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New technologies are often viewed with caution. Virtualisation, the consumerisation of IT, and the trend to BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Device) are hotly debated and it can be difficult to accurately assess the risk-level of embracing these changes within your business. A variety of solutions have hit the market and security vendors are continuously updating tips for best practice. It is the job of the IT director to ensure a business adapts to these new changes and it’s a task that can often seem daunting.

A Mitel report published in 2011 found that two thirds of workers were using at least one of their own devices for work purposes. The BYOD trend is only set to grow and the IT department needs to be ready to provide a secure network to accommodate a huge array of devices.

Having the freedom to communicate your way

As employees begin to push for more freedom and flexible ways of working, businesses need to make sure that the infrastructure to accommodate these changes is in place. Relaxing network restriction can seem like a risky move but doesn’t need to be if the correct supporting platform is in place. A Unified Communications solution can help a business provide consistency and security across any device, whilst still ensuring that employees have the freedom to embrace new trends and technologies.

UC also empowers individuals to work productively from anywhere, on any device and to be contactable on a single number. As a flexible solution, the IT director can adapt it to suit particular business needs at any given time. This is particularly important when it comes to embracing new technologies and updating the business infrastructure easily and securely.

Providing a secure solution

Mitel has spent many years developing these solutions, ensuring the stability of products and helping to grow new technologies within its offering. UC has reached maturity and IT directors should be reassured that the technologies are much more secure and reliable to support business critical needs in times of change. It’s time the cultural and technical barriers were overcome, for the successful business of the future.

After reading the article “High tech hotels a hit with geeky guests” in CNN last week I got excited to see that technology in hotels is being recognised for its potential to differentiate hotel brands amongst the competition. It’s also a clear sign that hotels are now really embracing the ‘consumerisation’ of technology that we use in our every day lives by accommodating new devices into their infrastructures and using guests’ own gadgets as a platform to provide services.

For too long many hotels have ignored this opportunity, but now businesses are recognising that it’s actually no longer just the geekier guests expecting to be able to integrate their own personal devices into their systems. The majority of guests now want to have personalised services delivered to them on their own devices so they can access information and communicate seamlessly whether at home, on the move, or in the hotel.

Intuitive applications that improve the guest experience can give hotels a real competitive edge, for example checking-in via an iPad and receiving a wake-up call that simultaneously communciates the breakfast options and weather of the day. With the right infrastructure, guests can also twin their mobile phone with the hotel’s phone system automatically, so the hotel can reach you wherever you are. For more great examples, take a look at what we’ve been doing with the Starwood Hotels and Resorts group here.

With the Olympics looming, hotels will be focusing more than ever on offering a seamless service to their guests. The latest technologies offer unrivalled opportunities to help hotels up their game and deliver a service beyond expectations.

The Olympic Games presents a huge opportunity for the UK hospitality industry, but also brings challenges as hotels prepare for an influx of tourists, competitors and support staff. Despite the focus on London, the Games will affect every corner of the UK with events in Glasgow, Newcastle, Cardiff, Weymouth and elsewhere. Visitors will be travelling and staying around the country, in cities, towns, and even out in the sticks, for example, Hadleigh Farm and Lee Valley.

So what can hotel operators do to ensure they are able to meet the demands of the Games?

1) Travel

Will your staff struggle to get to and from work during the Games? By understanding where they live and how they travel you can manage staffing levels and travel arrangements. Do all your staff need to work in the hotel? Teleworking enables staff to extend their desktop over a broadband connection into their home, and is also ideal for key members of staff who need to be on call 24/7.

2) Dealing with the additional workload

Taking on additional staff, providing training and ensuring standards are upheld will be a major challenge during the Olympic period. Wherever possible, you should look towards better utilisation of existing staff. Now is a great time to invest in additional training, improve business processes and implement mobile working solutions to improve productivity. The investment you make will be good for the long term.

3) Providing Guest Information

Your guests will have many questions ranging from local places to eat through to directions and travel to Olympic venues. Frequently asked questions can be pre-recorded in multiple languages and presented through an auto attendant. An IP display telephone placed in a common area can provide a cost effective information kiosk. Guests can look up information and make restricted telephone calls at the touch of a button, and this frees up busy hotel staff to manage more complex issues

4) Access for Disabled Guests

The ever increasing popularity of the Paralympics will attract many disabled competitors, spectators and support staff. Having accessible accommodation will enable hotels to attract large groups, sometimes with only one disabled user. Once again, good communication and well trained staff will be key to guest satisfaction.

Most of the challenges outlined above are not unique to the Olympic period. Through careful planning, hotels can help the UK to put on a great show in 2012 and benefit from improved productivity and guest service for the longer term.

Everyone’s heard Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC), but how much do you really know about the benefits for businesses?

What is Unified Communications and Collaboration?

