Cisco Telepresence for dance practice

What are the top uses for video conferencing? Long distance business meetings, project management, sales, you know... the usual. Turns out that there is another application as well, dance practice!

Engadget reports "Young dancers in Shanghai and New York are currently training hard in order to perform in "The Red Thread"" using Cisco Telepresence. The press release however sums up nicely the value of a Cisco Telepresence solution:

"Just as National Dance Institute uses dance to bridge together diverse cultures, so Cisco is using technology to bridge time, geographic and cultural distances. With technologies like Cisco TelePresence, we are elevating creativity and collaboration to the next level, changing the way people communicate and learn," said Anthony Elvey, Pavilion Director, Cisco. "That is precisely the theme of the Cisco Pavilion at World Expo: how technology can enhance your life. One day, people will be using high-definition video to communicate as easily as they do with the telephone today. This is Cisco's vision of the smart connected life."

If you are interested in learning more about Cisco Telepresence, feel free to contact us for more information or to arrange a demo.

Crossed Wires

The concepts around language and communication have always fascinated me. Communication is not merely the transference of sounds through the air or markings on paper. There is so much more to communication than just the sounds or markings. Looking at everything that goes into even a simple, short exchange reveals that communication is an incredibly complex and layered process, with many opportunities for missteps. It amazes me that we get it right as often as we do, but when it goes wrong…

I have to remind myself often that the way I like to communicate and be communicated with frequently differs significantly from the people I work with, and the same is true for each of them. Since I deal with very technical minded people, I have to remember they tend to like precise directions, with everything laid out in detail. Senior management wants only a quick overview, and will ask for details when they need them. Some people speak primarily in factual language, or while I tend to use metaphors and similes as examples.

I frequently have to mediate conflicts that arise from some people’s inability to modify their communication style based on the conscious and unconscious feedback they get from their audience. This is a vital skill, that can be learned and improved with practice, but a lot of people don’t recognize this. They miss signs that their audience is not comfortable with the message: furrowed brows, touching their face or neck folding their arms. I see these as signs my message is not coming across correctly (or at all.) Maybe they don’t understand me, maybe they don’t agree with me, but when I see these signs, I know to change my communication.

Cisco Cius

Our friends over at Mashable wrote an amazing article about our partner's new device, the Cisco Cius.

The Cisco Cius is Cisco's first entry into the tablet space. What sets this device apart from the competition is the software that the Cius will be able to run. 

"The key to this tablet is the suite of Cisco software products that it will run. The list includes Cisco Quad, Show and Share, WebEx, Presence and Cisco TelePresence; it also supports Unified Communications Manager."

More information regarding the device can be found below in Cisco's video data sheet:

 

If you are interested in learning more about this device, how you can participate in customer trials, or when this product will be available to purchase, please do not hesitate to contact Alliant Technologies.

Password Productivity

Gizmodo recently wrote an article which referenced a research paper published by Microsoft which states that billions of dollars every year are lost in productivity. Lots of firms have an IT policy to change your password after a certain time period. If you think about it, it makes sense... if your forced to change your password every month in a company of 1,000 employees or more, how many of those people are gonna be knocking on the IT director's door asking him to reset their password? Not a lot but enough where productivity will drop.

A great solution to overcome this would be to utilize RSA two factor authentication where the password is literally changed automatically by the RSA token device. Tthe user only needs the RSA key fob to remember the password. No more password memorization. Therefore, IT departments would never need an internal policy for the user to change their password, only carry an RSA token. If interested in learning more about RSA, feel free to give us a call.

First!

Dear friends, family, clients, employees, engineers, and the rest of the world wide web,

I am proud to announce the newest feature of our website… something we should have done a decade ago but are more than happy to release today… our blog.

The goal of our blog is simple, we want everyone to know who we are, what we do, what our culture is like, and what are thoughts are when it comes to strategic IT management. IT has been changing at an exponential pace. At Alliant Technologies, we have with much success predicted these trends ahead of the competition and have been able to be one of the leading firms in our space to be “first to market” on most of the IT innovations that have been changing and revolutionizing the IT industry due to innovations from our strategic partners like Cisco, VMware, and NetApp to name a few.

Also, we think of our blog is good way to exchange ideas, show off the fun and creative people who work here, exchange photos and recipes, and talk about the latest Jonas Brothers gossip =)

We honestly and humbly think that our ideas and innovations in the IT space are too good to keep to ourselves. We also want to provide our readers insight as to what it is like to work here at Alliant. Expect posts written from myself to others from our strategic management team, engineers, and maybe something from our HR director’s pet dog as well. Our employees are involved in various activities that we encourage and sponsor from marathons to community service to graduate school.

We look forward to publishing our ideas, thoughts, and happenings as they occur at Alliant. We want to promote a healthy and intellectual discourse on our website when it comes to IT as well as to the daily things in life that affect us all and we hope that you, the reader, can join us in that discourse as well.

I look forward to everyone’s thoughts and comments and hope you look forward not only to the excellent products and services that Alliant Technologies continuously provides but to our open mind as well.

- Bruce Flitcroft
CEO of Alliant Technologies