Why move people, when you can move information?

On Wednesday, September 1st at 11a.m. EDT, we will be hosting a virtual tradeshow to showcase our entire collaboration solution suite as well as introduce our guest speaker Henry Dewing, Principal Analyst at independent research firm, Forrester Research, Inc., on the latest in business video applications 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. EDT. Click here to register. 

Most readers have attended at least one tradeshow in their time – many of us have a drawer full of squishy balls, flashlights, USB key chains, and other tradeshow schwag.  Considering we are delivering content on our Collaboration Services, we felt it only logical to embrace the technology and deliver our message virtually – allowing you to digest the same content from your office, armchair, or favorite Starbucks.

This virtual tradeshow serves as a convenient and efficient way to learn more about today’s collaboration services – how they can make your company more efficient, more competitive, and ultimately more profitable.  (Embedded SlideShare Presentation below).

We’ve assempbled a team of experts from Global Crossing.  Along with my presentation, you will hear from:

• Valerie Ramsey, our Web Conferencing Product Manager
• Frank Piotrowski, our Video Conferencing Product Manager
• Tera Sumner, our Ready-Access Product Manager
• Julie Scarpella, our Product Marketing Manager, Planning & Analysis

Read more and comment...

I'm exhausted. I haven’t played a soccer match since I was in school and my return to the field wasn’t quite like Messi against Arsenal or Forlan against the Dutch, but we can say it was acceptable. I scored a couple of goals, I failed others (one of them could be a replica of "The Hand of God"), I received a few blows, but, above all, I sweated Global Crossing´s blue jersey against a rival worthy of all my respect: a wonderful group (and very skillful, indeed) of children aged between 3 and 15 from SOS Children's Village who we had the pleasure of visiting as part of a Corporate Social Responsibility initiative. In this activity called "Our network shortens distances. Our social actions bring hearts together" Global Crossing's employees were able to sponsor each of the nearly 100 children in the shelter with a gift and a school kit donated by the company. However, the most important part was sharing those intense moments with these children, seeing how our effort and commitment turned into smiles and affection. I must say that it will soon be my tenth year working in this company (ten years that deserve a toast), and undoubtedly this experience is one that made me feel most proud and honored about belonging to a group of such extraordinary people.

This small life lesson made me think about how we can collaborate -as a company- beyond charity and the true meaning of Corporate Social Responsibility. Read more and comment...

With all due respect to Public Enemy, don’t believe the hype when it comes to the Google/Verizon proposal for net neutrality.   Yes, it is significant that Google and Verizon agreed on seven principles on such a contentious issue, but seeing as to how they are increasingly close partners in the wireless market, is it really that surprising? 

Is it such an outrage that two parties on opposite sides of a debate came to limited agreement?  Only if you benefit from the continuation of the debate (say in the form of fund-raising or media attention).  At a time when rational discussion is hard to come by, we should respond to compromise with cautious skepticism perhaps, but not unbridled hostility. 

Is it surprising that Google and Verizon exempted wireless services in their net neutrality proposal?  Only if you ignore the fact that they are partners in the wireless business.  Read more and comment...

Business travel is occasionally portrayed in the media as glamorous, but those of us who have lived it know better. Airport parking, security searches, flight delays & cancelations, missed connections, squeezing into ever-smaller seats, luggage lugging, and car rentals – none of it is fun. Then when you finally return, you have the pleasure of filling out an expense report with all the required documentation. Some trips are simply necessary. But an increasing number of companies are finding ways to reduce business travel, especially for internal meetings.

There are multiple reasons to reduce business travel. The cost saving for the company is obvious – trips aren’t cheap. Trips put a lot of wear and tear on employees and their families, and they take high-performing employees out of service during travel. And airlines consume huge amounts of petroleum and emit billions of tons of CO2 (see air travel emissions). Air travel is fast, but it isn’t the most efficient option (see vehicle efficiency). Also, airliners can’t run on batteries as cars may soon do, so travel savings are oil savings. Read more and comment...

Wireless connectivity technologies, available to end users in a growing number of sites, offer new possibilities for communication and work, but also generate more exposure to new and greater risks.

There are two lessons that we, information security professionals, have learned in recent years. One is that hackers are no longer those teenagers seeking to investigate and gain prestige in the 80s: they now seek to profit from it. And the other is that hackers usually know very well what they are doing.

You might wonder "Hackers? Why should I care? ". But the truth is that if you have a cellular phone, a notebook, PDA, an email account, a social network account, a fotolog, website, Internet or Wi-Fi connection you are liable to be attacked and most likely won’t realize it until it’s too late.

