Author: Linda Graham

Join the Meet-up: Leveraging Technology and Innovation for Proactive Healthcare

Posted by Linda Graham on Posted in Straight Talk Tagged

NEC Corporation of America (NEC) is sponsoring a meet-up in Sunnyvale, CA, on Sept. 11, featuring a panel of industry experts discussing how to leverage technology and innovation for proactive healthcare.

Healthcare providers are increasingly under budgetary pressure to reduce costs and increase the efficiency and quality of care.  Preventive treatments free up costly hospital resources.  Technology is proving to be a key enabler in realizing these goals, especially as healthcare delivery models are evolving rapidly.

To improve wellness worldwide, innovators from across healthcare are envisioning and realizing game-changing digital health technologies.  Come hear real-world approaches, first-hand experiences and lessons learned from trailblazers on the leading edge of healthcare.

Details of the meet-up:

When:  Thursday, September 11 from 6 – 8:30 p.m.

Where:  Plug and Play Tech Center

Address:
440 N Wolfe Rd
Sunnyvale, CA 94085

Register for this event.

Moderator

Charlene Yu Vaughn, CEO, The Algonquin Group

Panel of Experts

  • Dr. Andrew Auerbach, MD, MPH, Director of InnovaEon at the Center for Digital Health InnovaEon; Professor of Medicine in Residence at UCSF
  • Jason Roos, CTO, Stanford Medical Center

Big Data to the Rescue!

Posted by Linda Graham on Posted in Straight Talk Tagged , , , , , , ,

There is serious buzz surrounding big data that may make one wonder if it really is all that we hope. Fortunately, there are plenty of scenarios that showcase how big data makes a significant impact in the daily lives of just about everyone. Let’s take a look at a few…

 Competitive Big Data

big-data-nec
* Photo by infocux Technologies on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons license.

Football, or soccer as it’s known in the U.S., is the most popular sport in the world, making the 2014 World Cup one of the most important sporting events of the year. It will be watched by millions as Brazil and Croatia go head to head. Many of those avid fans won’t even stop to think about what is behind their ability to access information regarding the spectacle that is sure to be the World Cup. But it’s a lot of planning and preparation. Think of it this way:

Joseph and his buddy Sam are in Ireland, betting on the game with their friend Luke, who was lucky enough to attend. They are all posting on social media, gathering statistics on the two teams, the players and the weather. After all, outdoor sports are definitely impacted by weather. The three buddies are able to gather all this information at the “touch of their fingertips” because somewhere, someone thought to gather the information, parse into usable bits and serve it up for anyone to access.

Let’s review another scenario – professional sports are big, global business. An important aspect of that is recruiting. Just how much data would you have to collect in order to have a player’s stats just to see if he’s worth the money he wants. Now apply that business. There are massive amounts of data we want to harvest. Unfortunately, most of that data is unstructured. Fortunately, there are bigger and better servers to crunch that data into something usable. Couple that with services provided by experts such as the team at NEC, and you can really make big data work for you.

Speaking of NEC and the FIFA World Cup, the company will provide information and communications technologies to the Arena da Curitiba in Brazil, including security via technologically-advanced monitoring, IP and wireless infrastructure for telephone, as well as sophisticated sound systems, giant screens, lighting and air conditioning. These systems are all fully integrated by NEC, whose know-how in providing integrated solutions for stadiums is supported by projects spanning a variety of countries.

 

 Little Monsters of Big Data

When we think about big data it conjures up images of large conglomerations churning away at all sorts of analytics in order to build a better mousetrap. But “business” is not necessarily corporate, suit-and-tie, in-office operations. In fact, there are interesting uses for big data cropping up everywhere. Case in point, Lady Gaga’s business manager, Troy Carter, is a big data fan. In fact, he created a fan-centric community called www.littlemonsters.com by mining the singer’s 31 million plus fans on Twitter and 51 million on Facebook.

 

Big Data Bring Back My Internet!

