The Unified Communications Buyer’s Guide to Picking the Right Cloud Telephony Solution | SlashdotMedia AdOps Asset Management

The Unified Communications Buyer’s Guide to Picking the Right Cloud Telephony Solution

There’s no better time for a business to embrace unified communications solutions. Actually, that’s not entirely true – several years ago would probably have been a better time. After all, these tools offer major benefits to businesses of all kinds, from the largest enterprises to the smallest shops. With a UC system in place, an organization’s employees can become more collaborative, more efficient, and happier. The sooner a company starts to take advantage of these possibilities, the better.

For those firms that have yet to embrace UC, though, one of the most important steps they must take is choosing a particular solution. While UC as a general concept is fairly straightforward and consistent, there is a tremendous amount of variety between the various services available. Here are some important considerations to keep in mind when evaluating available UC options.

6 Questions for a Prospective Cloud Service Provider

In order to remain competitive in today’s global marketplace, organizations must constantly improve customer service, reduce IT overhead, and increase efficiency—frequently with fewer resources than before. This may seem like an impossible feat, but the advent of UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) has enabled IT departments to be viewed as business drivers rather than cost centers.

Companies looking to take advantage of a cloud UC strategy need to consider the move from a myriad of business perspectives. “How will Provider X’s solution serve specific departmental needs as well as the requirements of the organization as a whole?” “Will Provider Y be able to better equip us with the required tools to streamline processes and increase collaboration?”

Here are six additional questions to ask any potential UCaaS provider before making a decision.

The Road Forward. An IT Roadmap for Scaling Self Service Reporting

A new implementation model, anchored by a real partnership between IT leaders and business users, calls for IT to own the center of operations, security and governance, data acquisition, maintenance and provisioning. In this paper, you’ll find an in-depth roadmap for scaling self-service reporting at your organization.

Read this report to learn about:

• New process for fast prototyping
• Clear enablement roles for IT
• Suggested workflows for new technology
• Nurturing a company wide culture of business analytics

6 Best Practices for Creating Effective Dashboards

The hallmark of a data-driven dashboard is the ability to see and understand data at the speed of thought. Well-planned dashboards will allow both business leaders and knowledge workers alike to ask and answer questions in real-time, turn insight into action and inspire true innovation.

In this whitepaper, you’ll learn about:

• How to connect all of your data to a dashboard—no matter where it lives

• How to blend data from multiple sources for a holistic view

• Choosing critical dashboard metrics that reflect organizational objectives

• Using the best types of charts or graphs that are right for your data

• Accessing mobile analytics in the field for improved efficiency and speed

• How to share dashboards to collaborate with colleagues, partners and clients

• Bonus: five dashboard mistakes to avoid

Interactive Data Visualization: The Age of “Look But Don’t Touch” Is Over

All good things must come to an end. Static data visualization had its time in the sun. Now, Aberdeen Group's research demonstrates the superior business performance of organizations that have taken their visuals to the next level.

Data Storytelling: Using Visualization to Share the Human Impact of Numbers

Storytelling is a cornerstone of the human experience. The universe may be full of atoms, but it’s through stories that we truly construct our world. From Greek mythology to the Bible to television series like Cosmos, stories have been shaping our experience on Earth for as long as we’ve lived on it.

A key purpose of storytelling is not just understanding the world but changing it. After all, why would we study the world if we didn’t want to know how we can—and should— influence it?

5 Things Your Spreadsheets Can’t Do

For many, Excel is the go-to analysis tool of choice. As useful as it can be, for delivering real insight from big data, spreadsheets simply won’t provide all of the answers you seek. Read this whitepaper to learn five critical ways go beyond spreadsheets to get more from your data.

In this whitepaper, you’ll learn about:

• Using all of your data, no matter how big or where it lives

• Seeing the complete picture with data blending and cleaning

• Four powerful ways to improve data visualizations

• Fast, interactive and shareable dashboards

• Real-time data and automatic updates

Top 8 Trends for 2016: Big Data

The year 2015 was an important one in the world of big data. What used to be hype became the norm as more businesses realized that data, in all forms and sizes, is critical to making the best possible decisions. In 2016, we’ll see continued growth of systems that support non-relational or unstructured forms of data as well as massive volumes of data. These systems will evolve and mature to operate well inside of enterprise IT systems and standards. This will enable both business users and data scientists to fully realize the value of big data.

Top 10 Trends For 2016: Clouds

In 2015, the cloud technology landscape changed in ways that only a highly disruptive market can. From watershed innovation announcements to unexpected business moves, 2015 drove any last shred of doubt from the minds of skeptics that the cloud revolution is permanent. At the eye of this storm is the growing realization that data as a critical business asset can be very efficiently (and cost-effectively) stored in the cloud. The database, integration, and analytics markets are now in a race to understand how each can ultimately capitalize on this shift.

Top 10 Trends for 2016: Business Intelligence

2015 was a year of significant change in the world of Business Intelligence. More organizations opened up data to their employees. And more people came to see data as an important tool to get their work done. Norms about Business Intelligence are evolving, and as they do, leading to wholesale cultural change at some workplaces. This change is driven not only by fast-moving technology, but also by new techniques to get value from data.

Unified Monitoring

In the past few years, the enterprise computing landscape has changed dramatically. Virtualization, outsourcing, SaaS and cloud computing are creating fundamental changes, and ushering in an era in which enterprises distribute increasingly critical IT assets and applications across multiple service providers. These changes are rendering legacy monitoring tools, which have their roots in the computing environments of a decade or more ago, virtually useless. This paper explores today’s computing trends and their monitoring implications in detail. In addition, it reveals how CA Unified Infrastructure Management (CA UIM, formerly CA Nimsoft Monitor) uniquely addresses the monitoring realities of today’s and tomorrow’s enterprises—whether they rely on internal platforms, external service providers or a combination of both.

The Total Economic Impact Of CA Unified Infrastructure Management

CA commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying CA Unified Infrastructure Management (CA UIM). The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of CA UIM on their organizations.

Experience Near Home Network Performance Internationally

When roaming, voice calls and data sessions typically need to be routed back to the domestic ‘home’ network of the subscriber – adding latency and reducing data transfer rates and call quality. By treating subscribers more like domestic home subscribers, Truphone is able to reduce latency and provide data rates and voice quality akin to that on a subscriber’s home own network.

The paper explores Truphone’s international performance and network architecture. Truphone’s use of international network access arrangements and the intercontinental positioning of core network elements means that, compared to the roaming architecture of a typical mobile operator, Truphone provides:

- Faster data transfer speeds

- Improved voice call quality

- Better monitoring of network performance

Download this whitepaper to explore Truphone's international performance and network architecture.

Advanced Endpoint Protection for Dummies

Today’s sophisticated cyberattacks are designed to inflict maximum damage to an organization’s systems and networks, steal sensitive information (such as personal or financial data), and take control of or otherwise render an organization’s systems and networks unusable. Cyberattacks begin by infecting a system on a target network — either by causing users in the organization to unwittingly run malicious code on their servers, desktop and laptop computers, or tablets or by exploiting a vulnerability in a legitimate system or application in order to run malicious code.

Cybersecurity for Dummies

Advanced threats have changed the world of enterprise security and how organizations are attacked. These threats, and the cybercriminals behind them, are experts at remaining hidden from traditional security while exhibiting an intelligence, resiliency, and patience that has never been seen before. Controlling these threats requires multiple security disciplines working together in context. Although no single solution will solve the problem of advanced threats on its own, next‐generation cybersecurity provides the unique visibility and control of, and the true integration of, threat‐prevention disciplines needed to find and stop these threats — both known and unknown.