Cisco to Expand Mobile Collaboration Features

From PC world some great news about the next step in collaboration tools from cisco. This means we can really work anywhere

Cisco will tackle the mobile world over the next year with a series of new features to bring smartphones into business communications, the head of the company's software group said at the Cisco Live conference on Wednesday.

As Cisco creates sophisticated interfaces for collaboration using text, voice, video and other media, mobile phones have been largely left out despite the fact that they are nearly ubiquitous. For one thing, IT departments often have an arm's-length relationship to cell phones. In most IT departments, they represent the largest uncontrolled expense, said Don Proctor, senior vice president of Cisco's software group, in a session at the conference in San Francisco.

Proctor and Chris Chamberlain, a director of product management in Cisco's Unified Computing group, discussed a set of future capabilities for better enterprise collaboration on smartphones. Cisco intends to deliver them by the second half of next year, Chamberlain said. The upcoming features included the following:

- If an employee is talking on a smartphone, Cisco's software can indicate that in the employee's presence information. Coming up, if a colleague sends an instant message to that person, it can be converted to an SMS that can be retrieved on the cell phone without dropping the call.

- A speech-to-text engine will be able to convert a voicemail to text so that a user participating on a WebEx conference can read it without interrupting the conference. The user could then go into a text-based conversation with the sender of the voicemail and also bring that person into the WebEx conference.

- If a piece of content such as a chart came to the smartphone through an RSS feed, the smartphone user could view the chart on the phone and then bring it into the document-sharing portion of an ongoing WebEx conference.

- If a smartphone user in a WebEx conference loses network coverage in a location such as a tunnel, the conference call will remain "anchored" so it can be reconnected after the user regains coverage. That will save the trouble of re-entering sign-on information.

- When employees with smartphones go to a remote office of the organization, they can view a map of the office and view their location in it, detected via Wi-Fi. That map would show available meeting rooms where the employees could start working.

- Once in the meeting room, the remote employee could be notified of resources in the room such as an IP desk phone and video screen and then use those to continue the meeting, controlling the whole process via the smartphone. If the person needed to leave the room, he or she could disconnect from the desk phone and screen but remain in the conference, continuing it outside on the smartphone.

Cisco intends to make these capabilities available on a variety of smartphone platforms. The company introduced an iPhone client for WebEx earlier this year. Cisco intends to use the native interface of each type of phone as much as possible to create a natural and easy user experience, Proctor said.

This could be my next phone (or brower in the living room or .................)

Ok, since a few months I decided not to work anymore in the living room but work in my home office. This left me with a clean living room and a much better phisical health since I have to walk up to the 1st floor anytime I need to check something stupid on the internet. So a living room friendly device to browse the web and do some other basic tasks would be great, specially if it looks good as well (although this is a personal thing)

I obviously could use the webbrowser on my mediacenter for this but this has one major disadvantage............My girlfriend or me can not watch tv at that same moment

So then this might be an option:

iriver Brings a Hot New Look and Feel to Networking With the All-Inclusive WAVE-HOME Multimedia Communication Device

Next Generation Networking Base Station and Handset Keep You Connected and In Control Of Your Home and Office Life

Las Vegas, NV -- iriver, a global leader in innovative digital devices, is bringing its award-winning ingenuity to the networking space with the game-changing WAVE-HOME. More than a home networking device, the WAVE-HOME is the ultimate all-in-one solution that provides advanced multimedia, web and phone capabilities – a comprehensive communications hub that keeps you totally connected and in control at home, at the office and in your life. Featuring a sleek and minimal base station and portable handset, the WAVE-HOME manages and integrates all your phone, Internet, home entertainment and lifestyle needs.

iriver's WAVE-HOME and all of its new networking devices will be on display at the iriver booth (#7935, Central Hall) during the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, January 8-11, 2009.

Myoung Woo Lee, CEO, iriver, said, "The WAVE-HOME is a milestone introduction for iriver as we expand our product innovation and design into exciting new areas such as life and home networking. Our mission has always been to help consumers easily connect with the things they value most in life. Our new networking devices take this concept to the next level by providing a stylish and powerful way to stay completely connected to every aspect of your home and business life and relationships."

