unified communications - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Top 5 criteria to assure the successful rollout of a global telecom expense management initiative

  The use of telecommunications within large organizations has increased significantly as the business ecosystem of customers, partners and employees has become more complex and globally intertwined. This changing environment now requires investment in a plethora of technologies to successfully conduct business and manage relationships. In response, many organizations have started either to establish or consider a telecom expense management (TEM) initiative.

• How joining Google Gmail with encryption system helps high-tech firm meet government security rules

  When a relatively small high-tech company with some big aerospace and defense customers wanted to adopt cloud-based email for its employees, it faced the challenge that whatever choice of cloud service it adopted, it had to meet the government's security regulations known as ITAR, or the "International Traffic in Arms Regulations."

• Lotus position: IBM kills the name, but software and founders live on

  Thirty-one years ago, Massachusetts-based software developers Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs created a program — an electronic spreadsheet — that would change the world. A year later, on Jan. 26, 1983, Lotus Development Corp. released Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC and grossed $53 million in sales. The following year, sales tripled to more than $150 million.

• Queensland parliamentary service seeks telecom review

  The Queensland parliamentary service wants to upgrade telephone infrastructure and move to IP-based unified communications, according to a tender published this month.

• Developers, engineers and analysts in high demand: Hays

  Mobile app developers and network engineers are in high demand in the private sector, driven largely by investment in mobility, virtualization and unified communications, according to recruitment firm Hays.

• Don't put innovation on hold: IDC

  CIOs say innovation is a top business priority this year, but acting on their plans will be crucial as they face increasing pressure to innovate while keeping day-to-day IT operations running smoothly, according to researcher, IDC.
  

• How Facebook built Graph Search and what it means to social media

  In the summer of 2011 Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg and former Googler Lars Rasmussen, who had joined the company about a year earlier, had a conversation about building a third "pillar" of Facebook.

• Some Facebook users asked for $100 to message Zuckerberg

  Want to send a message directly to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg? It might cost you $100, if you don't want it to wind up in his spam folder.

• Talk about big data: How the Library of Congress can index all 170 billion tweets ever posted

  The Library of Congress has received a 133TB file containing 170 billion tweets -- every single post that's been shared on the social networking site -- and now it has to figure out how to index it for researchers.

• Cisco infuses Internet TV platform with software from $5B NDS buyout

  Cisco this week unveiled the fruits of its $5 billion acquisition of video software maker NDS with a product designed to enable media companies to deliver synchronized multiscreen video services.

• When it comes to VoIP and unified communications, are you sacrificing security for cost savings?

  If you were to ask most IT professionals to connect CRM or ERP applications to an external IP network without some form of network security, they would look at you as if you had lost your mind. Even the most basic cloud-based business applications integrate security to help ensure the integrity of data and continuity of the service. Yet many organizations today are deploying business critical IP-based voice and video communications without applying standard corporate security policies.

• Facebook messaging changes could let paid advertisements into users' inboxes

  Facebook today announced a trial that could let paid advertisers directly message users' in-boxes, which have traditionally been held for messages from friends.

• Facebook bans developer of timeline-cleaning browser extension

  The developer of a browser extension that lets Facebook users block some types of content from their newsfeeds called Fluff-Busting Purity says the social network's legal department has banned him from the site, accusing him of violating the terms of service.

• Citrix: What kind of company is it anyway?

  Citrix is many different things to many people. It's a cloud company, it's a virtualization player, it's a mobile technologies vendor and it's a collaboration products provider. But according to Mark Templeton, Citrix CEO since 2001, all of that blends together and fits with where enterprise IT shops are headed. Here, speaking with IDG Enterprise Chief Content Officer John Gallant, Templeton dishes on Citrix's overall strategy, its relationships with Cisco, Microsoft and Apple, its rivalry with VMware, and its controversial take on open source cloud computing.

• Facebook vs. Fastbook: Developers offended by Zuckerberg knock on HTML5 make clone app

  A team of mobile app developers offended by Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg dissing HTML5 have created a Facebook app that they say works better than native versions because of the HTML5 coding.