CEO Blogs

As more and more workers function remotely and as travel budgets continue to shrink, the need for quality video conferencing from any device located anywhere has increased dramatically.

And yet the high price of hardware combined with the complexities involved with operation and maintenance have rendered traditional video conferencing solutions impractical for many, if not all, organizations.

It’s all been too costly to scale, too dependent on expensive QoS networks — and the need to reserve resources in order to conduct successful meetings has created far too much hassle.

What’s needed? Well, to begin with, a video conferencing solution has to be high-definition . It should be able to span mobile, desktop, room systems, and immersive telepresence environments. It should be easy to dynamically scale to changing business requirements and adapt to growth. And, of course, it should be simple to use.

As I pointed out in my last entry, the ability to field web and mobile applications is quickly becoming a business necessity for even small enterprises.

If you’re lacking the substantial developer expertise needed to accomplish that — and most smaller and midsize organizations are — than your best option is to search out an accomplished web/mobile app development services provider.

The numbers are more than impressive: 4.8 billion mobile handsets currently in use — and 19% of those are smartphones, up 2% from just last year.

Then there’s the Internet, which now claims some 2.2 billion users , 1.3 billion of whom access it via some sort of personal computer (desktop, laptop, ultrabook, netbook, tablet).

Hackers have many ways to exploit even the smallest vulnerabilities in your application environment and too often you’re compromised even before you grasp that there’s a problem.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. The solution is an application security scan conducted by a services provider adept at dealing with issues related to application development, support — and, of course, security.

With all the security your IT operations (should) have, you’d think this question would be moot — but it isn’t. The applications your business and your employees rely on could be time-bombs poised to destroy your ability to function.

That’s because the vast majority of applications used in business today are connected to the Internet, often in a variety of ways.

Besides application security testing — which I’ll be taking a closer look at next time — I want to focus now on three capabilities that can make all the difference when it comes to getting the most from an application support services provider:

Database performance and stability monitoring
Beta and test environment architecture, and
Documentation solutions