Making a profound business case for new technologies

Unified Communications This newsletter is sponsored by Microsoft E-Mail Security: All facts, no PR Download this exclusive Gartner Magic Quadrant report now and get an in-depth look at 18 enterprise e-mail security vendors and their offerings. Discover whose products are going to get more popular and whose popularity will decline, which companies are leading the pack and which are ripe for acquisition. Network World's Unified Communications Newsletter, 05/31/07 Making a profound business case for new technologies By Michael Osterman Last October, I was involved in a client’s advisory board meeting in New York and sat next to a senior manager from a large, U.S.-based company. That company’s senior management, concerned about the potential breach of sensitive data resulting from the loss of company laptop computers, issued an edict that all laptops had to be secured within a period of two months. Any laptop that was lost after that time and that was not equipped with appropriate encryption software would result in the immediate firing of the employee who lost it. That’s a good example of a profound business case for technology: implement it or risk getting fired. However, there are a variety of messaging technologies for which such a profound business case is a tougher sell. For example, in talking with someone the other day from a leading provider of enterprise instant messaging (EIM) systems, that individual related that they are seeing a somewhat soft market for EIM and presence, softer than what many people might have anticipated a few years ago. VoIP: Lessons from Early Adopters Experts say VoIP isn't a magic wand that will solve all of an organization's communications challenges right out of the box. Learn why VoIP may not produce expected savings and productivity gains, and other lessons from early adopters. Click Here to Watch Part of the issue is that many IT departments and business units have not yet found a really compelling reason to implement EIM and presence technologies, perhaps because they just don’t see enough business benefit from them relative to the other technologies they are faced with implementing. For example, a messaging decision-maker is faced with perhaps 15 different initiatives, technologies, etc. and must prioritize among them. If decision-makers in an organization have to solve problems around image-spam, phishing, spyware, archiving, policy creation and enforcement, outbound content filtering, e-discovery, etc., they will be less likely to consider the benefits of EIM and presence simply because these technologies are too far down the list to be addressed in the near term. The key for vendors, then, is to move EIM and presence up the list through the marketing of a clear business case for these technologies. We are currently conducting a survey of prospective EIM and presence customers in North America and will have some results to share on this topic in the next couple of weeks.   What do you think? Post a comment on this newsletter

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Contact the author: For webinars or research on messaging, or to join the Osterman Research market research survey panel, go here. Osterman Research helps organizations understand the markets for messaging and directory related offerings. To e-mail Michael, click here. This newsletter is sponsored by Microsoft E-Mail Security: All facts, no PR Download this exclusive Gartner Magic Quadrant report now and get an in-depth look at 18 enterprise e-mail security vendors and their offerings. Discover whose products are going to get more popular and whose popularity will decline, which companies are leading the pack and which are ripe for acquisition. ARCHIVE Archive of the Unified Communications Newsletter. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: security.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007