This is a collection of my thoughts on issues facing the enterprise and new technology. As Head of Marketing for Central North & East Europe for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, I am at the cutting edge of new developments and concepts and I will be giving my unique insights on topical issues twice a month. I am particularly interested in how organisations can move away from single-vendor tie-ins to achieve greater business benefits. I also have strong views on the implications of cloud computing on the enterprise. Hopefully, my blog will interest readers and stimulate further discussion via the comments section at the bottom of each piece.
Manish Sablok is Head of Marketing, North Europe for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. Manish has a key role in defining go-to-market messaging for customer service, network infrastructure and unified communications product suites in the Northern Europe region. Manish has previously produced articles and white papers on subjects including the importance of Customer Effort in the drive for loyalty, the importance of an Application Fluent Network in establishing an effective multi-channel communications infrastructure and how organisations can move away from single-vendor tie-in to realise greater business benefits. Manish has been at Alcatel-Lucent for seven years, and before his appointment for the new Enterprise group he was Solutions Marketing Director for Unified Communications (UC) with a worldwide remit. Manish Sablok has a strong background in communications infrastructure, having been at Avaya for five years as Product Marketing Manager for South Asia and before that was Global Account and Channel Sales Manager at Siemens.
Gartner states in its Magic Quadrant on Unified Communications for 2010: 'No vendor product adequately addresses all of an enterprise's UC needs. As a result, a best-of-breed approach remains the surest way of ensuring adequate functionality, and planners should require vendor products to be interoperable.
Recent disturbances have made it even more important for businesses to build home and remote working into their business communications infrastructure. And with the disruptions of the Olympics not far away, we all need to be prepared for employees to be able to work as well remotely or from home as they do in the office.
I was intrigued to see some research surface late last month which looked at job satisfaction rates. Shawn Achor wrote a blog published on the Harvard Business Review website entitled ‘The Happiness Dividend’, looking at why employees are unhappy in their work, and how companies can look to increase employee engagement.
I was amused a few weeks back to see a webinar held by a top infrastructure vendor promoting the value of a single vendor approach to provide the best enterprise solution. It was like a step back into the past!
With so many people realising the power of social media outside of the enterprise in their personal lives, we mustn't forget its power across the enterprise, and by this I mean customer-to-employee AND employee-to-employee. Despite the surge in social media adoption, it is the area of biggest disparity between home and the enterprise.