Many companies were already adopting collaboration technologies before the coronavirus pandemic hit last spring. But the massive shift to a remote work model has created a sort of forced proof of concept for numerous businesses, with employees and managers learning on the fly how to use these tools to support productivity and collaboration.

One thing that many business and IT leaders have discovered: Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) solutions and a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) are often a good fit. UCaaS refers to cloud-delivered capabilities, including voice and telephony, meeting solutions, messaging, presence and other communication applications. With SD-WAN, advanced software simplifies the operation of complex WANs while optimizing the end-user experience.

Here are several reasons why these two technologies work so well together.

Recently, I helped set up a demonstration of a video collaboration huddle space at an East Coast law firm. My partner and I expected the lawyers to use the equipment for a couple of minutes to test it out with their colleagues in another office, but two minutes stretched into five, and five stretched into 25. As the call went on, steady voices rose to angry shouts. However, when the legal team emerged from the room, one of the managing partners looked at us and said, “Please move forward with the project.” Then he walked away.

Most organizations that invest in a new video collaboration system are looking for a way to connect teams in different offices, enable remote work and bring a level of personalization and collaboration to their users that simply isn’t possible with voice-only communication. But if you’re interested in not achieving any of those benefits, then this…

Video collaboration in the customer engagement center (or contact center) makes sense for many of the same reasons the technology makes sense in other settings: When customers can see a human being on the other end of their conversations, they feel a human connection. When customer service representatives or sales staffers can see the people…

When I’m working on a project around the house, my children often observe me as I plan and measure, spending hours preparing before I ever cut a board or a wire. “You’re sure not lazy, Daddy,” they’ll tell me. “I’m the laziest person you’ll ever meet,” I always respond. “I never want to do a…

Sometimes, when I’m speaking with IT managers about how to build out video collaboration systems for their organizations, they want to start the conversation by talking about a particular high-end Logitech camera, or a specific, slick Samsung video panel. Often, these technology pros have a mandate from on high: A leader within the company has…