Collaboration - empowering the new "Unified Workplace"

Today's business climate is being shaped by a number of forces that are driving an increasing need for all of us to "collaborate across distances"; collaboration that harnesses the power of technology to bring people together in high quality virtual environments to speed decision making innovation, and provide better customer serivce.

From financial issues to societal, business needs to do more with less. Business needs to achieve more with less resources; to have more customer interaction, more partner interaction, and keep employees connected while on the road. The "net is that we must use technology more effectively to increase collaboration between employees, partners, and customers. We must use technology to scale scarce resources, to expand globally, and to gain the most benefit from our human resources. The challenge for most businesses is how to harness the power of technology to increase collaboration when most IT departments are challenged to keep up with increasing demands.

In response to this challenge, many IT leaders are turning to managed collaboration service providers to help them get the job done. Cisco has invested in a a program named the "Cisco Powered Program" to help business decision makers easily find the industry's leading managed service providers. Verizon was just awarded TMC's Unified Communications and Collaboration service of the year; I encourage all to take a look at their service offerings to explore how they can take your business forward.