The Lippis Report

By Siemens Enterprise Communications

This paper defines different telecommuting models and shows how companies are telecommuting across the globe. Lastly, it will demonstrate how Siemens Enterprise Communications Group has significantly cut expenses by adopting green telecommuting and how you can do the same.

Download this white paper to find out how to reduce cost by leveraging telecommuting.

By Siemens Enterprise Communications

“As in every downturn, who succeeds and who fails is likely to be determined not by what costs are cut, but how they are cut and above all which ones are not cut.”

The Economist magazine 22 November 2008

Recession is upon us. Business and technology leaders are hurriedly looking for places to scale back, while defining strategies for surviving – or even getting ahead – during the economic downturn. This paper addresses three key imperatives for communications management for a tough economy:

Streamline – How to cope with reduced budgets and staffing without impeding business operations

Compete – Using technology to maintain speed, innovation and customer service with fewer staff

Prepare – Ensuring your business can scale up and strike fast at the earliest signs of opportunity

The paper identifies key points for executives to consider in making communications reductions and investments and offers an array of solutions supported by real-world case studies.

Find out how by downloading this white paper.

By SIS International Research & Siemens Enterprise Communications

This white paper outlines the findings of a study sponsored by Siemens Enterprise Communications and prepared by SIS International Research. It discusses and quantifies the hidden cost of communications barriers and latency that small- and medium-sized businesses in 8 different countries, across 8 different verticals, and with up to 400 employees experience in their daily business activities.

Two major enterprise trends are combining to deliver greater communication options, that being unified communications and smart mobile end-points such as Blackberrys, Symbian, iPhones and Windows mobile devices. Enterprise mobility solutions are delivering greater value to dual mode smart mobile end-points thanks to 802.11 WLANs, 3G, fixed mobile convergence and unified communications. In short a mobile end-point is being equipped with the same services, features and functions that were once isolated and fixed upon a desktop phone. Luc Roy, VP of Enterprise Mobility at Siemens joins me to discuss mobile unified communications.

By Siemens Enterprise Communications

Enterprise Unified Communications (UC) value is being increased with the addition of high definition videoconferencing. UC videoconferencing is rapidly growing in popularity thanks to it being affordable and easy to use, and because it includes end-points from desktops to large meeting rooms. It is based on open standards such as SIP, and often includes high-definition video and audio to enrich the user experience. Siemens OpenScape Video is the first single-vendor, unified videoconferencing solution for everyone in the enterprise by providing a complete end-to-end videoconferencing solution as an integral part of enterprise UC. By integrating high definition video, PC-based video and voice only end-points into a UC network, OpenScape Video enhances enterprise-wide collaboration and increases employee productivity while reducing travel costs and carbon emissions.

802.11n offers impressive improvements in rate, range, and price/performance thanks to significantly higher processing and power consumption than older WLAN Access Points (APs). A key question in the decision to deploy 802.11n APs is whether there is enough power delivered over 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) switch ports or compliant power injectors to run these Aps, since 802.11n's increased bandwidth and processing may require more than the 12.95 Watts provided in 802.3af switch ports. I interview Craig Mathias, a Principal at Farpoint Group and author of the recent report “802.11n Access Points and Power over Ethernet: Key Considerations” and Luc Roy, VP of Enterprise Mobility at Siemens Enterprise Communications which is shipping an 802.11n AP that operates with 802.3af PoE. Craig tested the Siemens AP3620 802.11n APs and shares the results.

This is the year of the Branch Office. Business and IT leaders are re-distributing corporate assets and allocating significant investments in data center and branch office assets. There is strong business, economic, demographic and technical drivers' shaping this trend. The IT industry has responded by offering many new network design options to business and IT leaders who seek to add value to their branch offices. In this podcast I discuss this global trend with Inbar Lasser-Raab Senior Director of Marketing for Enterprise Routing and Switching at Cisco as we dive into the details of Cisco's latest branch office innovations. If adding value to your branch offices is a corporate initiative, then you need to listen to this podcast.

