The power of ten - enterpriseinnovation.net

As property prices start to spike upwards,enterprises are squeezed ever-tighterfor space. Pressure to keep costs down isconstant yet the need to cater to growingstaff requirements continues. And as workerscontinue to shift locations, the industrytrend of creating dynamic workspaces formobile workers must keep pace.According to Gartner’s Top 10 Predictions,by end-2013, 40% of enterprise knowledgeworkers will have abandoned their deskphone. Drivers include expensive complexdesk phones costing several hundred dollarsper unit, and growing moves towardsremote workers. With Wi-Fi and mobiletelephony becoming ever more sophisticated,workers can “telecommute” withgreater ease.The solution? Hot-desking.What’s Hot-desking?It’s a business practice which unlinks anthe increasing number of mobile and remoteworkers.don’t necessarily need a permanent desk—(a “hot desk”): a standard desk not permanentlyassigned to anyone, but used by anyvisiting individual or company employee. worker from a particular space while keepwww.cw.com.hking them accessible via a singlephone number.How Does Hot-deskingWork?This solution provides the userwith a simple, customizable webuser interface to temporarily assignany phone as the user’sprimary business phone. Anyincoming call to the user’s singlebusiness phone number is automaticallyre-routed to the assignedhot desk phone. The hotdesk phone can be any phone: internal orexternal, desk phone or even mobile phone.Nortel’s CommunicationsEnabled Business SolutionportfolioNortel has introduced its new Hot Desk-applications from Nortel’s CommunicationsEnabled Business Solution portfolio. Nortel’sHot Desking solution provides a rapid ROI byoptimizing existing IT environments throughintegration with a multi-vendor network infrastructure.Nortel’s hot desking application is designedto run on any IT environment as part ofNortel’s vendor-agnostic Agile CommunicationsEnvironment (ACE) software platform,announced earlier this year.“Optimization of IT resources is a key partof any CIO’s agenda in 2009,” says KarinaChan, Leader, Applications and Solutions,Nortel Greater China. “What we’re addressingwith ACE is the question of how you canleverage your existing investment to address,improve or innovate new businessprocesses.”“One of the fundamental steps in achievingapplication innovation is to recognize thathuman delays slow business processes andthat this costs enterprises real money,” saysChan. “By decreasing or eliminating thesehuman delays, you can experience positivetransformation by accelerating “time to ‘X’—time to decision, to revenue, to service, tosupport, to product.”The service is accessible from any webbrowser, meaning workers can set up any direct-dialphone number, turning any locationinto a temporary workspace. People callingthe workers only have to have one numberin their directory. This means enterprises canincrease revenue opportunities by providingtheir customers with single-number accessto account representatives so that fewer callsare missed or not completed.Hot-desking not only fuels productivity butalso help support operations against disruptionby risks and help organizations savingreal-estate costs during economic downturn.Why Nortel?Nortel Hot Desking is designed to run onany IT environment under ACE and is fullycompatible with a range of communicationsenvironments.HSBC UK is already using Nortel UC solutionto support HSBC executive mobilityincluding hot-desking. The solution enablesHSBC to allow its global management teamsto work together more. Nortel was able tonicationEnvironment (ACE) -which leveragesService Oriented Architecture (SOA)and web-services - to deliver this new uni-and speed.Businesses can now use Hot Desking tolower real estate costs by as much as 25%,reduce telecommunications costs for mobileemployees by over 10%, improve customercare, increase worker productivity, and betterprepare for emergencies.Sept 2009 Computerworld Hong Kong 17