Unified communications (UC) systems help companies improve productivity, collaboration, and knowledge transfer. With UC, instead of working with a jumble of tools, your company can use a suite of integrated solutions that includes voice, web conferencing, instant messaging, and file sharing. These integrated tools make conducting conversations and working on projects easier.  

However, the investment in your UC system may be lost if your employees don’t use it. CustomerThink, an online forum for business leaders, reports that some companies have seen adoption rates as low as 20%. UC systems are designed to empower employees to work with their favorite tools, so their rejection of the system is surprising. But, as the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”  

Employees tend to revert to their old processes once a UC system has been implemented. Employees may be reluctant to use a UC system because they want to stick with tools and routines with which they are familiar. Despite employee resistance, there are steps you can take to get them on board with UC so you can benefit from the system and see a return on investment (ROI).  

Here is a closer look at 3 things you can do to sway your end users toward a UC system: 

Since the widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), doctors and emergency medical teams have become dependent on networks to access and exchange patient information. If these networks perform inadequately or fail, the patient’s life can hang in the balance. 

In healthcare, just adopting technology isn’t enough. Healthcare providers need to choose technology that meets the extreme demands of their industry. As uses for healthcare technology expand into innovations like telemedicine, healthcare providers face higher performance, availability, and security requirements. 

The growth of the cloud market is showing no signs of slowing down. Technology research and advisory firm, Gartner, predicts that the worldwide public cloud services market will increase 18% in 2017 to reach $246.8 billion.  

There is a good reason why businesses are continuing to adopt cloud technologies. According to Gartner, companies are developing cloud-first strategies in which they look to the cloud when making crucial decisions. Cloud-first strategies make sense because the cloud provides solutions to many business problems. The rapid rise in the cloud market is driven by the variety of business advantages offered by cloud solutions.  

Here is a closer look at 5 key business benefits of the cloud:  

One of the most mundane IT tasks that all tech professionals are familiar with is data backup. When something goes wrong (a user accidentally deletes a file, a server fails without warning, a hacker attacks with malicious code) everyone in the office assumes a backup safety net is in place. But that assumption may be only partially correct. 

According to statistics published in Forrester’s 2016 study, The State of Enterprise Risk Management 2016, only 40% of businesses have a contingency plan in place in case of an emergency or natural disaster. In other words, there is a 60% chance that your business has not taken preventative measures to protect your valuable business data against a natural disaster.  

The question isn’t if it will happen, only when… 

High-profile cyberattacks like the recent WannaCry ransomware attack are becoming hard for businesses to ignore. It’s clear that ransomware attacks are becoming more sophisticated and difficult to detect. Today, even seasoned users can slip up and click on an infected link.   

Some companies may hesitate to switch to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) because they believe the rumor that it is too expensive for most companies to implement. The premise of moving to VoIP seems especially daunting for mid-sized businesses that operate on small budgets. Newer technologies can be more expensive, but VoIP isn’t new – it has been around since the 1990s. Since then, call quality has improved greatly and the emergence of cloud-based VoIP makes the service more accessible and affordable than ever before. 

Due to its wide range of features and lack of reliance on hardware, VoIP has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and shows a higher return on investment (ROI) than traditional telephony systems.  

Here are 3 ways VoIP reduces costs and boosts your ROI: 

There was a time when companies were nervous about trusting the cloud to store sensitive data. Now organizations are moving their mission-critical systems and data to the cloud. 

Technology researchers at Gartner predicted that both disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) implementations will grow an astonishing 200% by 2020. But what is driving this growth? 

Disaster recovery in the cloud is part of a larger trend towards reliance on cloud services. The trend illustrates a growing confidence in cloud security and reliability along with an understanding of the overall affordability of cloud services.  

Here are some of the main drivers behind the DRaaS market: 

For years, only large corporations could afford full-featured telecommunication systems. However, advancements in VoIP technology have put these systems within reach for small and medium-sized organizations. Tech.co, a news resource for tech startups, reports that small companies that switch to VoIP realize cost reductions of up to 40% on local calls and up to 90% on international calls. 

Now, even small companies can take advantage of features like auto attendants and direct internal dialing. VoIP also opens the door to unified communications, enabling your employees to collaborate virtually on innovative projects.  

However, the VoIP market can be tricky. Not all VoIP providers are created equally. Before you commit to a service, you must make sure it will meet your needs and expectations.  

Here are 5 pointers to help you choose your VoIP provider:  

Not If, but When

As the recent WannaCry attack demonstrates, ransomware attacks are becoming more sophisticated and their high-profile nature is hard to ignore.  Today, even seasoned users can slip up and click a link they shouldn’t.   For example, you might be tricked by an e-mail that looks like it’s coming from your CFO where she’s asking you to review an attached invoice. For most of us, we’re going to jump on that e-mail because it looks important, and by the time we realize what we’ve done, the damage has been done.