There you are, rushing around to update your web site with the latest, communicate with your store, and ensure that not only are customers served, but you have plenty of product in stock when BAM! Everything goes dark. No, it’s not the next zombie apocalypse; it’s just another service outage. But, what if, before you even called your service provider company, it knew about the outage. How? Big data. It is the hope of many communications industry leaders that appropriate mining of big data will help manage outages and even disasters. By looking for other patterns when customers begin to notify them of a problem, or even mining social media, it is possible for these providers to become more proactive. This spells fewer outages and more control for the communications companies to provide better service. Not to mention less interruption of your digital life and your bottom line.

Bottom line – big data impacts just about every company, organization, law enforcement agency and gaming company on the planet. Because gamers are so engaged, being able to mine their data provides interesting information regarding their behaviors. In fact, that is the very business model of Badgeville, which sells gamification technology for measuring and influence user behavior. The truth is the more they know about your behavior, the better companies can fulfill your needs, wants and desires.

 

Big Data Means Finding the Right Partner

The truth about big data is its immense power when in the right hands. This requires major computing power, as well as a partner that can ensure the large amounts of unstructured data are compiled into a meaningful metric. Fortunately, NEC has solutions for your big data needs that fully encompass the requirements to make the most of your big data. You can find more information on NEC’s big data solutions here.

How to Stay ‘Mobile’ During a Severe Weather Event

Posted by Linda Graham on Posted in Education, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, Straight Talk, Unified Communications Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

As the polar vortex recently bore down on much of the Midwest and East Coast, bringing lots of snow and multiple headaches, the topic of remote working comes to mind. Seasonal events such as heavy snow—not to mention the ice storm that paralyzed parts of the southern U.S. in early December—can disrupt businesses as well as daily life in many ways. Lack of electricity, canceled flights, delays or shutdowns in local transportation all have an adverse affect on daily activities.

Keeping a business operating at optimal levels when employees can’t make it into the office quickly becomes a problem. The losses in productivity and resulting lost business can mount up fast.

Cloud Services Can Help

Luckily for today’s businesses, technology exists so that many employees can perform their jobs remotely as seamlessly as if they were in the office. For example, cloud-based Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) enables employees to work remotely, helping to keep things running at the business. Communication tools such as softphones, instant messaging, and audio and video conferencing help dispersed teams collaborate and work on projects even when the weather outside is frightful.

Enabling employees to do their jobs even when they can’t get into the office keeps them safe during dangerous travel conditions, but it also means not losing employee productivity over the course of the weather event.

UCaaS keeps communications running smoothly, especially critical for organizations that heavily rely on communications for their revenue. During inclement weather, unified communications solutions can:

  • Integrate email, voice and instant messaging into a cohesive communication system so all employees can keep in touch
  • Provide access points to all data used by an organization so that users can communicate with others inside and outside their organizations quickly and more easily
  • Lower overall IT and telecommunications costs, particularly labor costs, because of the inherent economies of scale available through an integrated communications platform
  • Give access to carrier-grade communications that deliver consistency with easy-to-use functionality

Virtual Desktops—at Your Service

Other cloud services can make working remotely a reality as well. For instance, Desktop as a Service (DaaS) means moving an employee’s desktop to the cloud and making it accessible anywhere, anytime by an Internet-enabled service. Virtual desktops can be linked through a private network connection to a secure, remote data center far from the bad weather. Best of all, desktops in the cloud look and behave as if they are part of a corporate IT environment. Customers and employees won’t notice a difference in the quality of service.

Plus, the ability to deploy, manage and support desktops through DaaS reduces costs and eliminates the complexity of deploying and managing virtual desktops. Hardware costs can be reduced by nearly 60% and easier management means lower operating costs. Other benefits of DaaS include:

  • Improved security and compliance through centralized updates
  • Better mobility for your workforce through seamless access from any device, at any location
  • More flexibility to easily deploy and quickly scale desktops
  • A disaster recovery strategy to get desktops back up and running quickly

Routing Network Traffic Using SDN

Software-defined networking (SDN) simplifies the network management, proactively addresses network performance and quickly re-routes network traffic as needed—all critical functions during a severe weather occurrence.

