Comfy clothes. No traffic jams. Fewer interruptions. Flexible schedule. Stocked refrigerator. These are some of the reasons why most people say they’ve enjoyed the remote-work experience, have remained productive and would like to continue working from home, at least on a part-time basis.

The ability to deliver advanced communication and collaboration services to increasingly distributed workforces is driving rapid growth of cloud-delivered unified communications solutions. Analysts with Metrigy predict that 70 percent of businesses will be using UC-as-a-Service within two years.

Odd as it may seem now, just a few years ago business leaders debated whether employees should be allowed to use mobile phones for work. Many worried that the practice would reduce productivity, increase stress and create potential security risks.

That debate is over.

Successful organizations have always depended upon groups of people working together to maximize efficiency and solve complex problems. Team dynamics help create structure, encourage creativity, foster innovation and drive productivity. Research by Frost & Sullivan suggests that as much as a third of a typical company’s productivity can be traced directly to team collaboration efforts.

Defense-in-depth strategy can help organizations counter surging levels of cybercrime.

Although exact figures won’t be tallied for another couple of months, most security analysts expect 2021 to rank as perhaps the worst year ever for cybercrime. With data breaches, ransomware attacks, phishing scams and malware infections all increasing at a record pace, global damages from cybercrime are expected to reach more than $6 trillion by the end of the year — six times more than in 2020.

Don’t expect cybercriminals to take a vacation in 2022.

“The sophistication and scale of cyberattacks will continue to break records, and we can expect a huge increase in the number of ransomware and mobile attacks,” said Maya Horowitz, VP of Research at Check Point Software.

How hyperconverged infrastructure helps small businesses simplify IT infrastructure and management

The combination of increasing IT complexity and worsening tech skills shortages has been a double-whammy for small to midsized businesses (SMBs). Nearly three-quarters say the need to rapidly deploy new technologies in recent years has made it nearly impossible to effectively manage their IT environments, according to a Vanson Bourne survey.

In response to pandemic-triggered distancing mandates, businesses across the globe moved quickly to adopt cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions for their suddenly remote workforces. Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) adoption surged by 86 percent at the start of the pandemic, according to one survey of U.S. enterprise organizations.

More threats. Growing attack surfaces. Fewer security analysts. It’s no wonder a sense of pessimism permeates the cybersecurity community.
Despite increased investments in 2020, nearly 80 percent of senior IT leaders polled recently by IDG expressed a lack of confidence in their organizations’ IT security posture.

Lacking a coherent collaboration strategy, many organizations adopt multiple collaboration solutions from multiple vendors, and don’t have much of a grasp on how much it all costs. The subscription and license fees are only the tip of the iceberg. Network and IT support costs and a poor user experience add to the TCO of collaboration.

Many organizations focus all of their energy on growing the business but fail to adequately prepare for the challenges that business growth can bring. Growing pains are commonly felt in the areas of communication and collaboration, which become even more important with business expansion.