It happens almost by accident. An organization adopts a cloud collaboration suite, giving employees the ability to share files, exchange messages, manage their calendars and set up voice and video calls — all on a single platform. But then the company merges with another organization, which is using a similar platform from another vendor. Meanwhile,…

For many organizations, Skype for Business (formerly Lync, and before that, Communications Server) has been a staple communication and collaboration platform. This type of application — one that provides the ability to communicate quickly and effectively through instant messaging, check someone’s availability via presence status, place a phone call and spin up an ad hoc…

A couple of months ago, a higher education CIO I know came to me in a near panic. The university’s provost (who had never before acknowledged the CIO by name) had just walked into his office and asked why the school didn’t have a student-focused mobile app that a rival school offered. The CIO didn’t…