Help! We Need Unified Communications

Communications barriers and latencies can cost small and medium businesses up to 40 percent of their productive time, according to a Siemens-sponsored global study suggests.

On average, 70 percent of of small and medium business execitives recently surveyed say they spend 17.5 hours each week addressing the pain points caused by communications barriers and latencies, according to a global study sponsored by Siemens Enterprise Communications and conducted by SIS International Research.

Researchers at SIS International Research determined that the time spent per week dealing with communications issues was more than 50 percent higher in companies with more than 20 workers.

Companies of 100 employees could be losing more than $500,000 each year by not addressing their employees’ most painful communications issues, considering only "hard costs."

The top five pain points are inefficient coordination; waiting for information; unwanted communications; customer complaints; and barriers to communication.

Premium Video Not Conforming to Historical Patterns?

In past recessions cable operators and other multi-channel video suppliers have seen a dip in growth rates for premium services such as HBO, Showtime or Starz. That might not be happening this time. Or at least the impact has not yet been seen.

At the same time, Netflix growth seems to have accelerated as well.

Perhaps consumers will behave differently this recession than they have in the past, and in ways that are good for video providers. Better promotion from more providers or a change in the value of in-home entertainment might be explanations.

So far, this is a bit of a surprise to the upside.

Smaller Businesses Warming to Cloud Computing

The most important factors driving businesses of all sizes to implement cloud computing solutions are the same factors that have prompted companies to outsource IT services for years: lower costs, better performance and agility, according to Hosting.com, which recently surveyed 644 executives in a broad range of industry verticals, and including firms with fewer than 100 employees as well as firms with more than 1,000 employees. About 69 percent of the respondents say they have fewer than 100 employees.

The driving factors for adopting cloud services are nearly the same for all company sizes, the report suggests, and business size plays no role in how quickly the executives believe cloud technologies will be adopted.

Cost savings, availability and performance are the top three values respondents believe cloud computing represents, but scalability also ranks high.

Security and support are seen as the two top obstacles cloud computing providers must surmount.

But roughly a third of executives in the small business and mid-sized business categories think they will be using cloud computing in some way at their firms within the next 12 months.

About 70 percent of respondents say Web applications are best suited to cloud computing, but 41 percent say data base operations are best suited to cloud computing. About 37 percent see application servers as ideally suited for cloud computing.

About 18 percent of respondents prefer to buy using annual contracts while 48 percent prefer month-to-month payment schemes.

It is worth noting that Amazon Web Services (Amazon's cloud computing service) says it now has 490,000 developers in its program.

Voice Mail to Text Using Skype

Skype now offers voicemail-to-text conversion for all Skype voicemail users. SpinVox converts voice messages to text in English, Spanish, French and German and the messages are then sent by Skype as an SMS text message directly to a designated mobile phone.

The intended use case for 'visible voicemail' is an on-the-go user away from a PC and using a phone not equipped with a data plan and smart phone to receive those messages directly on the mobile device.

Recipients of converted voice mail messages can listen to the full voice message by either signing into Skype or by calling their "Skype To Go" number. Skype users may choose instead to receive voicemail notification using SMS or for free by email.

"Skype is the first internet communications software provider to deploy SpinVox, further reinforcing our position as the only provider of voice to text messaging services which are used daily by millions of people on five continents," says SpinVox co-founder and CEO, Christina Domecq. "Our user base has grown over twenty-fold in the last 12 months and bringing Skype's voicemail subscribers on board will accelerate this trend."

PC Subsidies Now Joining Phone Subsidies at AT&T

AT&T wants to move beyond subsidizing mobile phones with that strategy to other hardware, led by netbooks, that use the AT&T wireless broadband network. After rebates, consumers can buy netbooks from Acer and Dell for $99 and AT&T says it is in talks with other computer makers as well.

The payback is substantial, as AT&T gains customers paying $60 a month under contract and spends a couple hundred dollars upfront on the subsidies. The move also should help offset weakening sales from enterprise customers.

AT&T says it will expand its subsidy program to cameras, portable video game machines, GPS devices.

Depending on how AT&T decides to price those connections, the firm could undercut some of the demand Clearwire has been talking about stimulating. "Casual use" plans are a prime example.

Where this all culminates, of course, is an omnibus plan that allows users access for a number of devices as part of a single account, much as users now buy "family plans" for multiple mobiles.

Viewers Want Widgets, Parks Associates Says

Video-on-demand libraries and widgets will be the first generation of video services driving adoption of connected television experiences in the U.S., according to Parks Associates.

Some 33 percent of respondents are interested in widgets, and almost 50 percent are interested in premium Web content, including TV shows and movies, through a connected set-top box, says Parks Associates.

Among TV widgets Parks Associates believes have appeal are customized news, weather, sports, or traffic information.

“Broadband households are growing accustomed to viewing video off the Internet,” says Kurt Scherf, Parks Associates VP.

Scherf says consumers are willing to pay – either on the price of a television or as an additional subscription cost – for certain features.

iPhone is Global Mobile Web Leader

Apple's iPhone is now responsible for 66.61 percent of global mobile Web traffic according to a NetApplications.

The Java ME platform follows a distant second at 9.06 percent, trailed by Windows Mobile at 6.91 percent. NetApplications notes that despite the iPhone's commanding lead in mobile browsing share, Android (6.15 percent, tied with Symbian) and BlackBerry (2.24 percent) are rapidly gaining market share, but the report notes that doesn’t mean Apple's lead is shrinking, but that the overall market is growing fast.

Though one must be wary about imputing too much, the current figures indicate that there are clear end user behavioral differences between iPhone and BlackBerry users. That might be caused by user interface barriers or other user preferences, but the differences are striking.