SDN can help businesses keep their mission-critical processes up and running. Using OpenFlow technology, an SDN solution centralizes control of the network and automatically monitors network traffic, distributing it according to pre-defined policies and constantly updated network resources and traffic conditions.

Think of a delivery truck’s route from point A to point B. If the truck runs into bad weather conditions or an accident on the route, the driver can access a traffic monitoring app such as Google Turn by Turn to identify and then access another route quickly. The driver is able to quickly re-route the truck so that it doesn’t lose any more time in making its delivery.

So, when bad weather strikes, having the right tools and technology in place to enable mobility among your workforce can make a real difference. Consider including UCaaS, and SDN solutions in your disaster recovery plans to help create a safe and secure environment that protects your data and applications and keeps your businesses running.

To learn more about these solutions follow the links below:

UCaaS – http://goo.gl/5AGs87  SDN – http://goo.gl/HGiyf

Biometrics Can Improve Customer Experiences

Posted by Linda Graham on Posted in Straight Talk

Biometrics, particularly facial recognition, conjures images from sci-fi television to cop movies to real-life applications for law enforcement. However, the power of biometric technology does not stop there. In fact, according to a new report from research firm Frost & Sullivan, biometrics is just beginning to gain recognition as a viable solution for customer experience in the retail and hospitality industries.

The biometric market is expected to be worth $6.2 billion by the year 2019 primarily due to the continued adoption of the technology for applications beyond the law enforcement and government arenas. For example, the banking industry has found biometric facial recognition to be quite useful in ATMs.

Customer Experience at First Glance

Facial recognition can provide opportunities for multiple industries to serve their customers more efficiently. Take the hospitality industry as an example. As a high-end hotel, you want to provide white- glove service to your VIP guests. With facial recognition software for the hospitality industry, your staff will know as soon as one of the VIP guests enters the lobby. Now that individual can be greeted personally, and escorted to a room without going through the normal check-in procedures. It’s five-star service at its best.

“Being able to identify VIP guests immediately could enable the front desk staff to have room information pulled up before the guest steps up to the registration desk and be able to greet the guest by name,” said Raffie Beroukhim, vice president, Biometrics Solutions, NEC Corporation of America. “Overall, this capability helps enhance a VIP guest’s experience through personalization of services and increases customer satisfaction with the property.”

The guests really begin to feel like a VIP because of the rapid deployment of high-end services available simply by having facial recognition software such as NEC’s NeoFace® recognize them as they walk into the hotel. Furthermore, the ability to align the biometrics solution with existing surveillance equipment makes the implementation easy and much less disruptive to the property.

Hospitality is not the only industry to benefit from the expansion of biometric facial recognition software. Retailers will also benefit. Consider this – if a shopper repeated visits a store, facial recognition software such as NEC’s NeoFace Watch will recognize her and sends a message to the retail staff about her preferences and recent purchases.

According to Allen Ganz, senior account development manager for NEC, the idea is to provide an enhanced customer experience.
“I’ve often seen instances when a customer walks into a store, sees the long line and buys the product somewhere else,” he said. “Imagine a scenario where you can walk up to a kiosk where you already preregistered yourself along with, for example, your favorite drink and the store recognizes and knows I want my standard order.”

biometrics can improve customer experiences

Is there Any Privacy Left?

Many critics claim this type of technology voids the ability for someone to maintain privacy. However, the NEC technology requires customers to opt in to the service, giving retailers the ability to use this ground-breaking customer experience only with those shoppers who agree in advance.

For those who value a strong, individualized customer experience, biometric facial recognition such as NeoFace is a true value-add. It alerts team members to the arrival of someone who desires to be given white-glove treatment, while expediting either the check-in or purchase of products, and giving that person something truly valued – recognition of repeat business coupled with time savings.

What do you think about using biometric facial recognition to enhance white-glove service in retail and hospitality industries? Would you appreciate the extra effort?