It’s become increasingly clear that media-rich applications like video are transforming how we communicate, work, and live.  As someone who has spent years working in the Public Sector space, I’ve seen a major transformation in Education, including new ways we are approaching teaching and helping individuals to learn.  At Cisco, we are continuing our commitment to better education through the use of video through a variety of methods: video surveillance to protect our students; Digital Media Signage to provide a more interactive environment which better connects schools with their communities, students, and parents; and through TelePresence and Webex for enhanced classroom and distance learning applications. Our Video-Enabled Teaching and Learning Solution platform helps students in K-12 and higher education gain the skills they need to advance in today’s workplace by introducing them to a more collaborative, virtual learning environment.  This transformational learning environment will  empower them with 21st-century skills needed to increase overall U.S. competitiveness and job preparedness.  Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers shared his perspective on the future of collaboration and the value for education during a recent virtual forum for education leaders.  

News@Cisco writer Charles Waltner offers a look at efforts of the National LamdaRail. He writes: "One of the hottest topics in the networking industry these days is how the United State’s should develop its broadband infrastructure, highlighted most recently by the Federal Communications Commission’s comprehensive, multi-billion dollar plan to keep the country competitive in the age of the Internet. But since 2003, one organization has been quietly building a big part of the country’s digital future on its own." He also reports that the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute is using the NLR network to connect scientists to its $100 million National Institutes of Health research facility. Waltner writes that the National LambdaRail (NLR) is now one of the world’s most formidable public networks, capable of boosting economic development and scientific research through the power of ultra-fast broadband communications.  But getting NLR this far has required a little luck and a lot of perseverance.   He writes a bit about NLR’s history.  

As I explained in the Part I post of this series - Unified Communications and Collaboration Solutions - one of the questions I am asked continually when discussing collaboration solutions within various industries is "where does all this fit with Unified Communications?". While I typically don't get technical in this blog, it is worth explaining the pairing between Collaboration and Unified Communications since both are joined at the hip and currently getting a lot of attention in the market. It's a big topic to cover so I'm covering it as Part I and Part II posts, with Part I posted Wednesday, April 28 and Part II posted here today. PART II: THE BUSINESS VALUE OF UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS In my Part I post I left off with a summary of possible building blocks in a UC multivendor ecosystem - Microsoft OCS, Avaya call manager, Juniper network infrastructure, HP servers, IBM Sametime, etc. Most of these UC technologies work seamlessly in the background and are not directly visible or experienced by the user. The true business value of Unified Communications can only be achieved if the workforce has the proper set of every day communication solutions which provide for an effective human interface and a rich user experience. In other words, the physical end point devices (desktop VoIP phones, conference phones, video conferencing codecs and monitors, telepresence rooms, etc.) HAVE to be solid, robust, and easy to use. The conferencing and bridging platforms for managing multipoint calls also need to integrate with the UC infrastructure.     Collaboration Solutions Architecture Consider the reference architecture diagram to the left. Management and conferencing platforms in the "collabor-ation core" interface directly with the UC ecosystem for fully interoperable call control. This would be complemented by a complete portfolio of High Definition (HD) voice, video, and telepresence end points to provide an easy to use, open standards, and best-in-class user experience throughout the enterprise, regardless of location. Corporate HQ, regional offices, teleworkers, partners/customers, and even legacy networks in the field should all be considered. The key to implementing the best collaboration user experience is selecting a good partners for your implementation - those with open standards and interoperability, with a strong market portfolio of end point devices. This will allow for fully integrated “click-to-call” capabilities from any UC directory or contact list by users across the enterprise. Such a collaboration solutions implementation will allow for any organization to span the user touch points, anywhere, any time, from the desktop to the board room. UC Partnerships Are Key In the UC space, flexibility and interoperability is king. Vendor selection should be based on each organizations willingness to align leading UC players around an open standard approach to solution development and deployment through partnerships and interoperability. Such partnerships ensure UC vendors innovate and deliver solutions based on customer needs. Summary To summarize, select a partner on the path to Unified Communications that fully enables a mixed UC environment with collaboration solutions and endpoints for the best possible user experience and interface: 1. Easy to implement in every industry and working environment. 2. All of the desired attributes of best-in-class solutions to empower your organization. 3. Robust product portfolio to provide a rich user experience from the desktop to the board room. 4. Investment protection of your current IT assets through interoperability and deployment support on YOUR timetable. 5. Delivers business value with a fast return on investment

