It’s a fact that the global economy has slowed prompting contact center managers and IT leaders to explore strategies for maintaining efficiency and meeting revenue targets with fewer resources and constrained budgets. But within a contact center environment, there are many opportunities, sometime hidden, to actually maximize efficiency and still control and possibly reduce costs. With an expert, holistic examination of operations and identification of areas of improvement, management can be proactive in identifying and implementing strategies that not only help their businesses navigate through a potential economic downturn, but accomplish business results that remain beneficial after the economy recovers. Eddie Jenkins, Vice President, Customer Service Practice for the Professional Services business at Avaya joins me to discuss leveraging contact centers for strategic corporate value, which means increasing revenues, corporate productivity and gaining market share during down markets. This is a very timely podcast chocked full of great ideas to be successful in a down market.

With the slow down in the global economy we ask the question; how is this business cycle impacting IT and communications? During down markets cost reduction initiatives are obviously important, but so too is service creation as corporations respond and react to new market realities. One major difference in this down cycle from others is the fact that many firms are in the middle of a communications infrastructure upgrade cycle. Traditional TDM PBXs are reaching the end of their economic and reliability lifecycles. Most enterprises are either in the middle of or have migration plans to move to IP telephony platforms, implementation of Unified Communication applications, and the upgrading of Call Centers to Contact Centers. Given the state of this communications technology migration, IT organizations will find it even more difficult to manage the inevitable downturn in spending and tightening of resources to accomplish their missions. Ajay Kapoor, Director of Consulting and Systems Integration for Enterprise Communications for Avaya is my guest as we offer several actions that IT leaders can take immediately that help IT increase efficiency while reducing costs within 12 months. This is a great IT management podcast that business and IT leaders will find valuable and timely.

According to industry sources “The average corporation under budgets PCI (Payment Card Industry Compliance) by 40%. Any company, mom and pop shops to fortune 50 corporation that processes credit card information need to be PCI compliant. Penalties for non-compliance are severe and are enforced by the banks such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express and others through fees plus increases in transaction cost. For the mid market, a doubling of the transaction fee charge will have a much larger impact on its cost to productivity. Terry Quinn-Andry, Compliance Solutions Manager for Cisco Systems joins me to discuss PCI requirements for mid market corporation. We’ll explain PCI benefits, exposure of non-compliance and how to avoid penalties. If you’re responsible for PCI compliance, then you need to listen to this podcast

Data centers are the largest single IT investment CIOs and business leaders appropriate. Data center networking is leading edge by default and where high-speed links and new approaches are first deployed. While data centers are consolidating and becoming increasingly virtualized, networking requirements are fundamentally changing. High performance end-of-row and top-of-rack network switches are uniquely positioned to increase network throughput and reduce operational spend. I talk with Doug Murray VP/GM of Extreme Networks about new data center design options thanks to its Summit X650 high end Ethernet switch. If you’re designing a data center network, then you need to listen to this podcast

The conventional wisdom in IT threat mitigation is to build a layered defense with security technology such as firewalls, IPS, network access control, anti-x client software, alarm aggregation and event correlation, etc. Conventional wisdom is starting to shift toward a systems approach to protecting IT assets. The layered approach was built upon deploying best of breed products, which were best of breed only until other products emerged and relegated them to either standalone appliances and/or loosely coupled silos such as the linking between IPS and firewalls. The systems approach builds upon IT security investment by wrapping it with System Management for policy, reputation and identity that transcending endpoints, networks, content and application security. Fred Kost, Cisco’s Director Security Marketing is my guest as we explain the new IT security model and provide IT leaders with guidance on building a more secure IT infrastructure. To understand the systems approach to IT security then listens to this podcast:

Scott Lucas, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing for Extreme Networks is my guest as we discuss Extreme Networks major product portfolio expansion and the launch of its widget central. Extreme launched its new Summit X350 fixed configuration switch for network edge applications plus 802.11n access points and controllers. A new version of ExtremeXOS with enhanced automation capabilities to help IT leaders reduce operational spend is now available too. Extending the usefulness of its flagship BlackDiamond 8800, it launched the C Series of core switch interface and management blades for increased scalability and density of 1GbE and 10GbE ports plus PoE support. Extreme has created an ecosystem around the development of application Widgets by exposing features and providing software developers access to its ExtremeXOS. This ecosystem is called Widget Central. I talk with Scott about the new design options and widgets available to network architects afforded by this launch.

TCO or total cost of ownership is always a difficult metric to measure. So many business and IT leaders focus on purchase price or product acquisition without giving full attention to operational and facilities cost, which dominate network TCO. Conventional wisdom is that for LAN and WLAN switching acquisition cost represents between 20 to 25% of TCO with operational and facilities spend represents between 75 to 80% over a 3-year period. So the question is what can IT leaders do to optimize TCO and bring balance to network acquisition and operations. Scott Lucas, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing for Extreme Networks is my guest as we discuss best practices to balance TCO.

Marcus Bost, Chief Information Officer, Adena Health System is my guest as we discuss how Adena is using IP Video to provide neonatal care to its patients in southern Ohio linked to the largest US Neonatology center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital 70 miles away. Adena pediatricians are now able to collaborate with Nationwide Children’s neonatology experts in full high definition real time IP video to assess and diagnose infants, review CT scans, X-rays and consult with Adena pediatricians on treatment plans. Mr. Bost discusses the above project from both a human condition improvement and economic perspective. We end the talk with a discussion on network readiness and future IP video plans at Adena Health System. If you’re developing an IP Video plan then you need to listen to this podcast.

Many IT leaders have build private application delivery networks while outsourcing content delivery network needs to improve the performance of video, music downloads, and rich media. These two separate networks are now converging into one physical but logically separate networks with unique attributes for the traffic, which flows through them. Two experts in the field from Internap; Phil Kaplan Chief Strategy Officer and Tim Sullivan Chief Technology Officer join me to discuss how these two network clouds are beginning to drift together and what this will mean to IT operations and business. Internap’s approach to service delivery is software based and relies upon backbone router vendors such as Foundry Network’s NetIron XMR and its ServerIron to deliver the services it offers. If you have built an application delivery network and outsource content delivery to a service provider then you need to listen to this podcast.

IP video is being massively consumed in the consumer and corporate markets. In 2007 IP video exceeded the total sum of 2000 internet traffic which was nearly 25 Petabytes/month while IDC estimates that corporate video traffic will more then double in the next two years with greater then half of all corporations currently using some form of IP video. IP video is either deployed from the bottom up or top down. Click-to-conference plus enterprise based Web 2.0 social networking and collaboration initiatives are deployed from the bottom up while video surveillance, digital signage, TelePresence, and one-to-many for training and executive-to-employee briefings broadcast are top down. In short, business and IT leaders will not have total control over IP video deployments and are advised to prepare your networks for IP video. Kumar Srikantan Senior Director of Cisco’s Campus Switching Systems Technology Group joins me to discuss best practices to guide IT leaders to prepare their networks in support of IP video services. If your corporation is using IP video, then you need to listen to this podcast.