Ray Hood, CEO Qumu

Ran across a great interview with Ray Hood, CEO of Qumu from the good folks at FierceOnlineVideo. They caught up Hood to discuss the company's progress so far this year, its plans for the future, and what trends and highlights he sees in the online video industry.

Below are two excerpts from the conversation that particularly relates to our work with Enterprise. We welcome you to visit the entire article here.

FierceOV: Are there specific verticals where you are seeing greater uptake of enterprise video?

Hood: No specific vertical comes to mind as adopting much more quickly than others, but the size of the company is a factor. The larger enterprises are leading the way on adoption of streaming video, and we'll see that continue as we roll out products that allow for scheduling streaming video direct from calendars. The companies we've seen with the clearest benefits from our products have more than 5,000 employees and are geo-distributed.

FierceOV: What do you think the next "big thing" in enterprise video might be?

Hood: I think the convergence of technologies and ease of use with video will continue. For instance, an executive wants to have an event, he has three technologies at his disposal, what is the best choice: Qumu, Polycom or LiveMeeting? I think we need a clear and smooth transition to automatic selection of the best choice, given the present circumstances and what the exec wants to achieve with the meeting.

On the streaming side, I think the acceptance and adoption of H.264 as the standard will reduce latency in streaming events, and eventually, you'll be able to call on someone at a remote location to address a group in a multi-cast.

Microsoft, HP Tie the Knot on Unified Comm

Sean Michael Kerner of InternetNews.com reports that Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have officially joined forces for UC communicationons. "The move aims to better capitalize on burgeoning demand for UC solutions. Forrester Research has said the market for enterprise unified communications could grow as high as $14.5 billion by 2015, and that businesses will give about 60 percent of their workforce access to UC functions to improve their productivity." Kerner also reports that, "of course, interest in linking applications, devices and employees together through unified communications has also encouraged new efforts from other major industry luminaries, ranging from Cisco to Oracle."

Will the "marriage" work and offer more functionality to each companies software and development issues?

Microsoft, HP Tie the Knot on Unified Comm

Motorola brings new network options to enterprises

According to eWeek, Motorola has developed a new LAN solution which will offer more to enterprises looking to enhance their networks. Its advantages are cost, power, and performance.

Kevin Keefe, vice president of marketing for Motorola's Access Network Solutions recently stated:
"Enterprise users require a different level of network sophistication today than they did even a few years ago. Not only do they expect secure and reliable IP voice and data, but they demand improved network economics and greatly simplified solutions."

Read the full article here.

Enterprise 2.0 Maturity and Adoption: It's About Work

According to Gil Yehuda of Social Computing Journal, Enterprise 2.0 is at a very challenging stage of development. It's no longer a fad. It's not going away. But it's not a fundamental part of mainstream businesses, yet.


Do you think it will be a part of mainstream business within the year, within two years?



Yehuda goes into detail what can and should be done to enable enterprise 2.0 to head more into the natural order of business computing, we encourage you to read the article in its entirety here.



What are your thoughts on Yehuda's findings and predictions?

Wolfram Alpha gets supercomputer boost

According to CNet.com, concerns with the public launch of Wolfram Alpha later this month is withstanding the crushing load the Internet can impose. But Wolfram Research revealed Tuesday it's building the service on the world's 66th-fastest supercomputer. The machine, built out of Dell hardware by a company called R Systems, can sustain performance of 39.6 trillion mathematical operations per second, according to the November 2008 list of the top 500 supercomputers. That muscle will come in handy for Alpha, which I think of as a combination of a graphing calculator, search engine, and reference library that not only supplies some answers to factual, data-intensive questions but also does math in the process.

What will this mean for public performance issues? Will it make a change in your work?

Leading BOLDLY Through Change

The IIR Executive Education series is designed to provide senior executives with practical, yet aggressive strategies for surviving the economic downturn and leading through change. Blending business topics with corporate experiences, this series is tailored to helping you be an integral part of jumpstarting your company’s future. Think differently about your organizations efficiency model, ensure employees maintain an entrepreneurial spirit, build a team of leaders that help manage change, and plan for short term adjustments and longer term innovations beyond the immediate crisis.

Develop the insights, tools, instincts, and confidence you need to lead BODLY through change and capture success through corporate stability. Consider this your blueprint for becoming a high-performance leader and profiting from uncertainty.

Find out more here:
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Oracle Takes on SharePoint With Beehive Upgrade

Alex Goldman of Internetnews.com writes that, Oracle is adding several new features to its Beehive enterprise collaboration software, including unified communications and Web-based collaboration...Add unified communications (UC), and faxes and voicemails come directly into e-mail. The UC function also stores voice and Web communications for compliance purposes...With other Oracle software products, Beehive can do more. It can connect to any custom application that an enterprise has built to run on Fusion middleware, for example, using open platforms such as Sun's Java Management Extensions (JMX).

Will Orcale's introduction of Beehive cause you to think twice about your current collaborative software?

Oracle Takes on SharePoint With Beehive Upgrade