We’ve all seen it: our offices are changing from the traditional four walls - to no walls. A need to reduce real estate costs is a key driver, as is enabling a more diverse and agile workforce.

As more organisations move to cloud-based UC solutions, the VoxBox may well be the only conference phone that anyone needs.

A Forrester study shows that 84% of companies are using two or more cloud-based video conferencing apps.

"The workplace of the future is designed to focus on employee engagement, creativity and collaboration."

Telstra, Spark, Ingram Micro NZ, Dimension Data, and Data#3 among winners.

Polycom says it’s going ‘all in’ on Microsoft Teams to create the best experiences across a range of different communications devices and solutions.

The acquisition of Polycom will supposedly accelerate and expand Plantronics’ UC vision.

It has even been predicted that AI will contribute over US$15 trillion to global GDP by 2030 but will come at great cost.

Polycom are adding facial tracking, dual monitor support and better audio coverage to their flagship Trio offering, plus integration with Zoom Rooms.

“It makes sense to better leverage the cloud and improve the way our customers manage, measure and interact with voice, video and content sharing.”

A new executive team, bookings and strategic partnerships have helped drive broad enterprise adoption.

“We are now having to track 160 different vendors and service providers in order to really understand the market.”

With the acquisition, Plantronics hopes to enlarge their footprint on the unified communications ecosystem considerably.

Andrew Hug will lead the charge creating a customer-focused strategy that combines securing customer insights and analysis.

UC consultant Ian Darby recently ended up in San Jose where natural language processing (NLP) was a hot topic. Here is his take on the Next Big Thing.

For the fourth year in a row, Ingram Micro NZ hosted their Annual Charity Golf Tournament, raising $53,000 for the very deserving Cure Kids.

Polycom has expanded its capabilities with Microsoft, AWS, Zoom and Bluejeans to the Trio, the ‘smartphone for the conference room’.

66% of Australia’s population, an estimated 11.8 million people aged between 15 and 64 years - now make up our workforce.

Diversity – and not just gender diversity – brings different ideas, backgrounds, and assumptions to the table.

​Polycom has revealed findings from its latest research that shows collaboration technologies to be transforming business in 2018.

It is the convergence of people plus, not versus, technology that are now working together.

The combination is expected to expand the markets available to Polycom solutions for its worldwide network of channel partners.

"I’ve worked on how we can remove the stereotype of how an engineer is a guy, and make it about the role itself."

What needs to be brought into focus now is that issues of inequality and lack of access are not limited to emerging or developing economies.