Sat, December 01, 2001 — CIO — Between the economy and the attacks of Sept. 11, companies are turning to other means of doing business besides air travel. Of the 2,390 respondents to a CIO.com Quick Poll that asked how the attacks affected corporate travel policy, 48 percent said their company had a new policy banning nonessential travel requiring flight, and 17 percent had a new policy banning all travel requiring flight. It should be no surprise then that San Francisco-based industry analyst firm Collaborative Strategies reports that the tech-based conferencing business (video, voice and Web) grew between 30 percent and 50 percent during September alone.

If conferencing technology wasn’t something CIOs paid attention to before, now it should be. Employees are turning to a variety of communications tools that put stress on networks and can in some cases open up holes in firewalls. The tools are coming?business needs will dictate that?but how they are introduced in a company is up to the CIO. It can unfold in an ad hoc manner, or the CIO can build a comprehensive communications strategy, including a controlled tool set and an understanding of when to use each. In other words, by sticking to the right set of communications technologies, CIOs will be able to drive down costs, reduce bandwidth clogs and generally help their company through these difficult times. The following facts about each of the three major communications tools as well as emerging peer-to-peer technology will help you form your own communications strategy.

Teleconferencing

Phone calls are already a part of daily business, and no one really considers them cutting-edge IT. "There aren’t a lot of challenges, and the technology is all well-known," says the CIO of a global management consultancy. "It all comes down to how much [calling] you do. And if you do a lot of it you need to come up with a low-cost solution."

Teleconferencing software typically offers a set number of ports (each port supports one caller), the caller’s access point and the ability to create connections, known as bridges, that allow multiple parties to join a call. If teleconferencing is part of your company’s daily life, buying a teleconference package?as opposed to setting up one-shot calls through a carrier?can save you money. Buy enough ports, and you can negotiate your rates. Buying a package may also let you integrate the service with other communications tools such as e-mail and calendars, allowing employees to set up a conference call when they schedule a meeting. The software can even keep track of the total available ports and alert employees if there aren’t enough for a requested call. Employees can then reschedule at a different time or set up the call through a carrier.