I was talking to Tim Weber from the BBC earlier this week about Microsoft cloud services and as often happens we discussed who is actually in the cloud already and who us there with Microsoft. I mentioned Coca Cola Enterprises is one of the customers who’ve made the move to the cloud with Microsoft Online and the video above highlights their use of SharePoint Online and hopefully helps convince people that Microsoft is definitely in the cloud. Add to them GlaxoSmithkline, Aviva, Blockbuster, Energizer, Novartis and many more. Microsoft now have over 1 million paying customers using our Microsoft Online services so we’re definitely in the cloud. In fact we’re “all in”              

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at Aberdeen’s CMO Summit 2009 in San Francisco on the topic of enabling collaboration in marketing teams. It was a fun experience and the audience asked some great questions. In most organizations, marketing as a line of business (functional department) has one of the highest demands for effective collaboration due to the creative and iterative nature of every day work flows. Following is a quick synopsis of my presentation I gave yesterday to Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and marketing leaders from companies with some of the world's leading brands. The organizational pressures of pushing both short term performance and long term brand building initiatives rest squarely on the shoulders of the CMO. Increased customer complexity in an age of new forms of media and social networking further add to the CMO's challenges. In addition, ever changing cultural and lifestyle choices among staff members and target markets makes the role of CMO one of the more hot seat executive positions in any company. Further, strategic marketing initiatives in response to the pressures, complexity, and trends can often create fragmented marketing teams or “silos” which impact overall marketing department productivity by creating distance and communication barriers. The ability of marketing leaders to reduce distance barriers to enable collaboration and empowerment among staff members can ultimately lead to more streamlined marketing teams capable of faster decision making, better sharing and coordination of plans, goal setting and problem setting, and ultimately project option decisions, particularly in times of crises management. Enter the importance of collaboration solutions for marketers – getting teams to work together closely on projects to achieve common goals. Voice and video conferencing, content sharing, and telepresence technologies can enable marketing teams to bust through silos and collaborate effectively regardless of their physical location. The application of collaboration solutions into marketing work flows can be in any number of everyday business processes including the following: Global Team Meetings Virtual 1:1s with CMO Strategic Planning Sessions Creative Process Project and Event Management Product Definition, Launch, and Life Cycle Management Design Review and Approval Editor and Analyst Briefings Sales Training Customer Demos and Presentations Partner Meetings and Councils The benefits and business value of effective collaboration are quickly apparent to the entire marketing organization at multiple levels: work flow, employees, partners, and company ROI. Benefits will flow down through the department in the form of sharpened marketing processes and efficiency, impressive innovation and creative thinking, better decision making and moral levels of employees. Customers and partners will be more loyal due to tighter relationships with your team. The company as a whole will also see results with a faster time to market on new products and initiatives, reduced costs and carbon footprint, and ultimately increased shareholder value. Put collaboration tools in place for your marketing organization - you will clearly see enhanced efficiency, productivity, and creativity leading both short term performance and long term results!