The WAVE-HOME comes with a stylish base station with a 7" color LCD touch screen and is designed to integrate all of your personal digital content such as music, photos, movies, digital photo frame, hand drawing, Internet and phone services. Music, video, and FM radio can all be enjoyed in pristine sound thanks to the WAVE-HOME's built-in, high-quality stereo speakers.

WAVE-HOME is not just a simple VolP telephone, it's an internet multimedia communication device that combines a wide variety of activities at home or in the office. It can be used privately or in a broader context, such as creating new business opportunities via broadband internet such as VoIP. When connected to broadband Internet, the WAVE-HOME offers Web surfing, and also supports Internet phone service at home and in the office with VoIP Phone, VoIP Video Phone, SMS/MMS, MMCID/MMRB, live Phonebook sync, and more. Phone calls can be made by using either the internal speaker phone or the wireless handset that also supports a remote controller. WAVE-HOME also features a 1.3M pixel CMOS camera for taking sharp photos that can be instantly presented via the photo viewer.

Another exciting feature is the intelligent Widget that provides instant weather, stock and traffic updates, as well as web and multimedia services that users can enjoy without a computer since the device is connected to broadband internet. The Widget utilizes a graphical user interface (GUI) and displays an individual information window or a text box. The defining characteristic of a Widget is to provide a single interaction point for the direct manipulation of a given kind of data. Therefore, the user can arrange his or her data with several Widget functions such as Widget Connector, Widget Icon, Widget Manager and Widget Gallery. It provides endless options on the 7" color touch screen. Due to its simplified navigation, it creates an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.

WAVE-HOME catches the eye with its sleek, minimalist design that enhances any interior and creates style at home while changing the way we communicate.

Just hope this works nicely together with my other address books on the home network and the video card is good enough to show the pictures from the (security) cameras around the house from a webpage or even better a widget

The crucial role of ICT and AV within organizations

The role of ICT and AV within organizations


Communicating is a crucial element in the process of working and learning. This implies in a clear way that all facilities enabling communication need to function extremely well. Communication is already pretty difficult so anything to avoid miscommunication can make a big difference. ICT and AV (Audiovisual) systems support the communication process and enable groups of individuals working together to make better and/or faster decisions. This can generate a competitive advantage which again shows the value of ICT and AV systems in this era


When looking at the current global economic situation it is important to get most out of your ICT and AV environment against the lowest possible costs for that level of quality required. Lowering the costs too much might undermine a smooth operation and can compromise the minimum level of quality needed.

Although ICT budgets are under pressure as well there is no doubt about the importance of the CIO within an enterprise environment. According to Forrester Research the CIO’s key to success is choosing a small number of metrics that are relevant to the business and have the most impact on business outcomes. The five metrics that meet the criteria for relevance and impact are

• Investment alignment to business strategy,
• Business value of IT investments,
• IT budget balance,
• Service level excellence,
• Operational excellence.
  

These five metrics should form the core of an ICT performance scorecard and in order to perform well on all items on the scorecard the CIO should understand the business needs and deliver on this with well managed services (and costs).

However, when looking at the AV environment within an organization it appears that this is perceived and valued totally different. Often there is no strong alignment with the business strategies nor an AV performance scorecard and the responsibilities for managing the operational and service level excellence is much lower on the ladder. Pretty often this is just a contract management role where knowledge of the AV concepts doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite. This in general leads to an ad-hoc approach instead of a well structured AV performance scorecard approach

Structures to support

When looking at AV as stated earlier support is often done by the AV supplier and is reactive in nature while IT support is often organized according to the best practices as described within the ITIL framework where we can use the ITIL v3 core volumes

• Service Strategy focuses on the identification of market opportunities for which services could be developed in order to meet a requirement on the part of internal or external customers. The output is a strategy for the design, implementation, maintenance and continual improvement of the service as an organizational capability and a strategic asset. Key areas of this volume are Service Portfolio Management and Financial Management.