By Siemens Enterprise Communications

There is a lot of confusion surrounding the capabilities and status of the new 802.11n WiFi standard. Full ratification is not expected until mid-2009. However, the WiFi Alliance (WFA) launched a compatibility testing and certification program for 802.11n infrastructure and clients based on the Draft 2 standard which removes much of the deployment risk and accelerated the 802.11n market. Two of the major issues to consider when planning for 802.11n are power consumption and WLAN architecture. 802.11n hardware from many vendors requires significantly more than the 12.95 Watts guaranteed by the current PoE standard, 802.3af. The second major issue to consider is the increased traffic on your core network arising from high-throughput 11n WLANs. It is important that your WLAN solution provide flexibility for traffic forwarding and network segmentation.

As with any new technology, there are plenty of issues and caveats to take into consideration, but 802.11n is ready for enterprise deployment today. It provides a standard for WLAN performance and reliability that supplement the existing security standard (802.11i) and QoS standard (802.11e) to make WLAN as fast, secure and reliable as wired LAN.

by Siemens Enterprise Communications

See the same presentation that industry analysts saw when Siemens Communications made the largest UC announcement of the year by launching its OpenScape UC Server and a suite of UC applications. By viewing this presentation you’ll be more up to date with Siemens’ UC products and plan than you will be from any other source.

by the Farpoint Group

IEEE 802.11n is the only wireless-LAN (WLAN) technology that matters today. The outstanding improvements in rate, range, and price/performance now being seen in both residential/SOHO-class as well as enterprise-class products, as demonstrated by our own testing, have previously led us to conclude that the time to install .11n is now. The existence of a widely-implemented interim .11n specification from the Wi-Fi Alliance simply drops the last real barrier to adoption. A key consideration in the adoption of .11n, and the subject of this Tech Note, is whether .11n APs can be powered via IEEE 802.3af PoE. It’s one thing to upgrade Ethernet switches, but quite another if that switch or the IEEE 802.3af-compliant power injectors being used can't handle the power demands of a .11n AP.

Siemens Communications made the largest Unified Communications (UC) announcement of the year by launching OpenScape UC Server and a suite of UC applications. This is a huge software investment from Siemens taking one of, if not the, largest steps of any in the industry toward a software and services concern. Siemens is offering innovative UC software based upon open communications architecture while rooted in enterprise class voice communications capabilities. I discuss this announcement, industry dynamics, Siemens' relationships with Microsoft, IBM et al with Siemens' Mark Straton, SVP Global Marketing and Inderpreet Singh, Director of Emerging Technologies. If you're planning a UC project, then you have to listen to this podcast.

2007 was the year that enterprise communication vendors restructured with Avaya going private, Shortel going public, Microsoft and Nortel joining forces, Siemens Communications being spun off from Siemens AG, while InterTel and Mitel merged. 2008 is the year of Unified Communications (UC). I asked Grace Tiscareno-Sato, Senior Global Marketing Manager for UC at Siemens Communications to join the program to provide a view of what's ahead from the enterprise communication supplier perspective. Grace lays out her top 8 UC events to watch for in 2008.

View the Presentation

Richard Wood, Global Vice President of Portfolio Marketing, and Shayna Kaneshiro, Global Product Marketing Manager, both from Siemens Communications, join the Lippis Report Podcast to discuss Siemens’ unified communication solution for Small-to-Medium sized Businesses or SMB called HiPath OpenOffice ME. The OpenOffice ME appliance integrates messaging, mobility, presence plus voice communications and conferencing into one box, simplifying the deployment of these rich services to a market with little IT support allowing SMBs to be more productive and responsive to their customers. I was impressed with OpenOffice ME’s integration with outlook and its visual voicemail and I’m sure you will too.

A PowerPoint Presentation which accompanies the podcast of the same name, which can be found here.