State and local government agencies are stepping up their IT modernization efforts in order to streamline operations, cut costs and make critical services and programs accessible to their constituents. But there is still much work to be done.

Only 13 percent of state and local agencies have made substantial investments in modernizing operations, according to a new survey from the Center for Digital Government (CDG). However, 56 percent said they are planning to upgrade their technology systems over the next two years in order to meet their communities’ rising expectations for digital access.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now a key enabler of contact center efforts to cut costs, improve efficiency and enhance the customer experience. Virtual agents, speech-to-text, intelligent routing, advanced error detection, automated data entry and real-time data analysis are among the many functions enabled by AI. As a result, the AI-powered contact center is becoming “a necessity for companies that want to deliver stellar customer experience and gain competitive advantage,” according to Robin Gareiss, CEO and Principal Analyst at the Metrigy research firm.

In an increasingly data-driven world, legacy backup systems and strategies no longer provide adequate data protection. Tools designed for conventional on-premises backup are poorly suited for protecting data spread across multiple data centers, cloud platforms, edge servers and endpoint devices.

The numbers paint a disturbing picture of the current state of cybercrime. During one average day in 2023, researchers say, the world can expect to see:

3.4 billion phishing emails

300,000 malware infections
22,500 distributed denial of service attacks
2,328 data breaches

Faced with this relentless onslaught, organizations have had to accept that it is no longer possible to prevent every attack.

Boost IT security with a layered approach combining multiple tools and solutions.

Elephant calves in the wild are protected by the herd, which will circle the calf in order to fend off lions, hyenas, crocodiles and other predators. The huge size and coordinated action of the adult elephants creates a defensive ring that successfully discourages attacks.

Cost, security and talent remain limiting factors for cloud adoption, according to a new study.

The cloud is not merely a mainstream computing model — it is the basis for nearly every essential business technology initiative. That’s why the vast majority of organizations are aggressively pursuing public, private and hybrid cloud strategies to meet their future IT needs.

Surging levels of cybercrime cost the global economy more than $8 trillion in 2022 — and most experts think the worst is yet to come.

Ninety-three percent of cybersecurity leaders and 86 percent of business leaders believe that a “far-reaching, catastrophic cyber event” is likely to occur within the next two years, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Cybersecurity Outlook.

In our last two posts, we discussed the telephony limitations of Microsoft Teams and how to resolve them through integration with the RingCentral telephony platform. In this post, we’ll take a look at your deployment options — and a new update that makes the process faster and easier than ever.

Microsoft Teams is the world’s most popular business communications and collaboration service, but as we noted in our last post, the platform has considerable limitations when it comes to telephony. It’s why 85 percent of Teams users surveyed by the Cavell Group report that they leverage a third-party telephony partner instead of using a Microsoft calling plan.

Hundreds of millions of users rely on Microsoft Teams to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, partners and customers. However, telephony limitations are perhaps the platform’s most pronounced shortcoming.

Voice calling was not a high priority when Teams was launched in 2016 — the platform was designed to support workplace collaboration with chat, video conferencing, file sharing and application integration features.