Cisco Customer Collaboration Conference: Day One

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Info-Tech

The first day of Cisco’s Customer Collaboration Conference in Boston has been an enlightening experience about the communication giant’s plans for the contact center and collaboration spaces. Company representatives showed the firm’s strategy in several major areas, with an emphasis on tightening integration between contact center products and other areas of the company’s business (including unified communications products like WebEx). Cisco was also quick to tout its market share gains in enterprise voice relative to incumbent industry leader, Avaya.

Of particular interest was Cisco’s demonstration of contact center social media capabilities – Info-Tech’s research has repeatedly shown that customer service is the domain most likely to realize value from leveraging social media. Firms that incorporate social channels into their customer service strategy are over 20% more likely to realize their social media goals than those that do not. Contact centers are on the forefront of providing customer service, so Cisco’s move to incorporate social channels into upcoming solutions is a step in the right direction. The firm also displayed capabilities for using mobile devices and location-based capabilities to improve customer service delivery. Industry analysts heard from customers and partners of Cisco contact center solutions, who praised the value of consolidating service operations using Cisco’s cloud infrastructure and service applications.

Posted in Applications, News & Analysis, What's New in Research | Tagged cisco, cloud-infrastructure, communications, contact center, customer collaboration conference, customer service, mobile-devices, social channels, social-media | Leave a comment

 

 

Sea monsters and skill shortages: How will you fill the gap?

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Info-Tech

At some point in their careers, IT managers need to address a skill shortage. And in up to 55% of cases, these managers will look within their own ranks for someone to fill that gap. But there are times when the internal resources simply aren’t there.

This is especially true in new technology areas that are currently trending: mobility, cloud computing, big data, social media, and the new security concerns that have risen from these trends like Cthulhu from the deep of the ocean.

But fear is for the startled villagers on the shore. Instead, ask yourself questions in these five areas to determine how to add new skills to your team:

• Urgency. How quickly do we need to add this skill to our team? This month, in the next six months, in the next year? If this is the case, contracting for a temporary engagement to get the project off the ground may be your best option.
• Importance. Is this skill critical to the day-to-day operation of the business, or is it a project-based or short-term need? With mission-critical capabilities, you will want to have someone in the department full time. This may be a long-term process, or you can leverage knowledge transfer from a contract position.
• Novelty. Have we looked for this kind of skill before? What is the level of expertise available to be hired? With some new areas – like social media – there really is no recommended certification or defined set of skills. Spend more time understanding what tasks you need the role to fill to offer true business value.
• Scarcity. How popular or desirable is this skill right now? Do we have a large enough talent pool to draw from? When skills are hot and scarce, the pool of worthwhile of applicants gets shallow pretty quickly. This may be a case where training an internal resource is your only option.
• Cost. How much will it cost to hire vs. contract vs. outsource this skill? Is there a premium attached to hiring this skill? Balance your budget against your need. If the skill need meets the previous four criteria, be prepared to pay.

Don’t be left short-handed; read more about addressing a skill shortage in Info-tech’s solution set Acquire New and Hot IT Skills.

Posted in Governance, News & Analysis, What's New in Research | Leave a comment

 

 

Citrix synergizing consumer and IT

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Info-Tech

At this year’s annual Citrix Synergy event in San Francisco, one of Citrix’s primary themes was the move to mobile (the other was the move to cloud). Citrix made no secret that they were trying to bring the success of Apple in the consumerization world within the grasp of IT. In fact, they even ended the day-one keynote with a Steve Jobs trademarked “One more thing…” moment.

In his keynote, CEO Mark Templeton demonstrated how Citrix brings the magic of Apple’s AppStore and devices to enterprise end users while maintaining security and control within IT. He argued that organizations should think first about people, then about the data that they need to do their jobs, then the apps that let them do them, then the devices to make that happen — people + data + Apps + Devices; in essence, allow anyone to do anything, anywhere, and on any device, moving us from the PC Era of wires, desks, and software suites, to the Cloud Era of wireless, mobile, and app stores.

Interestingly, with the consumerization of IT, people are choosing to bring their own apps (e.g. Dropbox, Evernote, Twitter) and devices (e.g. smartphones, iPads, laptops) to the business. On the one hand, these users don’t want to give IT the control to wipe their device or limit their personal use but, on the other hand, IT needs a way to keep a handle on corporate data. Most forward-thinking CIOs and IT Managers that we speak to aren’t fighting this trend, however, they’re preparing their infrastructure to support these movements – and Citrix plans to help them move forward with that.

