Digicom Technology News

Over the past few years, personal video conferencing has promised to enter the enterprise mainstream, with laptops, tablets, and phones operating on upgraded networks capable of supporting real-time audio and video communications. Many corporations are looking to embrace personal video conferencing as both a stand-alone application and as part of an overall Unified Communications (UC) deployment because rich media communications can speed decision making, help build stronger teams, and ultimately drive top line revenues as part of a sales strategy. Avaya recently commissioned a study with the aim of establishing the requirements for successfully deploying pervasive personal video. Below is a brief discussion and results from the study.

Many of today's crop of personal video conferencing systems have overcome the limitations of the past – ease of use, video quality, bandwidth management, and reliability. And while many enterprise managers may have the perception that wide-scale deployment of personal video would be possible only as part of a UC platform rollout, it is actually very achievable and affordable using traditional MCUbased video conferencing. An added benefit to MCU-based video is its extensive feature set and room systems compatibility which contrasts with many UC-based solutions. Rolling out a personal video conferencing service to managers and information workers has significant benefits beyond travel savings – including improved team building, better integration of resources, and faster decision making while allowing for a richer interaction. A factor that is often overlooked is the need to deploy to a critical mass of users. Scale is essential to making video calling an everyday experience. Configuring the network to support personal video conferencing and the required bandwidth is an important step, but not one that is particularly onerous with today's technology and services.

The follow are the results of the study:

• Enterprises should evaluate the new generation of personal video conferencing solutions as a vehicle to increase sales, strengthen partnerships, and improve internal team building. The current crop of personal video collaboration solutions are enterprise-ready and overcome the scalability, reliability, and quality issues that plagued desktop video conferencing years ago. 
• Avoid creating islands of communication. Integrate room systems with personal and mobile video conferencing solutions, bringing added value to both sets of investments. Integrated deployments should support high quality audio and video and easy connections inside and outside the firewall.
• Create a small, end-user driven team of product champions with participation from at least one high level executive. Have IT represented on the team, but do not have only IT department members. Include the network specialists and line-of-business users.
• Communicate internally to all involved with information on what will happen and when so that colleagues can monitor the progress of the deployment project. Include training sessions and provide documentation on how to use the new solution effectively.
• Communicate after the deployment about how the solution is being used and what benefits workers are seeing. This will encourage others to use video, making the solution more valuable to all.

NEC’s Digital Signage Solutions provide a complete bundled product for customers that need a commercial-grade display and computer to source basic content. The V422-PC bundle includes a 42” V422 display and NET-SBC-04 single board computer seamlessly integrated utilizing the expansion slot of the display. This built-in functionality allows for a clean, hidden integration while reducing the bill of materials needed for installation.

• Bundled solution includes 42” NEC V422 and NET-SBC-04 single board computer for simple digital signage
• Full 1080p high-definition resolution provides stunning detail
• Commercial-grade LCD panel and components
• Expanded connectivity with digital loop through
• TileMatrix™ allows you to create video walls up 10 x10
• Ethernet and RS-232 Control and Communication allows for ease in remote monitoring
• NEC’s Content Management Software (CMS), a SaaS web-based digital signage software, is available at no charge

The theme for 2013---according to Gartner---is that the information technology department has to navigate cloud, social, mobility and information as those trends play off of each other. Gartner analyst David Cearley believes that a strategic technology will impact the enterprise over the next three years.

"These technologies will cause major disruption to your environment," said Cearley. "This list is a starting point."

Here's the overview:


Among the key points are:

Mobile as the top two picks isn't all that surprising. Mobile device management is top of mind with technology excutives. Meanwhile, employees are bringing all sorts of devices to work. That trend could is set to get become more significant since Windows 8 will bring 140 form factors to market.

Gartner predicts that Android and iOS will dominate smartphones, but Windows Phone will gain "substantial share." For tech execs, the actual players don't manage. They have to get a handle on securing data and managing choice.

Cearley said that by 2015, 70 percent of companies will have one executive in charge of overseeing Internet-connected devices and objects. The payoff will be in the supply chain, control and information services. "The Internet of things has applications across multiple industries," said Cearley.

The Ricoh Document Governance Index 2012 sets out the impact today’s business environment is having on business-critical document processes – the core interactions that occur regularly and repeatedly within HR, finance, procurement and accounts, driving every organisation, keeping employees on board, cash flowing, and making sure businesses are meeting legal and compliance requirements.


