Measuring the ROI of Video Conferencing

The case for Video Conferencing can be an easy one to make. Many of the clients we work with have some rather simple needs that Video can quickly address.

  • Getting their disparate teams to Collaborate on projects
  • Using Video Conferencing with home based workers for more face-to-face time with other employees
  • Working with vendors or partners to enhance their relationships
  • Enabling users who are across town from each other in high-traffic cities to stay at their desks and work with teams that are miles, or sometimes with traffic, hours apart.

However, many clients who install these solutions quickly learn that tracking the usage of the systems and staff may not be an easy task. Return on Investment (ROI) is a key and critical component for tracking the use, expansion, and overall success of any video deployment. Regardless of the type of endpoint (room based, personal system, or desktop), making sure that the teams are using them to their fullest extent can now be as simple as logging into a Web Portal. Read More »

Cisco WebEx Meetings for iPad and iPhone App Raises Bar for Mobile Productivity

An exciting new update to the popular Cisco WebEx Meetings for iPad and iPhone App was released on March 30th, 2013 to the Apple App Store. Cisco WebEx Meetings for iPad and iPhone enable users to enjoy the full meeting experience from their smartphone or tablet. The new Cisco WebEx Meetings for iPad and iPhone 4.0 release delivers some long awaited features such as

  • joining the audio portion more seamlessly with the Auto Call Me feature
  • Single Sign-On login via standalone browser
  • the new ability to share documents while hosting a meeting on the iPad. Read More »

Is Your Contact Center Listening?

As the Services Manager over the Contact Center Practice at CDW, I am always being asked “What are things we need to consider before starting a contact center migration, upgrade, and installation? How do I make sure my contact center is ready for the ways of communicating in a multichannel world? i.e. social video, web chat, email.” Most times my response is “People have a lot to say, is your Contact Center ready to listen?”  Your customers are transforming as well as your workforce. Read More »

Putting Cisco’s WebEx Meeting Server to the Test – Part 2

This is part two of a technical discussion of Cisco WebEx Meetings Server 1.0.  You can find part one here.

In this post we’ll cover integration of CWMS to Cisco’s UC infrastructure, some advanced configuration, the deployment scenarios my peer Jon Nelson and I tested in the CDW EFT lab and some design principles we developed that help CDW’s UC Solutions Architects design deployments with customers.  We’ll also briefly touch on what Cisco Early Field Trials do for CDW, and by extension, our customers. Read More »

IBM Connect 2013 (Not Lotusphere)

IBM’s Connect 2013 conference was held in Orlando, January 27 – 31, and it was once again chock full of exciting product announcements, fun times with customers, and sessions filled with great content. Our team is very proud that CDW was recognized as a finalist for the Distinguished Business Achievement award. CDW was also recognized as a ‘key business partner’ during IBM sessions on Social Communications (Unified Communications) and cloud mail migrations. In fact, CDW’s own Rupert Clayton delivered a great presentation on how to move to IBM’s cloud email offering, SmartCloud Notes, sharing tips from the implementations our engineering team has learned from prior migrations. IBM Collaboration Software is the largest segment of IBM software sold at CDW, and thanks to our customers, 2012 was a year of double-digit growth in software sales and services. We spoke with many existing and hopefully future customers at the CDW booth, where we had a little ‘social’ fun putting together a little vine video. A big thank you to our customers who were able to join us for our customer appreciation event at Splitsville in Downtown Disney. Unfortunately the photos of the backwards bowling didn’t survive the night.

This was the 20th anniversary of this conference, previously called Lotusphere. Read More »

Putting Cisco’s WebEx Meetings Server to the Test – Part 1

My coworker Srini Kilambi recently discussed Cisco’s new conferencing product, Cisco WebEx Meetings Server (CWMS) 1.0, from a features and licensing perspective.

My peer Jon Nelson, CDW’s UC Technical Architect, and I recently setup several CWMS systems in our Early Field Trial (EFT) lab to test various deployments and features during the CWMS Beta. This will be the first of two posts on the technical side of CWMS. In this post I’ll share a bit about the product, the virtual machines that provide its features (and their requirements), and some of the design considerations for CWMS deployments in the Enterprise. Read More »

Is My Baby Ugly? The Importance of Polling

“Is my baby ugly?” I use this polling question during my Microsoft Lync demonstrations. The question always gets a laugh. My audience quickly realizes the feedback is anonymous, so the screen updates to indicate that some participants are switching their answers from ‘no’ to ‘yes’. I’ll hear more snickering on the audio conference as the poll summary changes. Yes, it’s fun, but the exercise emphasizes the power of the polling feature to gather anonymous feedback. Read More »

Cisco Delivers Holiday Cookies to IBM

In December, Cisco provided a tasty holiday treat by releasing their latest software that integrates Cisco’s telephony systems with IBM’s social communications platform, IBM Sametime.  Cisco calls it CUCI-IBM (Cisco UC Integration for IBM Sametime), pronounced “Cookie” IBM.  My wife would tell you I’m a fan of cookies in general, but I’m quite excited by this CUCI that provides significant new functionality over past voicemail and phone control plug-ins from Cisco.  Read More »

On Premises Collaboration

When people think of WebEx the first thing that comes to mind is cloud collaboration and while that definitely is a viable and powerful collaboration tool, Cisco just recently has released an on premise version of WebEx.

The benefits of collaboration are numerous. Being able to share on the fly or scheduled is nowadays critical in a work force that is distributed. Couple that with video and its even more powerful. Read More »

Should I Move To The Cloud? For Executives, It’s Not About Tech

For executives, the consideration is less about cloud technology and more about how a cloud solution could improve their business. At CDW, we are uniquely positioned to guide executives through this important consideration. In order to press on this advantage, we’ll need to understand the executive considerations for cloud. Here are at least two decision criteria that executives apply to determine the viability of cloud for their business.  Read More »