Unified communications (UC) integrates real-time communications including telephony, video conferencing and instant messaging with non real-time communication services such as voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax. Collaboration provides a common set of communication tools focused on enabling distributed teams to work together more effectively by sharing desktops, applications and content.

Why implement UCC?

Here are my guidelines on the top five reasons why organisations should consider unified communications and collaboration:

1) Most organisations identify people as their most valuable asset. In a highly dispersed organisation where individuals are working across locations, UC provides the glue that defines your organisation and the way it operates whilst keeping employees happy and able to use the devices and applications they want to, wherever they are.

2) Unified communications can help to reduce worker frustrations and enable faster decision-making. Presence and availability information assists individuals to make better communication choices. For example, knowing a colleague is at their desk and making a quick call or instant messaging session could save several days of ‘email conversation’.

3) In these challenging times, businesses need to focus on customer service. In a multimedia world, customers expect to communicate in the media of their choice, for example, telephony, email, web chat, SMS or social networking. Unified communications helps organisations to manage all of these communication channels more effectively.

4) Ever rising energy prices are causing organisations to reconsider the need for travel. Dispersed teams can work together using video conferencing and collaboration tools, sharing documents and making decisions as if they were in the same room. In addition, no time is wasted travelling between locations.

5) Unified communications and collaboration helps organisations to attract and retain staff. In a recent survey commissioned by Mitel, 57% of workers indicated they were more likely to stay with the employer if able to work in their own way, and 88% of employees want mobile / flexible working.

The eyes of the tech world may have been drawn to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, but as the Catalonian sun sets on one of the mobile industry’s biggest events, we can now look forward to one of IT world’s premier events: UC Expo 2012.

Mitel has big plans for the show as we launch the latest version of our flagship UC solution, Mitel Application Suite 4.0, on Tuesday 6^th March.

The show is taking place at London’s Olympia Exhibition Centre, and you’ll find us at stand 509, where you can see demonstrations of the new solution and hear about all the new features straight from our experts.

We’ll also be on hand to talk more generally about all the latest industry issues and our full suite of communications solutions. So if you’re attending this year’s UC Expo make sure you stop by and pay us a visit!

The UK economy is still going through a challenging time in 2012. Small businesses are clearly not immune to that; in fact, they’re probably less resilient than bigger corporate organisations.

The need for value for money and ROI, which have always been guiding principles for small businesses, will undoubtedly intensify this year.  At the same time, there will be increased pressure on human resources as well as finances.

Small enterprises are often reliant on a few key individuals to lead and drive their business, whether it’s the owner, proprietor or other key staff members. It’s here that the benefits of UC and collaboration can really deliver value to small businesses and help them compete in tough times.

UC and collaboration can empower these key individuals to work productively from anywhere, on any device and be contactable on a single number. It gives them the ability to telework easily, without worrying about VPN complexity.

They can collaborate more effectively by instantly creating ad-hoc voice and web conferences with team members and customers. This means no booking conference bridges, and no paying a conference provider for the privilege.

Mitel embeds these applications into our key range of products for the small business market. With simplicity being an essential requirement in this space, they are designed to be easy to use and deliver real value.

Crucially, while IP continues to grow as a percentage of the overall market, we’re at the forefront of this transition and part of our value equation for small businesses is that we’re able to offer these applications on both IP and hybrid solutions. Our Mitel 5000 Communications Platform being a great example of this.

Unified communications is often still thought of as an enterprise solution, whereas in reality some of the benefits can actually be far more critical for SMEs to recognise.  

The London 2012 Olympic games is fast approaching and stories of disruption and its effect on business and infrastructure seem to be dominating the news.

It seems clear that disruption to businesses will be inevitable, as workers struggle to travel to and from work because of the extra pressure on all aspects of the transport system, and this won’t be limited to London. The games will be played out at a total of 34 venues across the UK, not to mention the various other operational sites, such as transport depots and training facilities.

The London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG) acknowledges this potential disruption and is taking steps to minimise this by releasing guidance for organisations on how to help their business and staff to work efficiently during the games. One of the key recommendations made by LOCOG is to consider giving staff the option of working from home or relocating staff temporarily.

Having the right technology in place

Mobility and the ‘work from anywhere’ culture is a trend which has been growing steadily, and the Olympics presents an ideal time for previously hesitant businesses to implement an effective remote working strategy to ensure all staff, regardless of their location, have the same tools to work seamlessly between home and office.

This is especially important when considering potential hurdles such as the mobile network coverage  issues that Ofcom is currently working to prevent, as thousands of spectators share video and pictures on smartphones. Far too often employees are expected to work remotely by simply relying on their mobile phones, but these staff will become the first victims if major problems are experienced, creating potentially damaging delays to a business.

