Video conferencing on the rise

Global IP Solutions released a survey in which it states enterprises looking to drive down costs and improve communications are turning to video conferencing, reports eWeek.

The survey echoes what other study findings, supporting the strategies of vendors Cisco, Polycom, Juniper, Tandberg and Radvision. In the survey of 1 200 people, most senior business professionals say they have used a video conferencing application. In the US, 40% of those surveyed say their companies will be deploying a video communication solution within the next six months to two years.

Cisco CEO John Chambers says video will change the way companies do business, and has pointed to his own company as an example. Cisco is increasingly relying on video conferencing and telepresence technologies for everything from internal meetings among internationally based employees to releasing corporate news to the outside world.

Microsoft has delivered its near-final version of Office 2010 to a small group of invitation-only testers, reports Computerworld.

The software giant says it doesn't plan to make the new build available to the general public, with the release candidate of Office 2010 recently distributed to Microsoft's Technology Adoption Program, a group of company partners and customers that routinely receives test previews.

Microsoft says Office 2010 will ship in June, although the appearance of a release candidate has created speculation that the final will unveil before then. Release candidates are the major milestone in the Microsoft's development cycle before it declares the software is ready to release to manufacturing.

Cisco sees the iPhone as a key part of its unified communications strategy in the mobile enterprise application space, reports Internet News.

"We believe the iPhone is a very important market for us," says Laurent Philonenko, vice-president and general manager of Cisco's unified communications business unit. "The iPhone came from nowhere in the enterprise and other companies deploying iPhones in the hundreds and thousands of units."

Cisco is bringing voice over WiFi to the iPhone, a feature it already offers on certain Nokia smartphones and plans to bring its instant messaging application to the iPhone as well.