Business Online Collaboration Dichotomy

The goal of creating a collaborative enterprise might seem like an essential requirement that all forward-looking business leaders would actively support. However, fear of the unknown sometimes makes intelligent people react in ways that, in hindsight, appear totally illogical.

A case in point, Cisco announced results of a global study that found that while 77 percent of IT decision makers surveyed plan to increase spending on internal collaboration tools, company employees believe that their ability to collaborate is constrained by their own employer policies.

That said, more than a quarter of those who work at organizations that prohibit the use of social media applications admitted to changing the settings on their corporate devices to gain online access -- claiming they "need the tools to get the job done."

This new insight was attained by investigating practices at medium to large enterprises -- those with more than 250 employees. The study, conducted by InsightExpress, surveyed 2,023 corporate end-users and 1,011 Information Technology Decision Makers (ITDMs) from 10 countries.

Progressive Use of Online Collaboration Tools
The research found that ITDMs around the world recognize the importance of collaboration tools to the future success of their business, with India and China being the most progressive in adopting the technology.

Consequently, many ITDM respondents said that they are planning to increase their spending on collaboration technologies over the next year, identifying video conferencing, Web conferencing and IP telephony as primary areas of investment.

• Globally, 96 percent ITDMs and end users recognize that collaboration tools have a role to play in the future success of their business.
• Of those surveyed, 77 percent of ITDMs expect investment in collaboration tools to increase between now and October, and 56 percent expect their spending on collaboration tools to increase by 10 percent or more.
• Productivity and efficiency were identified by both end users and ITDMs as the primary benefits of increased collaboration -- with 69 percent of end users regularly using advanced collaboration tools, such as video and Web conferencing, to help them complete tasks at work more efficiently.
  

Why Employees Defy the Policy Restrictions
Employees identified a variety of frustrations with devices and applications at work. These include restrictions set by IT managers on the types of collaboration technologies that can be used at the workplace, a lack of integration among the applications, non-compatible formats (video, data, voice), and the limited number of collaboration tools at their disposal.

• Slightly more than half (52 percent) of organizations prohibit the use of social media applications or similar collaboration tools at work.
• Half (50 percent) of the end users admit to ignoring company policy prohibiting use of social media tools at least once a week, and 27 percent admit to changing the settings on corporate devices to get access to prohibited applications.
  

The study also highlights how end users are clearly motivated by the benefits gained from increased collaboration, but also identifies a need for some enterprises to adapt their corporate processes and organizational culture.

• When asked to identify how collaboration benefits them, 45 percent of the end users pointed to improved productivity and efficiency, 40 percent noted they receive assistance in solving work-related problems, and 31 percent enjoyed accelerated decision making.
• Ease of use (58 percent), the ability to communicate anywhere and at any time (45 percent), and features and functionality (37 percent) are the three most desired attributes of a device or application.
• End users believe that elements of corporate culture can inhibit their ability to collaborate successfully: 46 percent feel that all decisions are made by people at the top of their organization, and 39 percent say colleagues are not willing to share information when it does not benefit their own business unit.
  

The research is the second of a two-part series that Cisco has commissioned to explore the impact of social networking and collaboration in the enterprise. Cisco previously shared findings that explored how organizations use consumer social networking tools to collaborate externally.

Culture is Key to Advanced Collaboration

Organizations that deploy the most advanced Internet protocol-based collaboration technologies achieve more than twice the return on their collaboration investment and perform better than their less collaborative peers, according to a thought-provoking Frost & Sullivan market study.

"Meetings Around the World II: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration," sponsored by Verizon and Cisco, examines how busy professionals in businesses and government agencies use advanced collaboration tools such as voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging or meeting via high definition video or Cisco TelePresence to get their work done.

The study is the first to develop a model for measuring a return on collaboration investment, the Return on Collaboration (ROC) Index. It establishes a progressive impact of deploying advanced Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) technologies on business performance and measures improvements in areas such as research and development, human resources, sales, marketing, investor relations and public relations.

Advanced Collaborators Harness Competitive Advantage
The study also identified emerging business technology adoption trends and attitudes across the globe. Key findings from the study include:

• Businesses and government agencies deploying increasingly more sophisticated collaboration tools -- such as VoIP soft phones, immersive video and fixed mobile convergence -- saw a corresponding improvement in business results relative to the amount invested.
• The overall average ROC score was 4.2 -- meaning organizations received an average return of four times their investment in deploying collaboration technologies.
• The majority of organizations deploying UC&C report they are more successful than their peers compared to those not deploying UC&C (70 percent versus 47 percent).
• Of organizations deploying UC&C, 40 percent plan to increase spending.
• VoIP is leading the way for delivery of advanced communications and collaboration applications.
  

Why Corporate Culture is a Defining Factor
If you're thinking that simply deploying online collaboration tools will deliver results similar to the leaders -- then think again. Your work environment is truly instrumental to success.

How do the Advanced Collaborators attain an ROC score of 6.1? These organizations tend to have "open" entrepreneurial corporate cultures where individuals are accessible, and there's regular cooperation between business units.

"Meetings Around the World II confirms and extends the key findings of the original study and builds on those conclusions. This latest research shows adopting progressively more advanced unified communications and collaboration tools can help organizations achieve a corresponding return on collaboration and improvement across all business functions. This return was most dramatic in the areas of sales, marketing and research and development" says Brian Cotton, vice president for Information and Communications Technologies for Frost & Sullivan.

Four High-Tech Steps SMBs Should Consider Now

The fiscal fourth quarter has just started. But now is the time for small businesses owners and mid-size business managers to start looking ahead to 2009.

