Unified Communications: The Promise Realized By Tom Gill, CIO, Plantronics

Unified Communications: The Promise Realized

Tom Gill, CIO, Plantronics | Friday, 01 September 2017, 05:24 IST

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Unified Communications and Collaboration

Unified Communications at Plantronics is about providing the tools that allow our employees to work from wherever and whenever is most appropriate given the task to be performed. In an increasingly global and mobile environment, it is important that we use the same communication and collaboration tools regardless of where we happen to be working. Our enterprise relies on Skype for Business to enable presence, IM, chat, conferencing and video all enabled on our laptops or smartphones. Our social for business platform is Jive. It has flattened the organization allowing associates at all levels of the organizationin every geography to share content and ideas. Both Skype for Business and Jive have increased innovation cycle time, increased knowledge sharing and greatly improved our ability to communicate both internally andwith our customer, suppliers and partners.

Challenges that Keep CIOs Awake at Night

Our biggest challenge is keeping up with the demand for IT innovation. Resources are limited so project portfolio and governance has become even more important as we ensure that we are making investments in projects withthe highest return. Unlike the IT gatekeepers of the past, our approach is to lead with yes, understand the problem,determine how to best solve it and then decide how it ranks in terms of business value.

Current Technological Trends

Mobility is important at Plantronics. Work is not a place to go but something we do and having the right mobile technology is key to ensuring that our associates are connected, available and productive. Our IT Service Desks around the world have made the adjustment to extend service beyond our physical boundaries. Our remote support tools allow us to take control of a system regardless of where it happens to be. Who would have thought that we would be helping to troubleshoot WiFi hotspots at homes and coffee shops!

Cloud computing has been a big winat Plantronics. We were early adopters of Salesforce.com for sales, marketing and support and have added dozens of other SaaS application services. Cloud apps also help with our mobility strategy making it easy to connect and do business remotely without the need for VPNs. We have also adopted PaaS and IaaS solutions which have allowed us to add IT services without having to add data center headcount. The cloud has allowed us to focus on our core business while scaling our IT services and solutions.

Embracing UC

My first thought is to get started, even if it is a pilot. We found adoption to be viral with presence, IM and desktops hare leading the way. UC solutions have evolved to the point where they simply work, including enterprise voice and scalable conferencing. Web RTC will make it even easier to deploy but there is no need to wait. Tools are in place to ensure smooth deployment and management.

Advice for CIOs

My goal has been to hire and retain top talent, ensure that they have the resources required to get the job done and then get out of the way. Innovation starts with the experts, not the CIO. I also like to emphasize leading with yes.Every one in the enterprise understands IT and trends like BYOD and cloud solutions need to be managed by IT. Our business partners know what tools they need to be successful. IT is here to help with configuration, integration,scalability and security. It’s all about collaboration and partnering!

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