"History should be our guide. The United States led the world’s economies in the 20th century because we led the world in innovation. Today, the competition is keener; the challenge is tougher; and that is why innovation is more important than ever. It is the key to good, new jobs for the 21st century. That’s how we will ensure a high quality of life for this generation and future generations. With these investments, we’re planting the seeds of progress for our country, and good-paying, private-sector jobs for the American people." -President Barack Obama, August 5, 2009 I’ve never been a big fan of pyramid diagrams, mainly because I think they are trite and overused. Every time I see a PowerPoint presentation using a pyramid to represent “strategy” I immediately lose attention for the topic, thinking to myself, here we go again. I just returned from the World Business Forum in New York City where I listened to some of the world’s most powerful leaders and top thinking business gurus. Over the course of the 2 day event there were several highly successful presenters who had diagrams to represent their philosophies and strategies. Which shape? That’s right, a pyramid. About two weeks ago (September 2009) I heard that the Obama administration released their Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs. It peaked my interest because I write about collaboration, a fundamental requirement in the process of innovation. So I looked it up online, downloaded the document, and saved it into an electronic file to read sometime on an airplane. While flying back from New York tonight I had a chance to take a look. In a time of deep recession and jobs leaving the US workforce due to unemployment and off-shoring, I’m surprised that more noise has not been made about the plan. Perhaps the reason for lack of attention is that it was released in the midst of the health care debate? Maybe it was overlooked because of the Chicago Olympic bid? Or maybe the shadow cast by the economic recession is so great that the prospect of innovation and recovery seems far fetched? Obama’s Innovation Strategy builds on $100 billion of stimulus funds targeted to support and establish government policies as building blocks of innovation. A diagram accompanies the plan description on the first page to depict the various “building blocks.” The form of the diagram? Pyramid. It didn’t do a lot to peak my interest but I plowed ahead through the document anyway. Here’s what I learned. The strategy plan has three parts as follows: 1. Invest in the Building Blocks of American Innovation.2. Promote Competitive Markets that Spur Productive Entrepreneurship3. Catalyze Breakthroughs for National Priorities The paragraphs dedicated to these three parts read like a “to do” list, the respective items beginning with every action oriented adjective in the book. Not that I don’t appreciate the content and effort to push Americans, but it made me chuckle because of the carefully selected adjectives used to describe how the administration will jump start innovation: restore, educate, build, develop, promote, encourage, support, improve, unleash (you have to love that one), drive, harness. Really, check out “the Pyramid” and see for yourself. The Innovation Strategy Plan seems more like a vision for the future as opposed to a true plan. It also comes off as a justification piece for the $billions in funding provided by Recovery Act - how, why, and where economic stimulus investments are being made. I find it to be an interesting topic because it is unclear to me what level of involvement the government should be playing – laissez-faire or stringent oversight. Obama’s plan seeks to “strike a balance” by investing in building blocks, primarily through the economic stimulus, that only the government can provide in sectors of national importance. Ultimately the tip of the pyramid is a new level of innovation that will stimulate growth and generate quality jobs. Bring on the innovation, lose the pyramid.    

With health care reform a hot current events topic, I thought I would republish a blog post I made in August. It seems even more relevant today since 32 million more Americans will soon be eligible for primary care health services through expanded insurance coverage under the new health care reform bill. With the flood of new patients stressing rural clinics, health care organizations will need to utilize creative solutions to provide doctor-patient collaboration.I never had a chance to meet my grandfather. He passed away before I was born. I do have a lot of old pictures and have heard countless stories about him. He was a doctor and moved his family from Vermont to the rural San Joaquin Valley area of California in the early 1900s. He was a general practitioner and most of his appointments were house calls to families which he made by bicycle. He prided himself on the intimate well being and collaborative care of these families who were not only his patients but also community members and neighbors.

The Iceland volcano ash situation continues to impact travel in Europe and the rest of the world. To date there have been more than 65,000 cancelled flights and most companies are issuing travel advisories to their employees to cancel travel to or from Europe and reschedule their trips until later this Spring. Even when airlines resume flights it could still take 7 – 10 days to clear the backlog of stranded travelers. What a mess!

