Month: July 2012

Federated Identities: Is Secure Ease-of-Access Keeping Up with Cloud Usage Patterns?

by , posted in Secure

B. Ostergaard
B. Ostergaard

Summary Bullets:       

  • Business users are pushing companies into a multi-cloud environment.
  • The automated mechanisms for handling multi-cloud access securely are not yet in place.

It’s not just the European summer weather that’s cloudy; so too is the future IT paradigm.  In this emerging multi-cloud near-future, business users will want easy access to corporate cloud resources from their private cloud, as well as the ability to launch apps in a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment and the ability to access a variety of ever-changing external SaaS clouds.  Users would prefer not to have to log in to these clouds individually with different passwords and log-in procedures, which just results in people keeping lists of passwords on yellow stickers or Word files on their desktop computers, clearly breaching any corporate security policy.  Public cloud destinations such as Amazon mostly rely on user-centric passwords (i.e., not aligned with the password used for corporate data site access), and even if a cloud site such as Salesforce.com (SFDC) is linked to a specific corporate account, it will still not sync with the user’s corporate password.  If the company wants to make such cloud access easy and safe (and keep password lists off user desks), the solution lies in storing individual passwords in the company’s Active Directory (AD) and subscribing to a federated identity service that automates access to multiple clouds based on the user information in AD.  With a federated identity service, users get a single sign-on service that may be either single-factor or require two-factor authentication for access to sensitive data. Continue reading “Federated Identities: Is Secure Ease-of-Access Keeping Up with Cloud Usage Patterns?” →

The Mobile Platform Battle for the Enterprise Continues

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Mobilize

C. Dunlap
C. Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

  • By year’s end, MEAPs will expand backend system connector support.
  • MEAPs need to continue to penetrate the enterprise through channel programs, OEM partnerships, and cloud coupling.

The battle to gain ground in the mobile platform space continues between traditional enterprise application platform (EAP) providers and the newer group of mobile application development platform (MADP) vendors, both vying for the attention of the enterprise.  Between now and the end of the year, expect to hear a lot more from both of these groups, each of which will present strong arguments for why enterprise developers will want to invest in their platform technology to implement mobile strategies which include mobile development, deployment, and management of applications for a variety of devices. Continue reading “The Mobile Platform Battle for the Enterprise Continues” →

The Gradual Rollout of IP eXchange and Its Potential Implications on the Enterprise

by , posted in Network

J. Stradling
J. Stradling

Summary Bullets:

  • The main idea behind IPX is end-to-end QoS for both mobile and fixed IP traffic.  Mobile data and video are about to go on a bungee jump driven by handset and LTE evolution, and IPX is designed to ensure that improved qualities can be delivered on new offerings.
  • At the moment, a handful of global wholesale providers offer early-stage IPX, and many more are expected to follow suit.

Thus far, IPX has provided real benefits on single-provider platforms to deliver HD voice and premium VoIP.  Companies such as BT Wholesale, KPN/iBasis, DT ICSS, TI Sparkle, France Telecom Orange, A1 Telekom Austria, TeliaSonera International Carrier and Tata Communications are all examples of IPX providers with full commercial products available.  We are likely to see more such bilateral agreements in the short term.  Carriers report that mobile voice calls last longer when the voice quality is better.  To put some numbers on this and get some idea of how much longer: BT Wholesale cites around 10% longer call times, whilst TI Sparkle reports increases approaching 40%.  Business clients might surmise that this potentially leads to raised corporate efficiency in closing deals, as both parties can actually hear what the other is talking about, as well as for solving technical issues and so on. Continue reading “The Gradual Rollout of IP eXchange and Its Potential Implications on the Enterprise” →

Is It Time to Abandon Your Interactive Voice Response System?

by , posted in Communicate

K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Customer complaints regarding the IVR interface with customer service are so plentiful that many customers and companies wonder if they may not be achieving the purposes for which they were designed: to speed up service, reduce company costs, and improve customer satisfaction and longevity.
  • More intelligent IVRs and the expanding use of smartphones/tablets by consumers have the potential to alleviate today’s major IVR frustrations.  They can eliminate unnecessary interactions and enable visual IVR functionality allowing customers to navigate more easily through menu choices. 

