Social Tools/Collaboration Article Archive:

IT decision-makers charging full speed toward UCC with visions of greater organizational efficiency and improved worker productivity are skipping a key step in the process: Most haven’t bothered to ask what their employees need or want.

The Round Rock, Texas vendor this week linked their PartnerDirect platform to the well-established Dell TechCenter to give registered partners a new online community space for sharing and discovering more technical information on Dell-based solutions.

HP’s release party for their hyperscale Moonshot servers was filled with references to HP’s desire to help save the planet. The real question for partners is whether Moonshot can help save the struggling vendor.

Struggling businesses taking part in quick deals have led to a surge in merger and acquisition activity in 2012, according to IDC, which claims that while sales of firms rose, valuations dropped.

Governance risk compliance and management firm AvePoint is cultivating its own niche around the growing GRC market wit the launch of a solution geared for Microsoft Office 365 — SharePoint Online users. Among other things, the launch represents the mammoth revival of GRC that is now causing the once stagnant market to fragment into more specialized niches.

Sherri Liebo, who takes over the post vacated last summer by popular global channel marketing chief Amanda Jobbins, brings a host of experience working with partners in Cisco’s $10 billion-a-year services business.

Intermedia is hoping to help partners deliver a smooth transition for their SMB customers from one flavor of Exchange to the next with a onboarding tool that eases account and object creation, data migration and cutover.

XpertUniverse claimed it was teased with the prospect of becoming part of Cisco SolutionsPlus, a reseller program designed to augment Cisco’s advanced technology products to create complete solutions by placing select products on the Cisco price list and allowing them to be sold by Cisco sales teams and channel partners.

The sector failed to live up to its billing as an industry great white hope last year after potential customers kept their wallets shut and revenue tanked badly in the first two quarters.

The new set of improvements should also give partners more options for packaging and managing value-added services for clients looking for better face-to-face communications in their daily business routines.