Today we’d like to highlight a couple of free resources available from Webtorials that may provide our readers with some insights: The first is an e-book titled “Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies,” while the second piece is an online discussion on converging the LAN and SAN.
Social media has transformed the landscape of communications. Individuals are embracing this new channel and expecting to have a consistent experience with every company: Facebook claims more than 750 million users worldwide while more than 100 million active users turn to Twitter to share their thoughts. Marketing execs have largely incorporated the power of social networking as a tool. And just as the call center evolved into a contact center a decade ago by adding bidirectional communications capability that incorporated faxes and emails, the contact center is also evolving further to now similarly harness the power of social networking.
IN THE NEWS: Mobile contact center moves to the cloud
“Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies” is sponsored by Avaya and published by Wiley Publishing. It explains how to integrate social media to improve the customer experience, increase productivity and simplify communications as a means to grow the size of the business audience. The book outlines the basics of using social media to streamline communications into the enterprise contact center, along with discussing the benefits of using listening technologies to find and respond to social media inquiries. Readers can download the book by following this link.
The second piece is an online discussion asking, “Does Converging the LAN and SAN Make Sense?” Moderated by our colleague Dr. Jim Metzler, insights and answers are provided Arista, Avaya, Brocade, Cisco, Extreme Networks and HP.
As was the case when we started this newsletter, the typical argument raised is that it is more efficient to run one network than it is to run two networks — the same argument that was made as part of the justification for converging voice and data networks. So, one could conclude that since that argument worked for voice and data networks it will work for the LAN and SAN. While that may be a valid conclusion, it took several years before a converged voice and data network became the rule rather than the exception.
Will the convergence of the LAN and SAN follow the path of converged voice and data networks, or is this situation different enough that adoption will occur more rapidly? This discussion explores fundamental issues such as why an IT organization might want to converge its LAN and SAN, and if it does, how to best go about it. The discussion can be found here.
Our thanks to Webtorials for making these educational resources available.
