Ribbon Supports Remote Staff with Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) and Collaboration Rooms on IBM Public Cloud

“I want to look them in the eye.” It’s a common saying about the importance of body language. In the past, that “look” might take a day of travel and cost most of a day of productivity. Today, however, modern enterprises are turning to real-time unified communication solutions to get meeting participants engaged—and cloud technology is the key.

COVID-19 and the Remote Working Collaboration Paradigm Shift

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, businesses, and individuals around the globe continue to grapple with the new normal of how we work. Working remotely has not only become a nice to have but “must have” capability and while adjustments are still being made, especially for those teams who are accustomed to working together in the same physical location, it really is possible to get more work done and even higher quality levels when the same team is distributed, and working from home.

Working from Home Doesn’t Mean that Your Communications Experience Has to Suffer

Working from home is now a mandate for a significant number of employees around the globe, and has forced companies to quickly ramp up their remote working capabilities. One tool that many companies are embracing for this new normal is Microsoft Teams.

Teams, which is an evolution of Microsoft’s Unified Communications platform Skype for Business that combines workplace chat, video and audio meetings, file sharing, application integration and other collaboration and productivity tools.

7 Simple Tips that Can Help Working From Home Easier During these Uncertain Times

With the unforeseen impact that Covid-19 is having on most of our lives and the overwhelming majority of employees now working from home, I thought I would share a few tips for working home that may be helpful as we all get used to this new normal. Some of these tips I have gathered in my career from leading teams that were majority home-based. Some are probably pretty obvious, but I hope they help some of you out…

Securing your Journey to Microsoft Teams Calling

Microsoft Teams turns three years old this month. The development of Teams was a strong response to the competitive threat from Slack: an instant messaging platform that was trying to replace email. Microsoft Teams integrated chat, files and meetings and came as part of their enterprise licenses. Three years later, Teams has surpassed the number of daily active Slack users by 50% and is the fastest growing business application in Microsoft’s history.

Branching Out More Efficiently and Securely with SD-WAN

As enterprises expand, through organic growth or acquisition, they need to support the IT needs of more distributed locations. These often include teams in shared office spaces versus enterprise-owned or leased facilities. To serve remote locations and users, enterprises are rapidly moving toward cloud-based applications including Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS).

The Importance of Enterprise Session Border Controllers (E-SBCs) & Why They Matter

When Voice over IP (VoIP) emerged 20 years ago, businesses’ voice and IT teams were skeptical about how wise – and safe – it was to move voice calls over the Internet via data packets. Although VoIP was substantially more cost-effective, there were concerns around audio quality, latency and, of course, security.

Today, securing VoIP sessions and applications has become a huge challenge. With a growing number of calls and collaborative sessions using VoIP on public and private networks, service providers must respond to enterprises’ increasing concerns about security.