I recently saw the results of a study done by New York University that said 49% of the people surveyed believed that use of interactive voice response (IVR) systems in customer service environments benefits neither the customer nor the company.  Only 15% of respondents felt that, as customers, they received any benefit from this common self-service tool being used by enterprises of all sizes today.  With this negative perception of IVRs being so widespread, you may wonder what is driving the growing use of the technology.  Well, to be honest, there are a few benefits to both customers and companies that originally brought IVRs to prominence in customer care circles.  First of all, IVRs enable companies to extend service hours without having to staff expensive live contact centers on a 24×7 basis.  Secondly, they do reduce queue times, because it has been shown that approximately two-thirds of calls coming into contact centers are fairly simple requests that effective IVRs can handle very well, freeing up live agents to take more complex calls requiring human interaction.  Finally, IVRs provide a sense of privacy or anonymity to consumers who may be calling to verify they are overdrawn on their checking account or late on a payment – facts they may not want to discuss with a live person.  So, don’t throw away your IVR just yet. Continue reading “Is It Time to Abandon Your Interactive Voice Response System?” →

The Season of Analyst Events: Operators Look to the Enterprise

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize

K. Weldon
K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

  • The top U.S. carriers for enterprise mobility (AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint) held analyst events over the past two months, disclosing service strategies for the business market.
  • How different are their plans, do they see the same trends in customer deployments, and what kinds of new offerings are on the horizon?

The season for analyst events is not quite over, with a number of European operators still planning to host analysts over the summer and fall.  These events provide a general perspective on each company’s strategic focus, performance, key service areas, customer case studies, and in some cases, planned service launches.  Do they all have the same priorities in providing solutions to enterprise customers? Continue reading “The Season of Analyst Events: Operators Look to the Enterprise” →

Help! My Network is Broken!

by , posted in Network
M. Spanbauer
M. Spanbauer

Summary Bullets:

  • You really can’t run an enterprise without some level of support contract these days due to infrastructure complexity
  • Your own talent pool & business needs will drive the level of support contract required for your environment

There are many case studies and hot topics that have circulated for years (and will continue to for many more, I’d wager) about how much support contracts cost.  However, I’ll ask you this, “Do you want to be the one responsible when you explain that the network outage could have either been avoided, or considerably shortened with expert help available?”  The question isn’t whether you should have access to expert help. The question is what level of expertise is appropriate for your organization.  This in turn depends on the systems in question, how many vendors are involved (in which case you begin to drift from a vendor specific support contract into a more involved services engagement with an integrator/partner – which is out of the scope of this particular blog) and what kind of an investment in your IT staffing you’ve made – and will continue to make.  Certifications, time out of office, headcount, expertise focus, business metrics, uptime requirements, line of business commitments for network uptime, etc.  It’s quite simple, right? (Tongue firmly in cheek.)  At minimum, you should have a standard business hours call center contract, which also gives you access to software updates. Not every vendor requires a contract for this and it is a significant perk for customers of those who are satisfied.  Though in mission critical situations, when a problem can run from a simple configuration error (which in my experience, is increasingly rare) to the more grievous hardware failure that you may not have hot spared on site (these lessons are learned once, painfully, and then never repeated), you need expedited assistance.  When a two or four hour support contract is put in place, a vendor or local partner is trained and carries inventory for every SKU that such a high alert contract may need.  After all, when an outage occurs, it could be trivial, it could represent millions of dollars per hour in lost revenue, or it could result in potential litigation (think about emergency services or when lives are on the line).  This is the vendor-side support model. Continue reading “Help! My Network is Broken!” →

AT&T’s Watson Looks for Its Voice in a Crowded App Marketplace

by , posted in Communicate

B. Washburn
B. Washburn

Summary Bullets:

  • AT&T Watson comes from different roots than Google’s Voice Actions or Apple’s Siri.  Its API faces mobile apps, but it could transcend them.
  • AT&T’s charge for use of Watson may turn developers away, but it can win with a premium pitch that attracts developers with business models generating actual revenues.

Just as it said it would, AT&T released its first API function tapping its Watson speech engine in June.   Starting with a one-time $99 charge (and a rate of about $0.01 per transaction starting in 2013), developers can access and incorporate the network-based voice recognition service into their apps.  There is just one function call currently available: speech-to-text.  However, speech-to-text is how successful voice recognition applications such as Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s S Voice, and Nuance Communications’ Vlingo mobile app all work (and by no coincidence, Vlingo is a Watson licensee).  Voice dictation, when captured and interpreted accurately, can transcribe and send SMS, launch Web searches and directory searches, or search through specific documentation or help pages, such as a software manual. Continue reading “AT&T’s Watson Looks for Its Voice in a Crowded App Marketplace” →

The Passion of Selling the Cloud

by , posted in Cloud Enable
M. Halama
M. Halama

Summary Bullets:

  • Hybrid cloud has scope to satisfy many needs
  • Hybrid cloud requires a dispassionate sale

It is a common belief that the public face of selling requires passion. Pure cloud services, such as those from Google or Amazon, offer plain and direct solutions that can satisfy straightforward storage, compute and applications needs. So, pure cloud solutions play a useful role for IT managers. They can also be readily understood by customers and believed in by sales people. Hybrid cloud is, however, growing in popularity among buyers and sellers, because not all IT problems are straightforward and hybrid cloud offers wider choices to match more needs. Continue reading “The Passion of Selling the Cloud” →