Ik heb al vaker geblogd over diverse communicatiemiddelen, of het nou UCC en MSN was, dan wel Skype of juist sociale netwerken; en ik kan er weer een aan de lijst toevoegen. De afgelopen week heb ik twee maal contact gehad met ZEND om over gezamelijke dienstverlening te praten. Nou gebeurt dat wel eens via Skype maar met meerdere mensen in een meeting zitten is dan toch vaak minder handig. Vertraging en kwaliteitsverlies spelen een goede meeting dan parten. Afgelopen week heb ik dan kennis gemaakt met WebEx, die (het beste van?) twee werelden combineert. [Read more →]

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The new buzz in management-land is Unified Communications, by Microsoft. It promises to deliver A Lot © for Very Little ®. Waiting for the IT department to buy, test, implement, usertest and actually use the required servers, mobile devices, software, hardware and new SOP’s could, just might, take some time and money (more about what’s needed here) . In the meanwhile, just using MSN (or Skype for that matter) delivers at least half the promised functionality at… well, zero costs. I use it daily to communicate with secretaries, personnell, co-workers, managers and whomever else is ‘live’ at a certain time.

There are a few great advantages to using MSN/Skype over, for example, regular e-mail. One is that it is less formal and you know that the recepient has at least received the message (not to mention the ability to send/receive messages even when offline). Also, it is less intrusive then using a phonecall. Further, if used well, people can tell you if they’re busy, out to lunch and whatnot. And, an underused functionality of MSN/Skype, you can add a line about what’s on your mind at that time which is, in the consultancy business (where you meet face-to-face once a month or less) a great way of telling how you’re feeling to the world (since you’re usually not in the same room with your long-term colleagues). Not to mention the plugins that start appearing for MSN to do online banking, passing money around, buy music, and more.

To improve the enterprise functionality, you’d additionally need a company plugin/applet where you can immediately see some details about said person (such as function, phonenumber) or even add an Automatic Friendlist where you get connected to people from your own unit/division, pushed from the companies backend systems.

The main differences between Skype and MSN is that Skype has, in my opinion, superior voice-and-video capabilities, whereas MSN has something very handy: webmessenger, so that even in situations where regular MSN/Skype/ICQ/Google Talk/Yahoo Messenger is blocked, you can still get online.

So, to set the right example, you can usually find me on Skype as: christiaan.lam

Go spread the word.

PS: and quoting one of my employees about Unified Communications “Lotus Groupware has been active in this field for years, and Microsoft has a disadvantage in this area, so to pretend UC is something all-new would be passing several companies who have been active in this area for a long time.” Seems it’s again Microsofts PR machine working

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