CLOUD COLLABORATION: Understanding the Options to Find the Right Fit

Every CEO’s wish list includes a desire for tools that enable innovation, growth and boost the productivity of today’s increasingly distributed workforce. The question of how to bring the best resources together, facilitate the exchange of ideas, foster innovation and do it all without the lost time associated with traditional face to face meetings falls to the CIO to answer. As the market responds to this growing demand, the solution offerings available to the decision makers have made the task of selecting the right tools and platform complex, if not daunting. A Collaboration tool’s Integration with other systems must be considered. Today’s end users expect communication and collaboration tools to work together seamlessly and across a growing fleet of mobile devices. Tools can no longer be stand-alone applications that “bolt on” but don’t fully integrate with existing solutions. Add in the pressure to contain budgets and securely manage the network, then the selection process can become stressful, time consuming and delay implementation while decision makers focus on making sure they get it right.

The accompanying presentation herein, provides an understanding of the options to find the right fit, when it comes to cloud collaboration AST-0074297_cisco_cloud_collaboration

 

 

 

 

 

The Top Ten Myths about Recovering Deleted Files

The fear of deleting files has waned over the years, based on the common assumption that easy-to-use tools are available to bring back almost any file. Many myths incorrectly make these “tools” seem more capable than they actually are. In this White Paper, many of the common, incorrect assumptions about file recovery and look at a software package, Condusiv Technologies’ Undelete, that actually fills many of the gaps left by other “recovery” methods are discussed.

Understanding the Benefits of Office Web Apps

There is a lot of good news to tell you about Office Web Apps. Many people believe that Office Web Apps are a replacement for the Microsoft Office programs on your computer, but that’s incorrect. Office Web Apps are companions to your Microsoft Office programs. They do not replace your desktop applications unless your content creation needs are extremely basic.

considering that Office Web Apps are quite new as of this writing, I think it might be useful to provide some different scenarios in which these applications can be particularly handy. You are likely to have your own to add to this list before long. But here are a few examples of how I’ve already seen Office Web Apps used to save time or simplify work:

Multimedia Presentations: Insert a Video from a Website in PowerPoint 2010

Well, it’s about time. No more packaging files to send your presentation to others or show it from a different computer, just because your slide content includes a video or two. No more worrying about maintaining paths for linked video files so that your media will play. If you’re a PowerPoint user, you might already know what I’m about to tell you: we can finally embed video in PowerPoint presentations.

In previous versions of PowerPoint, if you post a video to a website (such as You Tube) and then want to play it back during your presentation, you need to add a hyperlink on a slide to take you to that webpage for playback. But if you’ve needed this functionality in the past, you might have wondered if there was a way to play that video directly from the slide rather than opening it in a browser. In PowerPoint 2010, you now have the option to insert a video onto your slide from a website and then play it back during your presentation right on the slide—no hyperlinks or browsers involved. To do this:

What Are the Next Big Things in Social Tech?

One of the most critical roles a manager has is to be the person who guides the team toward a future vision of success. You simply cannot focus solely on executing today’s game plan without giving some consideration to what the future playing field might look like. The ability to predict what will happen over the next few years so that you can help your team have the best shot at succeeding is the essence of leadership. Without a picture in your head of what will happen in the coming years, you have no way of making solid decisions today that will be beneficial tomorrow. You can’t merely oversee daily activities; you must also be constantly planning for the changes that are sure to come.

Understanding How Font Choices Can Impact What Recipients See

One of the most basic components of formatting documents in any program is also often one of the most problematic: fonts. You can choose beautiful, creative, and interesting fonts, but if they are not standard fonts and do not exist on the recipient’s computer, your document might look entirely different to the recipient. When a font does not exist on a computer, the program in which you open a document (such as Word or Excel) will substitute the closest font available. Often the closest font has differently sized characters from your original font, which can alter alignment of complex layouts, change pagination, or distort graphics.

 

Use Microsoft Office Effectively: Choose the Best Tools for the Task

When you think of documents, do you automatically think of Microsoft Word? Word is certainly the best home for most documents that are predominantly text—usually regardless of the complexity of the layout or graphic elements you might need to include. But do you consider all of your options when you prepare to create a document? More and more, features are available across multiple programs (like new and improved picture editing tools that you’ll find in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel on both platforms).