And if someone is still thinking that "This can’t be such a big deal", then here goes more evidence. Please, just go to Google, type "how to steal data from social networking" in the search box and check the results ... If such an unsubtle search displays so much information, just imagine what someone trained to make money that way can do.

As companies implement increasing protection mechanisms (even though we are still far from ideal levels of awareness), hackers have to resort to new attack methods to achieve their goals.

Let's do this simple exercise: for every 10 people who use PDAs, what are the chances of they have a management position in a company? Quite high... and if we consider that in that phone there might be emails, files, names, telephone numbers and other information, the loot gets interesting. Read more and comment...

Companies are being pressured to travel less, hold productive meetings, and deliver results.   Many times the “simple” answer is to host a conference or video call to eliminate the travel and reduce the time out of the office to deliver quicker.   Depending on the number of locations, presentations, and audience, sometimes you leave the meeting stating, “We should have hosted that meeting in-person.”

In addition to trying to create an in-person experience, our customers are demanding a wide range of collaborative tools that allow them to conduct meetings without boundaries.  We launched our Telepresence offer with Teliris to meet this demand and to deliver a true-to-life experience.

Below is a video overview of the benefits of the Global Crossing Telepresence with Teliris solution.

• Cutting-edge collaboration tools that allow people to conduct meetings as if in the same room
• Realistic interoperability for Telepresence, videoconferencing or unified communications (UC) systems, creating a seamless experience possible across all solutions
• The ability to tie together any system into the premier Telepresence exchange for flexible, secure, high quality intra- and inter-company connectivity
• On-going support across all solutions for maximum reliability and availability
• Affordably to far-reaching locations anywhere in the world

                Read more and comment...

Cybersecurity is a complex challenge for security and network professionals alike.  It requires strong defenses and counter measures to protect your network and your computer environment.  Over the years, corporations and governments have implemented security solutions to protect and defend their network perimeters and the computers attached to the networks.  This has largely been accomplished through the deployment of firewalls, intrusion detection systems, anti-virus, and web content filtering at a network and host-based level.  It also requires that organizations implement vulnerability management programs to harden their systems and keep their systems patched against emerging vulnerabilities.  While this approach has been effective at protecting against the known cybersecurity threats, it does not fully address the problem and the potential of malicious attacks. Read more and comment...

For some time, much of the consumer market of IT and Telecom goods and services approached the recruitment on demand option as a consumer dream. By this mode, machines, infrastructure and even professionals’ abilities could be used and discarded according to fluctuations in the demand, with costs proportional to their use.

In practice, what are the advantages and benefits of this model?
To start, you can imagine that the most obvious advantage is the alignment of cash flow with the instant consumption of technology. With the requirement of on demand-resources, the attention model ensures that the IT manager does not pay for underutilized resources and has the flexibility to meet any excess demand at any time.

Without getting into technical and economic details of the feasibility of this model from the supplier’s point of view, let's examine this –apparently- such desired feature a little deeper.

First, it is a dangerous trap for the IT manager. The lack of limits on bandwidth consumption, the processing or storage capacity creates a situation where any failure in a database, security or usage restriction policy may lead to an explosion of demand that will result in very high consumption and exorbitant costs. Even worse, in some cases, it can happen slowly and gradually, by a natural adaptation of users and a growing misuse of company resources that the manager doesn’t perceive.

Moreover, the user’s adaptation also pollutes the service management itself. The flexibility of the resource pool creates the false sense of infinite resources, leading managers to reduce their concern, with the rise of future demands together with how resources are used. Again this may generate a scenario of misuse of money.

From a financial standpoint, the uncertainty about future costs only increases in a purely on-demand scenario. There is no way of guaranteeing costs just from the consumption history. Read more and comment...

Think Ahead represents our brand promise and captures the Global Crossing of today.

Global Crossing started with a vision ahead of its time when we created the world’s first global IP-based network.  We were thinking ahead back then and over the course of the past few years have continued to think ahead as we made very deliberate steps all designed to get us to a leadership position. 

Think Ahead also represents our dedication to our customers.  We aim to address their needs today and build pathways to future success.  It’s about working together to deliver success for our customers. 

We encourage our customers to think of us as someone to grow with; who has the technology, services and industry expertise to match their company’s vision.  We aim to help our customers meet their communication objectives today and plan the network connectivity they will need to succeed in the future. We emphasize that a decision to utilize Global Crossing services today will help avoid future network obsolescence and set the foundation to maximize employee productivity and their return on investment!

