As the wheels of my 6AM flight leave the ground it seems as though more than just the increased G’s of takeoff press me back into the seat. An unsettling feeling seems to surround the airliner’s cabin.More
In our final Olympic post, I thought it would be interesting to do an interview with Chris Gadsby, Avaya's program manager for the Olympics. In that role, Chris was integral for the successful deployment of Avaya’s equipment throughout the Vancouver area, and I hope this interview gives a flavor for the demanding work that the team was completing day in and day out during the Olympic Games. Thanks to Chris for his time and insight. More
An open SIP policy is a good thing. But a program for interoperability is even better. It’s easy to say that customers are welcome to use any SIP compliant device that they so choose. But how do you know that this actually works, and works well?More
Today I am very pleased to turn this blog over to Stephanie Childs, Vice President of Government Affairs at Avaya. This is the first guest post within the Sustainability section of the Avaya blog and it is my hope and intention that this is the first of many, both from Stephanie and from other areas of Avaya’s operations. Stephanie has a great perch in Washington DC to monitor and assess the many green/sustainability legislation and regulations. I want to extend my thanks to Stephanie for sharing her insight and knowledge with us here on the blog. More
The 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games wrapped up yesterday with a scintillating gold medal hockey game between Canada and the U.S. and the closing ceremony. Millions of people around the world were participating in some fashion, and the electric gold medal hockey game and the pageantry of the closing ceremony had me in a reflective mood about the values and unity that the Olympics represent. More
It seems my smugness in the recent post Surviving Snowmageddon about my work arrangement’s resilience against disruption has come back to haunt me. Well just a little.More
Clearly, part of the fun of being at the Games is sharing it with others. I was thinking about the difference in sharing now versus Olympic Games from an earlier era, say the ’72 Winter Games in Tokyo. We now are able to upload to facebook, send a text messages, shoot out an email, jump on a web conference or any other of the myriad of communication methods we now have at our disposal. Back in ‘72 I imagine that a phone call would have been a pretty big deal, and a postcard would have been the norm. We now have a much more immersive media life, which I for one am grateful for. More
Got back an hour ago from an electric Olympic event, the U.S. hockey team’s tight 2-0 victory over the scrappy and feisty Swiss team. The game was super exciting, with only one goal without an open net and two reviews by the referees of possible goals, one for the U.S. and one for the Swiss. The official reviews and timing system, requiring absolute precision and synergy, got me thinking about and similarly secure systems at all of the venues. More
Just before Christmas I had the pleasure of attending a dinner event hosted by Ken Hausman. I want to thank Ken for being such a gracious host for an excellent evening of discussion. A highlight of the dinner was an excellent discussion on Cloud Computing. One of the most interesting discussions was, "Is the cloud ready for the enterprise and is the enterprise ready for the cloud?" There were attendees from all corners in this debate including enterprise CIOs, IT Professionals and Cloud Computing services vendors and System Integrators. Those attending who are providers of cloud computing services were strong...More
Greetings live from Vancouver, which is as exciting and excited as it looks on TV! I am made the trip up to the area to do some work promoting our sustainability story and to get some first hand accounts of Avaya’s work during the Olympics. This is a very exciting trip and I am hoping to be able to bring a taste of the Games experience and feel to readers of the blog. More
In many ways, hosting an Olympics is a microcosm of the global trends such as the greater concentration of people, increased complexity and congestion, as the massive influx of athletes and spectators places significant demands on existing infrastructure. Part of this challenge is alleviated by infrastructure expansion and development, but that is often not enough. We here at Avaya are proud to be part of the second major answer, by offering our customers high tech communication and mobility solutions and platforms. Specifically, with high performance mobility technology tools, businesses, no matter their size, are able to ameliorate the challenges created by the Games for their most important resource, their people. More
Today it's rare that any company works projects totally internally. It's also rare that you are only communicating/collaborating for "work" from 9 to 5 and for personal otherwise. Our professional and personal lives have blurred. Unified Communication and Collaboration "tools" need to effectively bridge multiple enterprises together, as well as allow personal/professional connections outside your enterprise to be effective and useful. "Free" social networking services can have a role in the enterprise and in bridging multi-company and appropriate personal/professional communications. Presence and Messaging If project collaborators are in multiple companies there should be one or more mutually accessible forms of...More
Not only did Avaya and Bell Canada work together for Bell’s deployment of the first all-IP converged network at an Olympic Games, we also worked together to earn a collaborative Sustainability Star for the deployment and innovation of the all-IP (internet protocol) communication network for the 2010 and Paralympic Winter Games. This deployment embodies sustainability, both environmentally, via low energy operation and safe disposal at end-of-life, and economically, through efficient use of resources. More
I hope many readers of this blog are aware that Avaya is an active and proud participant in the spectacle of the 2010 Olympic Games, as the Official Converged Network Equipment Supplier for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. For those that might not be aware, Avaya is in the process of supplying network communications equipment both directly to VANOC and to Bell Canada, the exclusive Telecommunications Provider for the 2010 Winter Games, to deliver the first all-IP converged network at an Olympic Games. More
Last week I had the good fortune of attending the State of Green Business Forum 2010 here in San Francisco. The event, which I also attend last year, is a great way to spend a day listening to colleagues at companies across the economy sharing their successes and challenges. Hearing about the journey of others working in the sustainability space is inspiring and reassuring, as so many of the issues that they are working/learning are the same ones we are trying to address. More