Gaining competitive advantage – it’s tough to do. Especially with today’s economic climate in which budgets are tight, staffing thin, and organizations are expected to do more with less. Shareholder value is still king, however, as executives are held to a high standard of return on investment regardless of the global economic crisis. Companies need an edge … a secret weapon. Something to enhance their level of innovation, efficiency, and productivity to push into new markets where trails can be blazed. Get above the rest where there is more elbow room. This seems to be the 2.0 era. Business 2.0, Web 2.0, Capitalism 2.0, etc. So why not Collaboration 2.0? Yeah, it’s a buzz word these days, but maybe that is the secret weapon to get above the rest. In a recent article, The Collaboration Imperative (Bloomberg.com, Sept 24, 2009), author Vineet Nayar discusses the growing recognition by organizations of the need to collaborate with customers, partners, government entities, stakeholders, colleagues … even with the competition. In order to survive in this economy, business requires the cover of a collaborative ecosystem. Collaboration is not just about having tools in place. It’s a culture and attitude with a human element. Companies need to believe in it from the top down and executives need to lead by example. Yes, collaboration tools and solutions will enable the process, but it is the people that make it happen. That is why I like to look beyond tools like voice and video conferencing, telepresence, and content sharing collaboration solutions and consider the business processes where employees will put them into practice to gain that competitive edge. Following are a few examples. Human Resources Process Interviewing and recruiting can be a time consuming collaborative process involving meeting lots of prospects, arranging interviews with the hiring manager, and getting feedback on the role and candidates from other colleagues along the way. Traditionally, companies post the job online or in the newspaper and any candidate must be willing and able to present themselves locally to attend a live interview. Sometimes the best candidate isn’t down the street and some jobs don’t require physical presence. Video conferencing and telepresence allow for life-like interviewing of a candidate in another city or state... prospective employers can meet potential hires to quickly get to the "short list", decreasing the time to hire. The virtual collaboration process also saves the expense of flying prospects in and increases the number of candidates that can be considered.Training ProcessTraining on new products, company policies, or best practices within a given industry often involves having employees convene in a central location for a day or more of live classroom collaboration and instruction. This is challenging for several reasons – employees have to travel to the central training location, entire days are often dedicated to the session, and staff unable to attend the training require a repeat course. Further, travel expenses can be prohibitive. Video conference and telepresence based training can address many of these issues – instruction can be offered in two to three hour sessions over a period of time. Participants can join remotely from conference rooms or from their desktop PC allowing for life-like collaboration without the inefficiencies and costs of gathering in a central facility. Virtual training and distance learning can yield many benefits toward a competitive edge such as decreased time to market for new products and services as well as a shortened cycle to employee productivity for new hires. Stakeholder Relations Process Local citizens, shareholders, employees, and the media are demanding more collaboration and transparency from organizations of all types - corporations, school systems, NGOs, or government agencies. It is in the best interests of most organizations to maintain strong stakeholder relationships to be viewed in the public eye as a viable and respected entity. Most stakeholders, however, cannot attend public hearings and meetings that organizations hold due to work conflicts and distance. One means of addressing this issue is to record open meetings and make them available for public viewing. The state of New York, for example, has done this since the implementation of Executive Order No. 3, promulgated by the Governor on January 1, 2007. As a result all open meetings are available on the Internet for playback and web cast. Video conferencing is great as the platform for recording these open meetings. The same video end points used to record can also be utilized for typical meetings between distant locations for ongoing and daily collaboration. The recession has sent us a signal - it's time to rise above the rest. If innovation has to drive us out of this recession, the best brains must come together to create value. That will happen only if we start believing in the power of Collaboration 2.0. Besides, I like elbow room.

A plan is perfect until the unexpected happens. One thing that is constant is change. Crises events never follow a game plan. These are just some of the anecdotal phrases I have heard describing the events surrounding the Swine Flu outbreak of one year ago. So wouldn't you think that the CDC would be ready with the communications infrastructure to battle a pandemic? Or to broaden the scope of the discussion, that any organization large or small would be prepared to respond in times of crises when unexpected changes rock the world? Some are prepared as you will see in examples below, but others not so much. Despite planning and established processes, Swine Flu took CDC health officials completely by surprise (USA Today, April 22, 2010). The virus spread as quickly as jets from Mexico were landing around the world. Scientists had no idea how severe the flu would be since there was no recorded history of the strain. Operation centers scrambled to set up lines of communication for global collaboration on three priorities: Contain the spread of the virus Research the virus itself to understand its properties (and develop a vaccine) Educate the public Despite the challenges, the pandemic now seems to be over. But what have we learned from the H1N1 example? What could have been done better? How could organizations have been better prepared to respond, communicate, and collaborate? These questions are often asked after significant crises' .... 911 attacks, SARs, hurricane Katrina, rising gas prices, Haiti earthquake, and this week's Icelandic Volcano. To further complicate matters, such events often make travel to convene in meetings difficult if not impossible. In many respects, the 2000's have been the decade of disruption. Organizations of all types, public government agencies and private enterprise, would be wise to consider these examples. Collaboration solutions such as voice and video conferencing and telepresence provide for on demand meeting capabilities in times of crises and are an effective travel alternative, allowing organizations to ensure business continuity and immediate access to knowledge experts during unforeseen events. There are some great examples of organizations who have used collaboration solutions effectively during crises. This week in Europe, Regus, which operates the largest global network of 2,500 publicly available video conferencing rooms and telepresence suites, experienced an increase in usage of 108 percent in the UK and 18 percent across Europe during the last week as stranded travelers sought methods to maintain 'business as usual'. Mexico's National Center for Health Technology Excellence (CENETEC) did indeed utilize video conferencing systems to help them stem the initial outbreak of H1N1 (but other health organizations around the world as we have learned were not quite as well prepared). The Oklahoma Army National Guard uses video conferencing infrastructure to provide for rapid readiness and response during state emergencies such as tornadoes. It is clear that preparation with proper communications infrastructure allows for better response and collaboration in times of crises. Further, it also provides for better business practices during the normal course of daily operation. Organizations can utilize collaboration solutions to make themselves more nimble with immediate capability to bring decision makers together to improvise and be responsive to stakeholders at all times.