                   Read more and comment...

Kudos to the House Energy and Commerce Committee for exposing the excess in the Universal Service Fund.  The Committee asked the FCC for data on the largest recipients of USF funds and has posted the responses it received from the FCC.   It is pretty startling data.  Consider that Westgate Communications out of Washington (the state) receives ON AVERAGE $17,763 in support payments per line.  ON AVERAGE!!!  That means it actually receives more than that for some lines.  I’m sorry, but I don’t see how in any rational world that a phone line is worth $17,763 plus per year.  Under what theory do the residents of Chelan, Washington derive their entitlement to such an enormous subsidy?  Why is it that the rest of the country has to pay over $17,000 for someone who chooses to live in Chelan, Washington to have phone service?  Now one may think that Chelan, Washington is the Appalachia of the Northwest, but from what I can gather from the real estate listings , it is more like the Palm Beach of the Northwest. 

So as not to pick on poor Westgate Communications, let me also note that the top recipients of USF funding as reported by the FCC. 

Annual High-Cost Payments by Year-End Holding Company Structure: 2009 Read more and comment...

At Global Crossing, we have a vision to be the recognized leader in connecting businesses, people and information around the world. Today we announced our partnership with MLB.com, the official Web site of Major League Baseball, to provide high-speed, high-capacity connectivity among all 30 Major League ballparks and the MLB.com servers in New York City, allowing the league to distribute live streaming video and other information to its online subscriber base.

Baseball is not just an American pass-time that started in the late 1800’s, but is also well-known around the world today and a featured Olympic Sport.

I don’t have a favorite baseball team, but the most fun games are the ones where the fans are 110% into the game. Be it the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox, you know the fans have a point of pride for their teams and cheer with passion! 

I can’t help but think back to the book by Dov Seidman, “ HOW – Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything… in Business (and in Life) ”.  The prologue titled, “Making Waves”, shared a passionate story of Krazy George Henderson who had a vision of “…a gesture that would start in his section and sweep successively through the crowd in a giant, continuous wave of connected enthusiasm, a transformative event that later proved historical.” 

Just reading his entire story was inspiring. He goes on to state, “The fans start feeling that they are part of the game and they’re adding to it.”  Our teams feel that we’ve added to that fan experience in providing such services to the fan audience that in increasing online every day. Read more and comment...

Web conferencing solutions are great substitutes for travel and commuting. They can be used to facilitate discussion among parties in multiple locations, or to communicate detailed information across around the globe.

Employee productivity is increased with a cost savings with each of the examples below:

• Staff meetings and briefings between one or more supervisors and staff members
• Collaborative meetings or discussions among colleagues or vendors in different locations
• Sales presentations
• Training sessions  
• Periodic reports, such as reporting financial results to shareholders or directors
   

Global Crossing provides a variety of collaboration solutions for your business needs, and just this month, we launched “Global Crossing Web Meeting 11” with a variety of new features for you to enhance your web meetings. Some of my favorite features include the following:
  Read more and comment...

In late 2007, Global Crossing' Technology Office (GCTO) took a hard look at the company's internal VoIP network used to interconnect its home and field offices.  

Toll arbitrage via "on-net" dialing served as the main business justification to Global Crossing's internal VOIP network build out. But while "on-net" dialing helped the company recoup the cost of implementation within two years, there were still hurdles in the design that could not be overcome without Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunking Services. By moving not only intra-office call flows "on-net", but centralizing the PSTN interconnectivity in a regional model, control over both call routing and costs was achieved. This paper from Global Crossing illustrates how, through the transition to SIP Trunking, the foundation was laid for removing complexity in both routing design, and at the same time helping the company to cut costs and enhance their productivity. 

  Read more and comment...

During recent discussions with industry analysts, media outlets, customers, and at various speaking engagements, it is interesting how the dual role of CTO/CIO has been a discussion point that has come to the forefront of a lot of conversation. 

Our Background

As background, our shift to this structure was rooted in a broader organization strategy at Global Crossing. With significant year over year organic growth and acquisitions in the UK and Latin America the need to evolve the organization to manage a more complex business emerged.  Read more and comment...

After a successful few days in our Phoenix, AZ office, I was sitting patiently on a packed US Air flight headed home.  As you have probably experienced, half the plane was late to board and people were vigorously trying to shove their oversize “handbags” into the overhead compartments.  I could either get annoyed with this behavior or tune it out.  I decided to tune it out and picked up the December, 2009 issue of US Air’s in-flight magazine and started to flip through the pages.  Read more and comment...