While companies see the value of innovation, they frequently fail to put the right tools in place to support those goals. The new collaboration will be built on technologies that enable easy knowledge sharing outside the firewall.

Abstract: Remember bound volumes of reports in the company library? Secretaries who took the boss’s dictation? And smart people who shut their office doors and emerged with full blown ideas for business? Depending on where you are in your career, these may be real but ancient history. Or they may be laughable absurdities. You’re probably finding that exclusivity, hierarchy and solitude are already being replaced by radically different ways of collaborative working.

The signs are unmistakable. People increasingly work in places other than their offices—and on teams that draw expertise from virtually anywhere in the world. They access applications, data and subject matter experts live and across networks—and others tap into the same information. They employ whatever end-user device is right for the job to improve productivity—while enhancing the work experience for themselves and their employees. Today, collaboration is the name of the game.

In today’s competitive environment, sharing information and expertise can be critical in driving both individual and organisational success. From forward-thinking business leaders to younger workers who have grown up in the Web-based world, working collaboratively is now business as usual.

Learn about our vision for unified communications and collaboration, and how we deliver on this vision.

Abstract: Unified communications and collaboration strategies can help organisations deliver a user experience that brings together communications and collaboration silos across and beyond traditional business boundaries. By providing users with a single, integrated experience across both business applications and communications and collaboration tools, organisations can cultivate more dynamic and flexible business systems. They can achieve these objectives without having to replace their existing telephony infrastructure, even if running solutions from multiple vendors. And, as a result, they can build more flexible, real-time business models that allow them to respond more quickly to emerging marketplace opportunities and competitive threats.

By adopting unified communications and collaboration solutions, organisations can address critical needs such as improving productivity and responsiveness, supporting an increasingly complex and global business network and meeting the communications needs of employees no matter where they are working. IBM provides the essential software, services, hardware and strategic alliances you need to connect people to applications, data and one another anytime, anywhere—allowing people to find, reach and collaborate with the right resources more easily than ever. Using modular, standards-based IBM solutions, you can simplify and unify business communications, from voice, e-mail and instant messaging (IM), to video and Web conferencing, while reducing overall costs.