• Service Design focuses on the activities that take place in order to develop the strategy into a design document which addresses all aspects of the proposed service, as well as the processes intended to support it. Key areas of this volume are Availability Management, Capacity Management, Continuity Management and Security Management.


• Service Transition focuses on the implementation of the output of the service design activities and the creation of a production service or modification of an existing service. There is an area of overlap between Service Transition and Service Operation. Key areas of this volume are Change Management, Release Management, Configuration Management and Service Knowledge Management.


• Service Operation focuses on the activities required to operate the services and maintain their functionality as defined in the Service Level Agreements with the customers. Key areas of this volume are Incident Management, Problem Management and Request Fulfillment. A new process added to this area is Event Management, which is concerned with normal and exception condition events. Events have been defined into three categories:
  o Informational events, which are logged
  o Warning events, also called alerts, where an event exceeds a specified threshold
  o Critical events, which typically will lead to the generation of Incidents


• Continual Service Improvement focuses on the ability to deliver continual improvement to the quality of the services that the ICT organization delivers to the business. Key areas of this volume are Service Reporting, Service Measurement and Service Level Management
  

In general these core volumes can be applied to the management of an AV infrastructure as well and this would lead to lower support costs while having an AV infrastructure that fits the needs better and operates more stable due to the pro-active nature of the ITIL processes. Within AV support some of these processes are there already (but not always as mature as within the ICT domain) but other in general are absent like incident management or life cycle management. This would strongly plead for using the ITIL best practices in AV management as well (and possibly even using the same set of management tools where possible since the IT department may already have e.g. an incident management registration tool).

Blending both worlds even further.

When looking at the services both parties provide we used to have some clear distinction. For example the IT department delivered services like messaging and collaboration or network connectivity (wired, wireless and mobile) while from an AV point of view services like (video)conferencing or presentation/meeting rooms were offered.

When looking at the convergence that is taking place right now we see transitions where projectors get network connected, traditional (video)conferencing/telepresence systems integrating with webcams and meeting room reservation systems being available from the IT messaging system.

As a result the boundaries between the services delivered by the IT department and AV management are getting fuzzy. When looking at the ICT messaging and collaboration service this in general includes platforms like exchange, Office Communication Server and Sharepoint.
Traditionally meeting room reservation systems are managed by the AV team, as well as (video)conferencing or digital signage/narrow casting.

With all convergence going on we see digital signage products based on sharepoint, meeting room reservation systems integrating with outlook/exchange and (video)conferencing solutions working nicely together with office communication server.

This fundamentally reshapes the traditional services landscape and it would make sense to have the AV components managed by the same team that already manages the ICT infrastructure. There are some good reasons to do it this way around and not the other:

• The ICT department most likely already has the support tools and processes in place
• Since AV components will be more and more ICT components (projectors on the network, video over IP, etc.) ICT needs to integrate this in their network anyhow and thus will have a strong say in the choices made
• AV components and their networked interactivity are becoming more and more complex so it would make sense to have the most technical group taking care of them
  

Next steps

The AV industry should ensure the devices they design and built will support standards like SNMP so they will be easier to manage without the need for a layer in between as is needed today.

On the other hand enterprises should think about a clear strategy on their AV environment and how to integrate this with the ICT environment. This obviously can be a long term strategy to avoid disinvestments by replacing components that are still in the middle or beginning of their economic lifecycle (unless replacement would deliver a cost benefit that is bigger than the disinvestment). This can be done according to the IT’s AVision model as defined by MII that will lead you through the steps necessary for your organization (steps in maturity are outlined below, note this is not the complete model)

Last but not least, the CIO should prepare for taking control of the AV components as well. This means he needs to make sure that the AV specific technology is understood so he can keep delivering on the expectations

Conclusion

By integrating your AV support and ICT support in 1 support model (preferably ITIL) and using 1 set of tools the costs of managing the integrated environment will go down while the support moves from reactive to proactive. This obvious will result in a situation where communication can migrate to more effective communication