NEC Builds Bikes and Team Bonds during Annual Sales Conference

NEC Corporation of America’s (NECAM) Enterprise Technology Services (ETS) team had a bit of fun with a team building exercise during their annual sales conference.  Kevin Flynn, ETS Vice President, chose a team building event that would bring his team and the ETS supporting teams together by participating and competing in an event that gives back to the community.

Joined by NECAM president and CEO Shin Takahashi and other executives, the group was divided into teams that competed to complete a series of challenges similar to those from the popular television game show “Minute to Win It”.  Each time a team won a challenge, they would receive a part of a bicycle that they would later build.

Once all parts for the bikes were given out, each team received the base of the bike that they were to build.  But there was a twist.  The bike bases were all marked with a specific color tape, as were each of the parts.  Teams had to barter and negotiate with each other to obtain the parts that had the same color tape as the frame they were given, truly putting their sales expertise to the test!

The finished bikes were donated to Texas Bikes for Tykes, a non-profit charity organization that builds or repairs bikes that are given to underprivileged children and adults in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, as well as Mexico, Honduras, and Ghana.

Visit NEC at Enterprise Connect 2012 in Orlando

Enterprise Connect is upon us once again, and NEC is busier than ever in preparation. Our theme this year is The Empowered Workforce, and we'll be featuring two recently announced solutions: UNIVERGE 3C and UNIVERGE Cloud Services

UNIVERGE 3C is our comprehensive unified communications and collaboration suite, representing not only a technology evolution, but also the evolution of the UNIVERGE brand. Where UNIVERGE 3C excels is in its common user interface across multiple device platforms (PC, laptop, tablet and smart phone), as well as its new, feature-rich Web collaboration capability. All of this will be on display at Enterprise Connect. 

Announced this week, UNIVERGE Cloud Services will soon deliver unified communications as a service (UCaaS) in a manner that easy to purchase, deploy and manage.  The service features a host of NEC's broad capabilities, including UNIVERGE 3C as its core UC platform, and Express5800 servers and M-Series storage in geographically redundant data centers. 

In addition to the flurry of activity at NEC booth 609, we have a number of speakers. You can find the full Enterprise Connect 2012 conference schedule online.  Here's a quick rundown of NEC's speakers at the event.  See you there!

 

Date

Time

Speaker

Session Type

Topic

Monday, 3/26/2012

11-Noon

Todd Landry, SVP, NEC

General Session

Plennary/Summit: Has the Post-PBX Era Begun?  (Roundtable) 

2-5 p.m.

Pat Henkle, Director Product Line Mgmt, NEC

Reactor panel

Tutorial Workshop / RFP: UC with a PBX

Tuesday, 3/27/2012

9:15 – 10 a.m.

Donna Zett, CIO, AOT Bedding (Serta / Simmons)

General Session

Plennary/Summit: Is There a New Model For Communications & Collaboration (Roundtable)

 2:30 – 3:30

Todd Landry, NEC

Breakout panel

Breakout: UC Interoperability: How Real, How Much? (Reactor Panel)

 2:30 – 2:50

Jay Krauser, NEC

Sponsored session

NEC Sponsored Session (20 min); Heavenly UC: What it Means to Consume UC from a Cloud

Wednesday, 3/28/2012

2:30 – 5:30

Pat Henkle, NEC

Reactor panel

Tutorial Workshop / RFP: UC without a PBX

2:30 – 3:25

Todd Landry, NEC

Sponsored session

NEC Sponsored Session: The Millenial Workforce & UC

2:30 – 3:30

Ed Ashley, Manager, Product Mgmt, NEC

Breakout panel

What's New in Desktop Phones?

2:30 – 3:30

Jay Krauser, NEC

Breakout panel

Managed / Hosted UC: Who's Offering What?

 

 

A Bold New Direction for NEC at Enterprise Connect

Enterprise communications is evolving at an incredible pace.  It seems only a few years ago we were all touting the benefits of voice over IP.  Today, our industry is about much  more than voice and data over the same network.  Of course, unified communications is that “much more,” giving us voice, status and presence information, messages in a single inbox, video and Web collaboration tools, social networking capability, and ideally the ability to go mobile with all of these features.

This week our industry’s largest event, Enterprise Connect, kicks off in Orlando with a new name and  vision, “Communications Transforming Business.”  It’s a fitting tagline  for a show that evolved out of voice-centric roots into a much broader array of topics, as UniCom Consulting’s Marty Parker points out this week on NoJitter.com, and one that also aligns with the direction NEC is demonstrating at booth 609.

UCC_AgentToday, NEC Corporation unveiled a new Unified Communications & Collaboration architecture, which is being demonstrated in booth 609 at Enterprise Connect.  Using Rich Internet Applications (RIA) technology, UC&C fits into today’s secure Web architectures and can be deployed either on-premise, in the cloud or a combination of both.  It gives users a unified client across any device – smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC.  The client itself is designed to be simple, elegant and intuitive based on the user’s role.  It’s definitely worth a look if you are at Enterprise Connect this week.

Also worth a look are our speakers – we have five of them this year in the Enterprise Connect program.

“IP Telephony RFP: Who Delivers the Goods?”

  • Monday, February 28, 2:00 – 5:00 PM (Wade Irwin) in Osceola A

“Comparing UC Options: Who’s Offering What?”

  • Tuesday, March 1, 2:30 – 5:30 PM (Gary Gordon) in Osceola A

“The Role of Tablets in Enterprise UC”

  • Tuesday, March 1, 2:30 – 3:30 PM (Gary Gordon) in Osceola B

“Unified Communications Interoperability: What’s Needed?”

  • Wednesday, March 2, 8:00 – 8:45 AM (Todd Landry) in Sun B

“Integrating Mobility and UC RFP”

  • Wednesday, March 2, 2:30 – 5:30 PM (Sheryl Teague) in Sun B