I’m really looking forward to my presentation at IBM Connect this week. The conference is the perfect venue to share with the IBM ecosystem family some of the innovative real-time communications solutions that GENBAND is bringing to market. My presentation, Embedded Technology and Collaboration, takes place at 3:30 pm on February 1. 

It’s clear that the market is adopting unified collaboration technologies (as opposed to traditional disparate tools like IM, web conferencing, etc.). Ironically, with all the progress at enabling collaboration, most collaboration environments –no matter how sophisticated or large -still have limited public access and require defined clients. It’s no surprise that our business cards still focus on telephone and e-mail addresses as these are still our only true public identities. WebRTC and similar web-centric communications technologies offer a bridge to bring the value of UC services to a larger palette of applications and environments.  Access doesn’t require anything more than a browser and authorized access. 

Moving to web-centric communications technologies also changes the economics of collaboration.  Traditionally, collaboration was complicated and expensive because media assets had to be local and didn’t scale.  Today, we can get those services, a la carte from the cloud and integrate them into any environment, to deliver them anywhere.  There are no longer economic barriers to adding collaboration to any service and deriving more value in the process.

Creating better embedded experiences can drive real value, even from traditional assets or business models. In our everyday lives we choose products, services and brands based on how easy they are to use or buy or interact with.  Adopting better technology to create more engaging experiences is not just “cool tech”, it’s a business imperative.

In addition to my presentation, I’m also looking forward to experiencing my first IBM Connect conference. I’ve heard so much about where IBM is going with Watson and their Social Collaboration platforms, I’m looking forward to seeing those experiences firsthand.  Additionally, I’m told that this is IBM’s largest annual customer event.  I think anytime you create an event this size, with this breadth of customers, you learn as much from your peers as from the best formal program.

The GENBAND team will be highlighting our market-leading WebRTC solutions and cloud services at the conference. We will also be showcasing our Nuvia Cloud UC and Kandy Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions. 

I look forward to catching some of the great presentations at the show including our very own Dr. Natasha Tamaskar, who will be presenting, How Today’s New Communications Platforms Enable Rapid Service Creation for Businesses, at 9 am on February 2.

It should be a great show. If you’re attending and get a chance please stop by our booth #510 to see some of the cool collaboration tools that GENBAND is bringing to market.

Greg