Businesses are often concerned by perceived obstacles, such as integration of staff into the wider business. However the benefits of home-working are far reaching and can be seen from cost savings, through to productivity and motivation. Mobile/Home workers must feel part of the routine and be able to communicate with colleagues as if they were in the same office, regardless of their location. Having the right technology is a vital part of this strategy.

Providing a flexible solution

The best unified communications solutions provide a platform that is flexible and leverages a business’s existing IT and communication investment wherever possible. This approach assists in meeting both company and employee needs.

The Olympics provides an opportunity for employees and managers to experience a taste of flexible working and see the resulting increased productivity. This is a win-win scenario and the model can continue to grow with the business long after the athletes have gone home.

The Olympic games looks set to capture our attention this summer but, with the right UC solutions in place, businesses too can enjoy this huge event by ensuring productive, motivated workforces that can work from anywhere.

Everyone’s heard of virtualisation, but how much do you really know about the benefits for businesses?

What is virtualisation?

Virtualisation enables organisations to run multiple virtual machines on a single, physical platform, sharing its resources across multiple environments.

Why virtualisation?

Here are my guidelines on the top five reasons why businesses should consider a virtualised communications network:

1) Fewer servers = less cables, less data ports, less rack space and less heating, ventilation & power. VMWare suggests its customers achieve a 60% reduction in infrastructure cost per application and a 2-3 times improvement in IT support

2) Many IT teams spend all their time ‘keeping the lights on’. By reducing support time the IT team can free up more time to understand business processes and propose innovative solutions.

3) By considering voice as ’just another business application’ running in a virtualised environment, businesses can leverage their investment in virtualisation and move to a single business continuity plan.

4) Green credentials can be increased due to fewer physical servers being powered which equates to a much smaller carbon footprint. In addition, ‘Distributed Power Management’ enables hardware to be bought on line during busy periods and shut down during quiet periods.

5) Ensure enterprise applications can perform with highest availability and performance. Any problems can be isolated by taking a snapshot of the production environment into the lab for investigation

Businesses are facing a multitude of challenges, which virtualisation is ideally placed to address. The need to do more with less, rising energy prices and ever increasing compliance requirements are helping to drive widespread adoption of server virtualisation and cloud computing.

And at the same time, a virtual solution is a sure fire way to put your businesses at the cutting edge of communications developments, with unified communications (UC) and collaboration delivering a way to improve operational efficiency, support flexible working and drive cost savings.

Did anyone listen to comedian, Michael McIntyre, on the Chris Moyles radio show? (BBC Radio One, 20th December 2011). They were discussing the challenges around expression when communicating by text or social networking.

Do you exchange kisses with your bank manager? Reply to a text with a smiley face? Or finish your sentence with ‘dot dot dot’ to keep your reader in suspense…? Michael noted that he always finishes a joke with an exclamation mark to ensure the reader understands that it’s humour, even though he is a comedian!

In our business lives I fear we all use the wrong communication media from time to time, poring over an email for 15 minutes when a short telephone call would convey more information in less time. Better still, we can get immediate feedback, avoiding several days or even weeks of ‘email conversation’.

For many organisations, communication is the most important business process, and unified communications solutions can help workers to make the most intelligent communications decisions. By providing individuals with a single number identity regardless of device or location, a single mailbox and access to presence information, for example, employees can quickly select and initiate the most appropriate communication media.

Instead of pondering how appropriate that smiley face is whilst drafting an email to your boss, thinking smarter about the way we communicate could save us both time and face!

Great change is afoot in IT departments as a result of both technological and cultural change. Perhaps the hottest trend to watch out for in 2012 is the ‘consumerisation of IT’, whereby end-users have become the drivers of new technology developments, which is putting increasing pressure on IT departments to deliver the technologies of the moment.

At Mitel, we recently conducted research[1] to examine the extent of this trend, and the results showed that as many as two in three workers are using their own personal devices in the workplace – often because their own gadgets are more advanced than those provided by IT departments. We expect this bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend will only become more prominent in 2012, and this can present a challenge to IT directors as many see it as a security threat.

There remains a cultural barrier for IT directors who are accustomed to locking-down their networks, now being challenged by employees asking, “can I use my iPad for that?”. We’d like to see 2012 as the turning point for IT departments, not only in recognising the potential benefits of more flexible technology approaches, but also in terms of the reassurance that empowering end-users doesn’t need to lessen the IT department’s control. It’s about giving them confidence by getting the right infrastructure in place from the outset.

A shift in working practices and changing attitudes to mobile working are also likely to be key issues for IT departments in 2012. For example, events like the Olympics and the resulting increase in congestion in major cities will drive more businesses than ever to consider remote working strategies. The technologies to enable this have been available for some time, but such a huge event could be the catalyst for a cultural overhaul that’s needed for widespread uptake.