Global teamwork is increasingly becoming a critical business factor, with more companies comprising teams spread across several locations.
So says Roelof Louw, senior sales consultant at T-Systems South Africa, who adds: "The economy is now interlinked, and South African companies must react quickly and flexibly. To achieve this, their business requirements - such as teams dispersed geographically working on product development, for example - must be matched to solutions available within the cloud collaboration space."
In view of this, he says, T-Systems has developed a cloud collaboration solution for smooth collaboration between international employees, partners and customers.
"Dynamic Services for Collaboration (DSC) comes with Microsoft Exchange, a mail server, calendaring software and contact manager, enterprise software Lync and SharePoint 2013, which can be used to provide intranet portals, document and file management, collaboration, social networks, Web sites, enterprise search, and business intelligence," he says.
Louw states that companies can access these services via their corporate networks, as well as online or using a mobile device, from any location.
"Existing databases and applications can also be integrated into the collaboration landscape," he says.
According to Louw, factors that drive unified communication and collaboration (UCC), such as social networking, smartphone proliferation, increasing use of video and the virtualised network, influenced its migration to the cloud.
"Unified communications consolidates multiple channels in a single user interface, and allows the integration of collaboration tools. This enables employees to, for example, jointly edit documents in real time (Web conferencing)."
He states that taking UCC into the cloud further extends this potential, allowing employees to collaborate quickly and easily at the right time, regardless of physical distances involved.
Further, presence information shows the best way to contact a colleague. Where required, telephone calls and online chats can be turned into phone or video conferences - at the click of a mouse. This is all made possible by bringing together voice, data and video communications in a single UC solution and via an Internet protocol (IP)-based network.
Head of telecommunication pre-sales at T-Systems, Dean Young, adds that another factor taken into account for implementing UCC solutions is user profiling, which is then incorporated into the technology.
"We look at data associated to a specific user, or customised desktop environment, then draw up a solution into which the user's company policies, such as data security management, can be integrated. This also helps the business in minimising costs," he adds.
Louw explains that combining all communications services in a standardised application environment accelerates business processes and supports multi-site, cross-border teamwork.
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