IT Cloud Services Primary Sectors of Adoption

You don't know me!

By Mike Kaechele

Been thinking a lot about relationships lately. I think they are one of the most important parts of teaching and learning. If there is little or no relationship between people than it is hard to have the trust to push each other to a deeper level. When something goes poorly in my room it is one of the first things I check. I also think it is important to reflect openly even when things do not turn out as well as planned.

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I like to experiment in my classroom and am not afraid to try something new. Recently my 8th graders worked with an 8th graders in Vietnam designing video games in Scratch. The project was modestly successful at best. One of the reasons was that the students in Vietnam were more experienced with Scratch and in thinking like a programmer than my students. Many of the international students had used Scratch for a few years whereas almost all of my students were first time users. We learned the basics by making a few basic games following step by step instructions. Most of my students were fine with that but when they had to create their own game from "scratch" then they struggled.

Some of the groups worked well with each other, but many of the groups struggled. The reasons were varied as some students slacked off and let their partner students do most of the work. Others had miscommunication about either their designs or how to actually make them work.

By Aphrodite

But the key breakdown that I saw was the lack of relationships between themselves and the students overseas. We had the students create introductory videos but did not have time for them to make any more videos through out the project. Skype unfortunately is not an option because of the time difference. Students were supposed to email the game files back and forth to each other and explain what they are working/stuck on. They often forgot to do this or did not take the time to write good explanations.

The students just were not "connected" to their overseas partners so they were not very motivated to cooperate. It was easier to blame some abstract student partner who was not in the room. We were under the gun time wise to get this project done, but next time we must lay more groundwork before the collaboration to develop relationships between the students. For most middle schoolers their social life and friends are their life. We need to tap into this to build meaningful relationships to inspire deeper learning.

Shared Vision for the Future of Hosted Collaboration

With the increased reliance on IT from business leaders, it's important for CIOs to understand the concerns of CEOs and the implications they may have on IT, according to Gartner, Inc.

"Business leaders see very uncertain times ahead in 2011, and they must defend growth despite falling business and consumer confidence," said Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

According to Gartner's assessment, CIOs should target at least one major business process to be revolutionized or obliterated in 2011 or 2012 -- substantively improving how companies collaborate is one example.

BT and Cisco have a shared vision for the future of hosted collaboration and unified communications services, built on their insight across a variety of networked IT and communications services.

The companies' mutual understanding of complex network environments and solution provisioning has helped them deliver superior capability, service, and value with global reach.

BT and Cisco jointly addressed the ongoing transition to hosted collaboration, unified communications and Internet Protocol (IP) telephony services, including the developing demand for IP telephony as a cloud-based service, at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2010.

Collaboration: New Realities, Rules and Opportunities
Stephen Bruce, head of UCC and Mobility portfolios for multinational corporations at BT Global Services and Matt Rowan, manager of partner operations at Cisco, discussed the new realities, rules, and opportunities that stem from a cloud computing-based collaboration and unified communications strategy, including the implications of a utility-priced service.

Bruce said, "As more of our customers contemplate their end-of-life traditional telephony environments and look to embrace the cloud, they are obviously interested in the notion of moving their IP telephony applications into the cloud. The carefully planned transition to cloud-based IP telephony can help customers dramatically reduce upfront investment costs while accelerating the adoption of IP telephony and unified communications on a global scale."

Rowan said, "As businesses analyze their options related to the consumption of collaboration solutions, cloud models offer compelling value. We are seeing enormous demand for cloud based collaboration solutions. Customers are asking for a low risk, minimally disruptive transition, and I believe BT offers a solid answer."

BT, in collaboration with Cisco, announced its hosted unified communications and IP telephony service to business customers in the U.S. in June 2010.

The service allows businesses to bring converged voice, mobile and data services to every desktop in their organizations, using BT and Cisco's cloud computing-based technologies. BT can rapidly deploy services to both large and small sites, offering business customers significant savings as well as operational predictability.

Managed Cloud Services for Enterprise Collaboration

Managed cloud services can accelerate your business by allowing you to transform ideas into marketable products and services with greater speed. Cloud can provide nearly limitless scalability, enabling your business to grow without time and resource intensive IT build-outs.

Cloud can transform the economics of your IT -- from capital-intensive, to pay-as-you-go. Service level agreements guarantee the capabilities you need, when you need them. Costs are tiered and metered to accurately reflect your requirements and usage.