Comparing the 2012 results with what we found in 2009, we can see:

• Business leaders are puzzled by the process priority jigsaw, and as a result many are failing to ensure their critical document processes keep up. Big data, emerging markets and managing multiple vendors were highlighted as the main trends impacting their document processes in 2012.


• Fewer than half have a fully developed and implemented document process management strategy, just a 4 per cent improvement since 2009. Meanwhile, many have set targets outside of a strategic framework, indicating confusion about the best way to ensure they keep up with the pace of change.


• The last three years have seen an inverse shift in priority targets for document processes, with business risk replacing cost as the top priority. But new targets are replacing others, indicating businesses are struggling to fit them all together under a strategic framework.


• Reviews are regular, but are they effective? Most businesses are reviewing document processes regularly, but the majority do not make changes as a result. This indicates businesses are adopting a high-level approach which makes it difficult to fully understand how these processes are being managed, what the bottlenecks are, and how to make improvements – not to mention monitoring the processes and implementing new ways of working on an ongoing basis.

European businesses can gain competitive advantage by mastering business-critical document processes, but the first step in this journey is to develop a rigorous process strategy for the long term.

Working with a specialist partner such as Digicom will help businesses solve the process priority puzzle, by:

• creating a strategy to manage document processes with targets linking to business objectives


• carrying out ongoing reviews that will drive change


• fixing processes that aren’t working, to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the entire business.

Polycom the global leader in open standards-based unified communications (UC), announced significant enhancements to the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform that make it an even more comprehensive and flexible software infrastructure for delivering video collaboration from private, public, and hybrid clouds. The new enhancements also make the RealPresence Platform more universally accessible by ensuring multi-vendor interoperability, eliminating barriers to access, and bringing down the cost for enterprises to video-enable their organizations and for service providers to extend from Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) to expanded Video Collaboration-as-a-Service (VCaaS) offerings delivered from Polycom-powered clouds.


Polycom introduced the industry’s first open standards-based Scalable Video Coding (SVC) protocol, delivering 3X the previous capacity for HD multipoint video calls for greater scalability, dramatically lower TCO, superior performance, and backwards- and forwards-compatibility to protect customer investments. Polycom also today introduced Polycom® RealPresence® Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition, the industry’s first multi-protocol, integrated software MCU that runs on industry-standard servers.

In a related announcement, Polycom introduced RealPresence® CloudAXIS™ Suite, an extension of RealPresence Platform that lets customers extend enterprise-grade video collaboration to users of Skype®, Facebook®, Google Talk™, and business video and UC applications via a browser for B2B and B2C video conferencing with the highest quality, reliability, and security.

“At Polycom, we continue to bolster our RealPresence Platform software infrastructure with interoperability enhancements designed to ensure customers are future-proofed and able to quickly leverage trends such as BYOD, mobile computing, and social networking that offer new opportunities to extend enterprise-grade video conferencing to the masses. Polycom is laser-focused on open standards-based interoperability for two key reasons: first, to protect our customers’ investments and ensure backwards- and forwards-compatibility; second, to remove all impediments that limit the ubiquitous adoption of video collaboration,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, president of Products and Services, Polycom.

Below is a brief summary of the announcements made:

• Powerful Polycom® RealPresence® Platform enhancements include industry’s first open standards-based SVC (Scalable Video Coding), with 3X HD multipoint video call capacity for greater scalability, dramatically lower TCO, superior performance, and backwards- and forwards-compatibility to protect customer investments—all available through a software update

• Polycom® RealPresence® Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition, is industry’s first multi-protocol, integrated software MCU that runs on industry-standard servers Polycom extends firewall traversal and security options with Polycom® RealPresence® Access Director™, vastly improving capacity and supported protocols for improved B2B and B2C connectivity

• Building on earlier Polycom RealPresence Platform enhancements, including multi-tenancy support and open APIs, service providers can expand VaaS offerings more efficiently at scale

• In related announcement, Polycom® RealPresence® CloudAXIS™ Suite, an extension of Polycom RealPresence Platform, lets customers extend enterprise-grade video collaboration to users of Skype®, Facebook®, Google Talk™, and business video applications via a browser, for B2B and B2C video conferencing with the highest quality, reliability, and security.

