Challenges in the market
In today’s video conferencing market, enterprises are challenged with outdated systems and frequently lack the ability to scale their video collaboration aspirations due to incompatible solutions. However, they often find themselves locked-in to specific tools or meeting room endpoints, which can cause problems when there is a need to expand functionality and services. Another less than welcomed trend in the market is the rise of cybercrime with denial of service and ransomware attacks. In fact, many organizations opt to use public cloud providers, believing that security is part of their offering unaware that insecure APIs, weak authentication, and user identity protocols can be susceptible to account hijacks.
Enterprise decision-makers need the reassurance that collaboration systems are as secure as possible to ensure their employees’ data and operations are fully protected. In November 2018, Tenable, the Cyber Exposure company, announced that its research team had discovered a serious vulnerability in a desktop conferencing application that allowed a remote hacker or rogue meeting attendee to hijack screen controls, impersonate meeting attendees, and boot attendees out of meetings. It is imperative that when choosing video conferencing tools, security stakeholders check that the system software is designed, coded, and maintained by the cloud service provider in a secure and compliant environment. Encryption is essential to protect any form of messaging or communication, as well as the physical security of where the data is stored. Data jurisdiction is an important consideration, especially when using any cloud-based solution.
Better collaboration for the future
Today’s workforce is dynamic. More people are working remotely and, therefore, secure communications are crucial to improving collaboration. Video conferencing, instant messaging, and meeting room solutions are essential tools to create an environment that can quickly bring stakeholders together efficiently. Enterprises need to rethink how they can empower employees to work more effectively and move with market trends to stay relevant, competitive, and safe.
Millennials are becoming the dominant workforce demographics and this generation is moving away from traditional forms of communications like email, opting instead for instant messaging to enable them to communicate with colleagues and friends. The convergence of video, voice, content sharing, and messaging, into one simple solution will likely be a major driver for more effective collaboration. Having the ability to deliver intuitive solutions that seamlessly connect people at the touch of a button helps remove the friction currently caused by outdated systems, legacy infrastructure, and an increasingly dispersed workforce.
The rapid development of integrated cloud-based collaboration solutions is already driving advanced video conferencing to give the workforce a better a superior experience. Empowering every employee with easy to use tools dramatically improves internal and external communications. Customer engagement is more responsive, partnership performance increases, and more opportunities will unfold to expand business growth. We are already witnessing a major change in work practice strategies.
In the next five years, more enterprises will be less location based to reduce expensive overheads, more fluid with how they optimize resources and continue to focus on maximizing employee productivity. As the ability to ‘meet in an instant’ drives more benefits for a better-connected workforce, the future is the culture of now.
Before founding StarLeaf, he was founder and the General Manager of the Americas for Codian. When Tandberg acquired Codian in 2007, Will was appointed Chief Strategy Officer, which allowed him to help set the strategic vision and direction on a global basis, prior to Cisco acquiring Tandberg in 2010.
Prior to Codian, Will held senior management positions at Calista and Madge Networks. He has a Masters degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University.
- Overcoming Challenges for a Better-Connected Workforce - March 25, 2019
- How Enhanced Security Prevents a Hijacked Meeting - February 28, 2019
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