By combining Receiver with its newly acquired ShareFile with StorageZones – called “Follow-me-data” – Citrix is linking users’ apps and devices with corporately controlled data that can be securely stored in any public or private cloud, while giving end users access from any device. This means IT can remotely wipe corporate data within Receiver, but personal apps and data outside receiver remain untouched. Add to that Cloud Gateway2, which enables unified delivery and orchestration of Windows apps, Web apps (HTML5, Android, Blackbarry, or iOS-based), and corporate or third-party mobile apps, on any device through an enterprise app store on Receiver, and you’ve taken care of data, apps, and devices.

To take this one step further, to add the people aspect, Citrix added Podio (think Facebook meets SharePoint and CRM) through a recent acquisition, which brings social to collaboration, enabling real-time commenting on in-progress work. It also integrates with Sharefile and GoToMeeting, as well as numerous third-party services like Evernote, Dropbox, GoogleDrive, SkyDrive, and others, to bring full circle to IT, the people + data + apps + devices story.

In the end, this is more than just bringing apps and data to users. Users are driving the consumerization trend by telling IT what they want, and they are so attached to their devices and apps, that they’re willing to bring them themselves. Organizations that are forward-thinking are driving their users to be more productive by giving them the tools to capitalize on this movement.

Posted in News & Analysis, Videos | Tagged appstore, Citrix, citrix-synergy, citrix-systems, cloud, consumerization | Leave a comment

 

 

Big Data; let’s talk about the elephant in the room

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Info-Tech

Big data is becoming more and more popular; the pressure to become involved in this trend is on the rise. Parallel to this is the growing trend of sustainability and going green. Where these two buzzing topics intersect is showing great potential and realized benefits.

Companies such as AMEE, an environmental data company, are making the connection between business and the environment. The data AMEE provides helps users to measure environmental impacts, making data analysis into a tool for sustainability.

Using big data for behavioral analytics, real-time analytics and applying the insights gained from analytics can be a challenging task for anyone. Being able to fight climate change and adapt to our ever-growing planet through big data use is a feat which many people could begin to realize. Take OPower as an example, their use of energy consumption data has allowed them to help consumers save on their energy bills. By doing this not only has OPower benefited their business through big data, but they have also helped others make significant progress towards living sustainably.

Behavioral analytics is a growing channel of big data. There are a huge number of benefits and opportunities it can offer to you. As your audience changes, you can change with them to meet their needs. For example, tracking areas of high energy consumption provides an opportunity to appeal to consumers to buy energy efficient appliances and technologies to decrease their energy costs.

Another way that big data is contributing to the green revolution is through its contribution to reliable renewable energy. Seeing as the sun can’t shine and the wind can’t blow 24 hours a day, how can we decrease the inconsistency of availability in renewable resources?

Relying on renewable resources to power grid systems would have a huge impact on fossil fuel consumption, decreasing our dependency on the quickly depleting resource. Many technologies and initiatives to increase the availability of green power are being fueled by big data. One example is Australia, who is using big data analytics to locate and access geothermal energy. The Australian Centre for Renewable Energy along with several other institutions, are working towards making geothermal targeting processes more economically viable. By combining their data resources the group has been able to develop software to target geothermal hot spots. This software tracks energy sources deeper in the earth’s layer than has been possible before, tackling the problem of high cost of drilling.

Although it is still early in the game for big data there is much to gain from big data analytics. Developing a big data strategy can help in solving problems which cannot be solved with your current solutions. Managing your data to maximize your benefit means better data. Better data means better insights, which means better decisions and better business results.

Look to Info-Tech’s solution set: Build a Strategy for Big Data Platforms, to help develop a strategy that benefits you.

Posted in Infrastructure, News & Analysis, Research, What's New in Research | Tagged ACID, analytics, apache, BASE, bi, big data, business-intelligence, cassandra, cloudera, data, data-management, data-model, database, database management, hadoop, hbase, nosql, not only sql, SQL, unstructured data | Leave a comment

 

 

Developing IT Staff Capabilities: Client Question and Answer

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Info-Tech

We recently received a client inquiry about IT training. The questions they asked are applicable to so many organizations, so we felt it would be worthwhile to post part of the conversation here. For more information on this subject, please read Info-Tech’s recent solution set, Develop IT Staff Capabilities.

