles, such as CEO, CMO, and CIO; the others held senior-level titles, such as EVP, VP, and director. A total of 12 percent identified themselves as working in sales and marketing.

http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html

Will Google Voice, Google Wave be Business UC Contender?

Some people might not think Google Voice and Google Wave are contenders in the business unified communications business. But executives at Cisco Systems are not among them.

Officials at Cisco Systems Inc. say they are closely watching Google Inc.'s aggressive foray onto their unified communications turf and plan to respond quickly by boosting the capabilities of Cisco's offerings.

Cisco's announcement in late June that it plans to offer at least some pieces of its IP voice technology as a hosted service could be viewed as a direct response to Google's recent move to start limited release of its Web-based Google Voice and Google Wave communications tools.

Though Google Voice and Google Wave might be seen primarily as consumer offerings, they could provide value for smaller businesses. And as often is the case in communications, tools that start out in the consumer space frequently wind up adding more features over time, ultimately becoming useful for more business users, and even larger businesses.

Google Wave, which has been in development for about two years, promises to give users a single platform for accessing e-mail, instant messaging, blog, wiki, multimedia management and document-sharing tools.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/340831/Google_s_Unified_Tools_Pose_a_Threat_to_Cisco?source=rss_newssaid.

Seamless Handoff Between Wi-Fi, WiMAX and 3G at 60 km/Hour

Fixed-mobile convergence has been growing in importance for several reasons, among them a general demand shift to wireless access, but also because of growing preferences for a more unified user experience and broadband economics.

On the latter score, the key issue is simply that wireline broadband is more economical than wireless broadband, and likely always will be. So to the extent that end user demand shifts to wireless devices, service providers must find ways to offload traffic to the wired network.

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On that score, KT Corporation of Korea, TelcoWare, and mobile broadband gateway developer Stoke say they have succeeded in implementing seamless network handover between 3G, Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks, even when users are moving at speeds of 60 kilometers per hour.

Seamless handoff will be key for mobile providers trying to automatically shift access to any available wired broadband network, and to enhance seamless handoff back to the mobile network.

IP PBX Line Shipments Will Dip for First Time Ever in 2009

IP PBX lines shipped in 2009 will decline for the first time ever in 2009, say analysts at Dell'Oro Group. Aside from the global recession, vendor instability (Nortel, in all likelihood) is causing a bit of hesitation.

“For 2009, we anticipate a degree of vendor volatility that will cause many customers to stay on the sidelines for a longer period of time than we would expect if downward pressure was coming only from the weakened economy,” says Alan Weckel, Dell’Oro Group director.

“In the current environment, some customers will hold on to existing analog and digital lines for a longer period of time,” Weckel says.

According to the report, Cisco, Avaya and Nortel had the most IP line shipments in the quarter. The eight largest vendors in the market, including Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel and Siemens represent about 49 percent of total line shipments in the first quarter of 2009.

Notwithstanding, IP telephony penetration will continue to grow this year, albeit at a slower pace compared to the previous years.

Branch Offices Ripe for Cloud Computing?

At many enterprises, branch offices account for 20 percent of a company’s IT infrastructure, according to Forrester Research. Since IT departments are seeking to cut costs, branch office IT investments likely will be shifted to remote services provided by some sort of cloud computing infrastructure.

The potential impact on the service provider business is not so clear, but one might assume there will be greater bandwidth requirements at remote locations and in the backbone than presently is the case, as the traditional trade-off in computing is between local processing and bandwidth. One can compute locally, substituting cycles for bandwidth, or compute remotely, substituting bandwidth for cycles.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Branch-Offices-Ripe-for-IT-Consolidation-Forrester-239188/?kc=rss

AT&T Launches New Small Business Bundle

AT&T has launched what it calls the nation's first bundled offer targeted at small businesses,  including wireless, wired and high speed Internet services, starting at $99.99 a month.

The “All for Less” bundle is now available to small business customers with one to four lines at a single location, across AT&T’s 22-state footprint.

The wireless plan features 450 minutes of use each month for each wireless device.

The broadband service operates at rates up to 1.5 Mbps and comes with as many as 11 email accounts and AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot connectivity.

The local voice service comes with unlimited local calling, call forwarding and caller ID, as well as unlimited domestic long distance calling.

To qualify, customers must already have wireless service or purchase new wireless service from AT&T in addition to new or existing local voice, long distance voice and broadband services.

The offer expires Aug. 31, 2009 and requires a two-year service agreement. Additional bundles that include other high-speed Internet speed tiers and/or wireless plans are available at additional costs.

