Clearly the economic news over the past five months has been disturbing and at many times scary. So the question we ask is why invest in Unified Communications (UC) now and not wait until the recovery? The answer is straightforward, as UC not only pays for itself with a rapid payback measured in months, and at times as short as six weeks, but most importantly it reduces corporate operational cost by streamlining business processes. Steve Hardy Director Global Product and Solutions Marketing for Avaya joins me to discuss investing in UC now during a challenging macro economic climate. For any executive seeking both IT and corporate cost cutting projects, you need to listen to this podcast.

The future of IT is a networked model. Value creation and innovation is found in content that flows freely throughout networks. Cloud computing, Web 2.0, mobile applications, unified communications, video on-demand, social networking, etc are the result of the networked IT model. But IT and networks can be more tightly integrated with an applications enablement layer offered by service providers, which provide Over the Top suppliers with reliability, privacy, billing and security services. To link and simplify IT and networks in the most complex environments the industry needs a Network Integrator. I talk with Avedis Menechian, Chief Marketing Officer for Alcatel-Lucent about Alcatel-Lucent’s role as the Network Integrator of Choice.