Part 1 – Standard budgets and training cycles

What is the industry standard for IT training budgets? This currently ranges anywhere from $700 to $1,100 per person (and I’ve seen as high as $2,500), but that number is on the rise. The recession cut training budgets, but we expect to see it rise back up closer to 2008 averages, which were around $1,200. There will be some organizations that will go even higher than this to make up for the training opportunities that were missed because of the financial crunch.

About 20% of the total training budget is dedicated to management training. If too much of the training budget is allocated to managers, it has the potential to stir up some negative feelings. To maximize the value of manager training, there has to be some trickle down to the employees. You could make it a condition of training that the managers debrief their staff after the conference/seminar.

What is considered a typical training cycle (e.g. once a year, every other year, as needed)? Some organizations will do as-needed, project-based training and leave it up to the project manager to make sure they have the skills they need (the PM can approve training requests in this case). In this way, you know the skills will be applied immediately following the training which improves learning retention.

Others will mandate annual training in alignment with each employee’s performance review cycle. It comes down to budget, skill currency need, and projected business initiatives. An employee’s stage in their lifecycle can have an impact on when they are trained on what. Newer employees will receive more standardized training on basics, while veterans will get more targeted development on technical skills as required. For example, CISSP is a high-level certification and should be reserved for veteran employees (a minimum of five years experience is required to request permission to write the exam).

Part 2 – Budgetary concerns and employee responsibilities

What non-traditional training resources could be used to stretch the budget we have? We see a lot of people opting for e-learning or self-paced online resources, like you have with CBT Nuggets. You may also be able to leverage your own employees. For example, pair seniors with juniors for job shadowing. Do you have any natural born teachers in your department? Anyone who is always taking advantage of coachable moments? Anyone that other employees consistently go to when they have a question? You could use these people in Train-the-Trainer type learning. They go for the course and bring back the knowledge to share with their peers.

How much of the training cost should the employee be expected to bear? If it is tied to their performance, the company should bear the cost. However, if there are annual professional dues associated with any certifications, those are generally left to the employee. We believe, in most situations, they are tax deductible. If the employee wants to learn a skill that is not central to their day-to-day job, then they should be responsible for picking up that cost. High-cost development opportunities (like paying for degrees, MBAs, etc.) are often conditional – the business will pay as long as the employee stays with the organization for a certain number of years. If they leave, the employee reimburses the organization a pro-rated amount. I’ve seen this happen with certification programs too, but the organization will want a signed agreement with the employee about this before they commence the development.

Part 3 – Spending your training money wisely

On what technologies and/or staff would our training dollars be better spent? Look at your employees and assess them by a couple of criteria: self-discipline and learning style. An online learning resource is great, cost-effective, and convenient. But if you have an employee who you would not consider a self-starter, this is not going to be a great way for them to learn, unless you can structure the time for them in some way. Other people learn well just by picking up a book.

Most of the time, your employees will know what type of learner they are. You can also confirm this by having them evaluate their experience after the fact, and build their post-training performance in their annual review. If you invest anywhere, coaching would be a good choice. It’s the most effective development tool out there. Getting your managers trained up to be better coaches and having them apply the practice provides the best ROI of all methods. Employees may have to study some core skills/knowledge first via e-learning, classroom lecture, etc., but augmenting this with coaching will make it stick. And if employees are doing e-learning modules, assess the quality and content of these modules first – many of them won’t be at the right level for the employee and will be a waste of money and time. Actually, this is a good idea for any kind of training. Most vendors post outlines on their site, so you can make sure you’re not duplicating knowledge you already have in house. These outlines can also help cover your bases if doing self-directed learning via books. The bottom line is to match the development to the employee’s development need. What is the employee’s career path, motivation, learning style, etc? That way they’re not wasting time on something they can’t use in their job.

Posted in Governance, News & Analysis, What's New in Research | Tagged big data, capabilities, cloud, mobility, performance-management, security, skills, social-media, soft skills, technical skills, training, training effectiveness, training methods, training-program, trends | Leave a comment

 

 

 

← Older posts