ANZ Banking Group will spend hundreds of millions over five years on technology to attract the next generation of tech-savvy customers amid a spending war by the major banks.

“Customer expectations about what they can expect to do either online or on their mobiles have changed dramatically in recent years and it’s driven by the way they’re conditioned by what other providers do,” he said. “We know that we can’t stand stillbecause it’s a competitive environment.”

Mr Chronican said ANZ’s strategy would involve investing smartphone applications that allow instant money transfers. It would also include transforming bank branches to have more video conferencing suites and better automatic teller machines.

The bank will roll out more than 800 next-generation ATMs from 2013, all of which will be able to handle cash and cheque deposits in real time. Previous ATMs allowed deposits but needed employees to process the funds, which slowed settlement by several days.

ANZ will deploy Cisco video conferencing units to 43 regional branches in a bid to replace roaming financial specialists with a 'hub-and-spoke' approach. The technology is an extension of ANZ's existing Cisco telepresence networks in major city headquarters and provides on-demand access to ANZ's Melbourne specialists from other branches nationwide. ANZ began trialling the regional network in April this year. The system has since been used 150 times by remote staff, including those in the bank's Alice Springs branch, which does not usually have such access. The smaller units, which also provide access to desktop sharing for presentations and application access, are capable of high definition conferencing but will largely function in standard definition with encryption for an average bandwidth requirement of 384 kilobits per second. “We’ve been piloting the use of Cisco’s videoconferencing technology in remote branches and we will be the first bank in Australia to use this technology on a major scale, providing regional customers with better access to specialist advice,” Chronican said.

Australia’s banks are increasingly competing for the younger demographic through smartphone and tablet apps. Commonwealth Bank of Australia received plaudits for its Kaching tool, and ANZ’s goMoney app has already been well received.Banks are facing increasing competitive pressure to make their services mobile. Commonwealth Bank chief information officer Michael Harte recently said that the future of banking lies in recreating the 'old fashioned' banking experience of personalised service using the potential of mobile devices, whole-of-life customer data and real-time transactions.

A report conducted on behalf of Ricoh by Coleman Parkes, entitled Ricoh Document Governance Index 2012, has been compiled from 1,075 interviews amongst C-level executives, directors and other employees in Ireland and throughout Europe. It investigates how document processes – the processes that keep employees on board, cash flowing, and legal requirements satisfied – are being managed, comparing the findings to a benchmark set in 2009.


The report reveals the major global trends impacting businesses operations. These include big data, with 91 per cent of respondents citing the increasing amounts of data they now face as having the most impact on their ability to manage critical processes within their businesses, taking focus and resource away from revenue generating activities. Businesses also identified managing multiple vendors and emerging high growth economies as having a major impact on their organisations, which has in-turn created further amounts of data that they are required to manage.

Crucially, these trends have had a radical impact on business priorities. The research found that in just three years, businesses across Europe, including Ireland, have replaced a focus on cost, efficiency and the environment, with a focus on business risk. 65 per cent of respondents say they have now set targets for business risk in relation to their business-critical document processes, nearly four times as many as in 2009. The importance of transparency with overall business goals was also highlighted, with 64 per cent of respondents saying they set targets for processes to be aligned with overall business goals, compared to just 15 per cent in 2009 confirming the same.

These findings are in stark contrast with the results of the Ricoh Document Governance Index 2009. The focus for European businesses three years ago was basic cost and efficiency, with 67 per cent of businesses setting targets for cost and 59 per cent for efficiency, compared to 43 per cent and 51 per cent today. Environmental sustainability also appears to have been neglected by today’s businesses as they struggle to manage increasing amounts of data, multiple vendors and emerging markets, with only 33 per cent of businesses having a target for it, making it the lowest ranking target compared to three years ago (41 per cent).

“With so much change in the Irish business landscape it’s not surprising that there has been a huge shift in priorities for organisations here over the past three years. In fact, we are seeing the same trends across Europe. Business leaders are now most challenged by the big data threat, managing multiple vendors and also managing emerging market opportunities,” said Chas Moloney, director, Ricoh UK and Ireland. “In this era of uncertainty, reacting to industry trends by diverting resources can increase risk in other areas of the organisation. To prevent this, businesses need to strategically align all critical document processes to ensure all areas of the organisation receive the attention they deserve, are optimised and are prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow.”