Add Email Contact Info on a BlackBerry With One Click

BlackBerry users now can add contact information embedded in emails directly to their contact managers, with a single click, using "gwabbit for BlackBerry," now available a BlackBerry App World, Research in Motion's app store.

The app also can be downloaded from www.gwabbit.com. The app can add and update information in the BlackBerry Contacts or Microsoft Outlook directories.

Gwabbit costs $9.99 annually.

The "gwabbit for Outlook" app, released earlier, automatically identifies signatures in incoming emails and creates them as new or updated contacts on a desktop or notebook PC.  gwabbit for Outlook is available for a single, one-time fee of $19.95.  The two products together deliver complete email contact management for any professional on the road or at their desk.

Gwabbit is now available for all BlackBerry smartphones including the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Curve series and BlackBerry Pearl series of smartphones.

Videoconferencing as Lead Unified Communications App

Video-based conferencing services are not the only unified communications service business customers are looking to buy, but they seem to assumed a "lead" application status recently.

That, at least, is what respondents to a recent Yankee Group survey indicate.

High-Definition Voice: Most Impact in Conferencing Apps

A poll of 186 industry professionals shows a belief that high-definition voice quality will have greatest impact for video conferencing and conference calling.

The Global IP Solutions-sponsored poll also shows that a third of respondents think high-definition voice quality also will benefit overall productivity in the workplace, while 57 percent considered conference calling would benefit the most in a work setting.

About 16 percent believe high-definition audio will have greatest impact for call center operations.

Some 11  percent of respondents say they use high-definition voice service “all the time or whenever they can” and an additional 30 percent reported having used it once or twice.  About  47 percent of respondents have not used it yet.

AT&T Launches "Synaptic Storage" Cloud Service

AT&T now is selling enterprises a new "AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service", a storage-on-demand offer that provides enterprise customers with control over the storage, distribution and retrieval of their data from any location, anytime, using any Web-enabled device.

The service automatically scales storage capacity up or down as needed, and users pay only for the amount they use, AT&T says.

AT&T is introducing the service to customers on a controlled basis this month, with plans to make the service generally available in the third quarter. The service is deployed in AT&T Internet data centers (IDCs) in the U.S. and will be accessible by customers connecting to the Web anywhere. In time, AT&T plans to add the service to select global IDCs to meet customer demand internationally.

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=26821

60% Unified Communications, Video Adoption by 2010?

Some 60 percent of enterprise executives polled recently by Network Instruments say they will have implemented unified communications capabilities at their organizations by 2010, while 57 percent say they will have implemented video solutions by 2010.

Some 66 percent of the 442 network engineers, IT directors, and CIOs in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America also report they will have teleconferencing solutions in place by 2010.

VoIP adoption continues to rise, as 75 percent of companies will have installed VoIP by the end of 2009,  compared to 61 percent in 2007.

One has to interpret such findings. When enterprise executives are asked whether they will deploy a given technology, it does not mean they will deploy throughout the entire enterprise. Also, plans typically slip a bit; rarely are they accelerated.

That's about the only way to make sense of survey findings that often show a third of respondents plan to do something "within the next 12 months," virtually every time a survey is taken.

Recession Drives Video Conference Interest

Among respondents that do not currently use video conferencing, 68 percent say expections they can save money on travel expenses is the most important factor driving their adoption of video conferencing in the next 12 months, says In-Stat.

One might safely assume the recession, and the desire to cut discretionary expense, accounts for much of the current interest.

Some 57 percent of decision-makers indicated their organizations have formal video conferencing policies in place and those policies are designed to maximize return on the video conferencing investment, particularly when it can be used to mitigate travel, says In-Stat.

“U.S. business users find video conferencing to be more appealing and beneficial when the sessions involve sharing files, collaborating on documents, and adding or including key individuals in the sessions dynamically,” says David Lemelin, In-Stat analyst. “There is also a strong desire to use video conferencing capabilities at the desktop, where users have better access to their complete set of communications and collaboration capabilities, including IM integration.”

http://email.in-stat.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/hBREt0LeRpW0K560DHgc0EQ

26% of IT Execs Say They Will Invest in VoIP This Year

Information security tops a list of projects information technology executives expect their firms to invest in this year. Some 43 percent of surveyed IT executives say they will do so, says Robert Half Technology.

Voice over Internet Protocol investments will be undertaken by 26 percent of respondents.

Some 28 percent say virtualization initiatives will be funded while data center efficiency was cited by 27 percent of respondents.

You might be surprised that so many enterprise executives are planning VoIP initiatives of one sort or another, this year. That's almost as many as those saying they will undertake data center virtualization efforts.

http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/PressRoom?id=2458