Green has never been a hotter topic in corporate culture, and has become an aspect of business that can not be ignored nor neglected. With this post I thought it would be valuable to lay out a vision for a best practice green business program within the technology sector. It delineates four major components of that program, corporate operations, customers, external communications and thought leadership. More
While millions of idle people cost our society hundreds of millions and more of productivity … As the bills mount to facilitate abortive attempts by millions of commuters to travel to offices for non productive days … my ability to telecommute has kept me from missing a beat even as the Four Snowmen of the Apocalypse ride. More
In addition to going live on the is blog, the sustainability program at Avaya is also jumping into twitter, follow us here @greenavaya. I have tried to follow a few of the green resources that I think are valuable on twitter and will be building that list out over the coming weeks and months. I will be posting every new post on this blog via bit.ly on the twitter feed and highlighting interesting articles and developments I see during my work. More
Before you get invested in a blog or any other media source, it is pretty important to know a bit about the creator/author. The quality of the content, insight and is only as valuable as the author, after all. More
Welcome from the newest blogger on the Avaya blogroll. My name is Wilson Korol and I am the new Sustainability Business Leader here at Avaya, coming over from Nortel in the acquisition that took place in December 2009. My contributions to the avaya.com blog will focus on green and sustainability in the corporate setting, with particular attention paid to the tech sector.More
The scenario: In a virtual desktop environment the users have only a thin client on their desks. The thin client (a web browser, Citrix client or Wyse terminal) accesses the business and office applications running on a server in the data center or in the cloud. Technical terms used for this are Desktop Virtualization (VDI, Microsoft Web Access) or Cloud Computing (Google docs and Apps). In my humble opinion (IMHO) desktop virtualization is great when you want to ensure nobody can copy your customer data and walk away with it. There is simply no way to copy any data on...More
Apple recently announced it's long rumored iPad tablet device. With all the buzz the announcement is creating, it reminded me of another modern communications issue I have; too many devices! The explosion in device technologies and types is a major part of the communication revolution and the challenges it presents to us. The communication revolution is driven by new communication modes being adopted today; social networks, texting, IM, video, blogs, RSS feeds and more. It's also driven by the emerging new devices and technologies, especially smart phones, and the ever advancing capabilities they are giving us. We have smart phones,...More
A way to honor those swept up by recent events is to not miss this moment of learning. Our organizations may have been spared the immediate impacts this time, but none of us are outside the window of probability for some future event. Now is the time to learn, plan, and act so that in some small way, those who have fallen may not have gone in vain. More
In Eastern beliefs, “Karma is the law of moral causation.” You don’t have to understand the intricacies of this ancient philosophy to see the wisdom in the Sanskrit text, “According to the seed that’s sown, So is the fruit you reap there from…” Today, the concept of the karmic effect seems to be expressing itself in the marketplace accelerated by the explosion of social networking. What are your customer’s social networks beliefs about your company?More
Today Apple announced their ipad tablet. In my opinion its a device targeted to playback/display media (web, video, ebook) and gaming - leveraging its 10 inch screen, 1 Ghz processor, 3G and WiFi and integrated graphics controller. Additionally, standard Apple office applications such as iWork were demonstrated. Apple also presented a consumer - oriented ECO-system with web-browsing, ebooks, e-newspaper and Games. Obviously a great product that takes the i Pod touch concept to a larger screen. Lets compare this offering with the needs of Enterprise level collaboration. My view on the requirements for enterprise: 1) Multiple real time sessions. Multi...More
Cloud computing / desktop virtualization together with real time communicaiton / collaboration allows exciting new solutions to business problems. In today's blog we cover the challenges of the retail store manager. The issue: Establishing a great relationship between the customers and the store is the prime goal of retail store managers. That makes customers return - thus driving revenue. So the retail store managers should spend the majority of their time on the shop floor. Instead they spend a substantial part of their time in the backoffice in front of their PC doing administrative work. Thus there is need to...More
20 years after the landmark book, Total Customer Service: The Ultimate Weapon, The 6 Laws of Customer Experience add new competitive weapons to the arsenal. More
In the past decade, a sea-change has taken place in the way voice and data communications are structured, delivered and used by businesses around the world. As we kick off the second decade of the New Millennium, what’s in store for the brave new world of communications? Here are the top 10 areas we expect to see action in 2010:More
At the end of the last decade we saw Amazon snap up Zappos for $928 Million. Combining two of the most customer focused organizations I am aware of on the web and making one of the most powerful customer centric companies out there.More
It’s no surprise that Direct Marketing response rates have dropped to a historic low with success rates in the low single digits. And further - that marketing organizations are becoming increasingly focused on Inbound Marketing (credit HubSpot for creating this term) which are a source of much higher response rates.More
This post is part 2 of a series of posts on the Communication Revolution and Deep Impact it has on us. Part 1 of the series discussed how the Communication Revolution has brought on information overload and communication management issues. This post focuses on the impact that new technology and communication modes have had on our social communication behavior and preferences. Ultimately the series will end with recommendations and examples of what Unified Communication solutions can do to help us better cope with the less positive side effects of this revolution. The Communication Revolution has given us mobile phones, social...More
Let's face it, we have more ways than ever to connect with each other. To help you keep up with a variety of business communication topics, we share our perspectives and ideas here. We hope Avaya Insights will be your starting point for answers as you explore your next communications challenge.
Be part of the conversation, share your insights.
