TMCnet Unified Communications Week in Review

If you own a company and are looking to keep your competitive edge, then now is most definitely the time to transition to a next-generation platform like unified communications. UC can significantly enhance not only communication but collaboration amongst global workforces, helping teams to finish projects in a much shorter period of time through a variety of channels including instant messaging and video conferencing.

This week, it was revealed that GENBAND and Samsung (News - Alert) Telecommunications America signed a strategic alliance that will combine Samsung Mobile’s SAFE suite with GENBAND's (News - Alert) SMART OFFICE mobile UC applications. SAFE is part of Samsung’s family of enterprise solutions which include the necessary security and feature enhancements. Through working together, the firms will be unveiling a way for employees to work productively while on-the-go with access to various voice, data and video communications.

Tim Wagner, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Sales at Samsung Mobile, said in a statement, “This alliance with GENBAND brings powerful new communications capabilities to the enterprise, fortifying today's mobile workforce with unprecedented on-the-go productivity. Our SAFE solution, which enhances security for enterprise devices, combined with GENBAND's industry leading UC software and service provider expertise, offers enterprise customers a holistic, innovative and cost-effective desk phone complement or replacement solution that will allow employees to carry their communications environment with them, whether inside or outside of the office.”

In other news, HD video conferencing is now being leveraged heavily by the healthcare industry due to the fact that “the technology improves the efficiency and efficacy of physician responsibilities, which in turn allows for the patient experience to be greatly improved by the use of video conferencing solutions,” according to a Teo blog post.

Say, for instance, a patient needs immediate attention for an ailment but can’t physically travel to his or her physician’s office. With video conferencing, this problem can be quickly resolved as patients can remain in the comfort of their own home sweet home while still receiving urgent care. Appointments will never again be missed, helping to keep the public healthier and happier since they didn’t have to worry about transportation to and from their doctor visit.

Moreover, in spite of the fact that corporations are usually the ones being touted as largely responsible for bringing UC to the spotlight, public divisions of a variety of countries as of late have begun to implement these solutions as a way to slash costs and ultimately increase customer satisfaction via communicating in a variety of channels.

Closing out the week, findings were released by analyst firm Ovum (News - Alert) that highlight the fact that communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) have never held a larger responsibility than we are now seeing in companies.

It is crucial that firms spread around the world understand that without an efficient communication model in place, customer satisfaction rates will drop which in turn could cause the organization to shut its doors for good. Also, expenses will climb through the roof when not leveraging a UC system- something most budget cautious companies might never recover from.

For all of the most vital breaking news in the industry, be sure to stay tuned to the unified communications community, exclusively on TMCnet!