All applications, including legacy, run more efficiently and sustainably with greater utilization of the underlying infrastructure.

Cloud can make new business models possible and unlock revenue potential. Companies can enter new markets, respond more quickly to changing customer needs, collaborate more effectively to drive innovation and business value.

Collaboration Use-Case Scenario

• Global organizations face real collaboration challenges. Employee expertise is distributed across headquarters and regional and branch locations around the world. Technology and travel limit responsiveness to customer needs. Cultural differences hamper internal teamwork and organizational agility.
• Enterprise-wide collaboration is particularly difficult to improve due to the communications silos created by existing infrastructure and disparate technology environments.
• Rich collaboration enables organizations to extend services reach and improve relationships with customers. Poor collaboration can result in customer dissatisfaction and competitive exposure.

Role for Cloud Technologies

• Cloud network-based collaboration strategies enable employees at all levels of the organization to connect and collaborate.
• Collaboration services built in the Cloud can also integrate with and enhance business processes and applications.

Application Considerations

• Proper collaboration architecture design relies on a thorough understanding of technology, people, and processes. The architecture must also be able to integrate with the desired business applications and processes.
• High-quality collaboration experiences require end-to-end solutions.

However, Cloud is neither an instantaneous nor simple transformation, but can be adopted in a controlled and pragmatic way. Cloud involves new technologies, new service and deployment models, and new IT skills sets and processes. Migration of legacy applications to Cloud can be a real challenge. That said, legacy platforms can co-exist with Cloud deployments and be migrated only as appropriate.

Moreover, Cloud does not always offer the best business solution. Some Cloud solutions limit the ability to customize functionality or cannot guarantee quality of service. Some workloads may have stringent compliance or technical requirements that demand other approaches.

Organizations will need to determine where Cloud applications are most appropriate, based on workload-specific requirements around cost, risk, and performance.

Hannover Re Adopts Tata Managed Telepresence

The reinsurance business is evolving. Traditionally, reinsurance transactions are between two insurance entities: the primary insurer that sold the original insurance policies and the reinsurer. The companies in this industry are long-standing users of advanced communications technology, now including video collaboration.

Tata Communications announced that it has been chosen by German reinsurance company, Hannover Re, to deploy and run its Telepresence facilities -- serving the group’s internal teams in 18 locations across 16 countries, worldwide.

Tata Communications will deploy the Cisco TelePresence high-definition, immersive video collaboration systems to help employees based in Europe, North America, Asia, Middle East and Africa collaborate with each other on a daily basis.

Under this agreement, Tata Communications will provide Hannover Re with a solution that includes deployment and installation of rooms, maintenance, management and concierge service for scheduling and reservations, the world's first public rooms, open global Telepresence exchange as well as the Cisco-certified TelePresence network.

Reliable Integrated Telepresence Solution
Tata Communications' Telepresence services include managed private Cisco TelePresence rooms, public Telepresence rooms that can be rented by the hour -- and the ability for these private and public rooms to connect with each other.

"Tata Communications is the vendor that meets our expectations in respect of Telepresence operations and services. We are confident that Tata Communications will prove its reliability both in the course of the implementation project and in the operations phase," says Mr. Hartmut Fuchs, Hannover Re, CIO and Managing Director, Information and Technology.

"What convinced us is the option to integrate our internal Telepresence network into the general Telepresence infrastructure provided by Tata Communications. We expect that this will allow us to extend Telepresence based communication to business partners in a second phase."

Global Telepresence as a Managed Service
Tata will manage all aspects of Hannover Re's Telepresence needs, supported by its world-class global network. Tata Communications' open exchange also means that coverage can be extend to any public Telepresence rooms that Hannover Re chooses to use in the future, catering to external users such as customers, prospects and partners.

Tata Communications' Global Meeting Exchange enables meetings between any connected private or public rooms, and moves Telepresence from a private intra-company experience to a broader based inter-company collaboration tool of choice.

It meets the market demand for Telepresence meetings, regardless of the service provider network. With this collaboration, customers on either network can connect to each other extending their Telepresence coverage across their business ecosystem.

Claude Sassoulas, Tata Communications' Managing Director for the Europe and Africa Region, says, "This deal with one of the world's largest global reinsurance groups is a significant milestone for our organization. It will strengthen our position as a global provider in the German market, where we are looking to continue our expansion."