"Cost cutting" is a popular topic during today's uncertain economic times. You can hide in fear and close your wallet. Or you can take these four steps to gain more predictable operating costs -- while driving your business forward.

1. Move to a managed services contract: If you're using an IT consulting firm or solutions provider to maintain your network and PC infrastructure, ask them about so-called "managed services." Many consulting firms now offer flat monthly fees to maintain, protect and optimize business desktops, servers, network infrastructure and applications.

This flat-rate approach will eliminate those "surprise" emergency IT repairs that can throw off your company's monthly budget or hinder cash flow.

If you're not familiar with the managed services, here are some key questions you should ask as you seek information about the industry.

2. Rethink business travel: Notice I'm not suggesting that you eliminate business travel. Face-to-face engagements are still important when meeting new clientele or pitching new business.

But for established business relationships, consider transitioning your face-to-face meetings to the virtual world -- especially if you need to communicate on a global scale. Convene online meetings using WebEx, unified communications and other tools that drive rich discussions. Make sure your business's web site includes a simple instruction page to help all of your employees -- and your customers -- get started with these collaboration tools.

And lead by example: Your top executives should be hosting the collaborative gatherings from time to time.

3. Find Your TelePresence: Conventional wisdom says TelePresence -- a rich, comprehensive video conferencing technology -- is too expensive for small businesses. But that's a misnomer.

For about the price of a one-week business trip, it's now possible to deploy a personal TelePresence system in a central office or a branch office. (In fact, the concept of Personal TelePresence dates back to at least 1994.) Each time a TelePresence system eliminates a business trip, you're essentially pay your company a dividend or freeing up cash for marketing, sales, research and development -- or other revenue-lifting activities.

4. Head for Home: If you still offer company cars to some employees, it might be wiser to invest those corporate dollars in your employees' home offices. Your company will spend less dollars on rising energy costs; employees will eliminate commute times and related expenses; and at home TelePresence and collaboration tools will make staff members far more productive.

I'm not suggesting that you eliminate company cars for your road warriors, top revenue producers and field service experts. But take a look at the numbers -- and ask your employees -- to see if they'd prefer to reduce their travel expenses in return for at-home TelePresence.

Some pundits think that at-home TelePresence won't gain momentum until 2010 or so. I disagree. I think leading-edge users are already making the move. I'll be looking for an in-home TelePresence system myself in the first half of 2009.

You have nearly 10 months of operating expenses to review from 2008. Take a close look to determine how your company is spending its travel dollars. Then, shift a portion of those dollars to collaborative tools.

Your company will gain improved productivity -- while earning a financial dividend -- every month in 2009.

Why is Google shy about Marratech acquisition?

On the same evening of the record quarterly earnings announcement, preceding a week which included the huge acquisition of DoubleClick (was DoubleClick a Smart Buy?), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) coyly announced the acquisition of Marratech's Video conferencing software on the Official Google Blog under the title: Collaborating with Marratech. No press release. No analyst call. No interviews. Just a simple announcement through a blog post by Google's VP of Engineering Douglas Merrill:

"As a company, we thrive on casual interactions and spontaneous collaboration. So we're excited about acquiring Marratech's video conferencing software, which will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there's an Internet connection.

We look forward to learning from the extraordinary ingenuity of Marratech's engineers as they focus on desktop conferencing research and development in Sweden, where they will continue to be located."

Why would Google do this? Why buy a company's video conferencing software when you are not going to go all out and talk about it? After all, Google is a key marketing innovator providing an advertising and search platform to tens of thousands of businessess worldwide. Why even put an update on the official blog afterwards that says: "To clarify some confusion, we acquired Marratech's software, not the company itself."

Contrast this particular Google acquisition with Cisco's acquisition of WebEx. Both Marratech and WebEx play in the same web collaboration and web conferencing market place. WebEx has over 2,000 employees; Marratech has 10, albeit a solid engineering team (as per Wikipedia). WebEx has industrial strength proven web conferencing and web collaboration technology used by thousands of corporations; Marratech has good technology that is used by tens of organizations.

For starters, Marratech has good software that include:
* High quality voice for groups with private audio feature
* Interactive group whiteboard including application and document sharing
* Multi party video

and provides support for:
* 256 bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) end-to-end encryption
* Support for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on the client and server side.
* Support for bandwidth saving clusters
* Support for IP Unicast, IP Multicast or both
* Support for H.323 (dial in and out, E.164) and SIP
* H.264 video

Here are my top five reasons on why Google chose to acquire Marratech's video conferencing software and did not make a huge splash:

1. Google quite possibly entertained acquiring WebEx Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: WEBX), but did not go over the top as it did with DoubleClick, and essentially gave way to Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO). WebEx would have been a smart play for Google in the enterprise market.
2. Google then decided to simply acquire video conferencing technology that it can essentially mold and embed it deeply within the Enterprise applications and Desktop. Google thus was looking at acquiring technology fast and for a small price.
3. Google will likely integrate Marratech into Google Talk, Chat, Google Apps, Google Desktop, and other Google collaboration products in the future. Marratech may even provide a superior audio solution than what Google has today. Google is only buying the software; it is not clear on whether Google will create a new team of engineers to work on the new solution, or outsource the development to Marratech.
4. Google may provide "Live Video Conferencing" powered by Marratech as an add-on to YouTube customers. This could be huge. YouTube has been a runaway hit with on-demand Video; combine this with live Video conferencing, and suddenly, Google can be powering the world's Video conferencing solution through the Google network.
5. Google will possibly use Marratech as a launchpad in Sweden and create a larger technology presence in the future.