|
Introduction
Information has become such a vital asset that people want and
need it anytime, anywhere to match their ever-mobile lifestyles
and business needs; this fact has pushed Internet and wireless
penetration.
Desires for efficiency, simplicity and convenience
are common as well, the same rules apply to businesses - they want
to operate efficiently, effectively, cut costs and maintain
competitiveness, all at the same time.
Email has been a contributor to efficiency gains we
have seen since late 1990's; in hindsight, email technology was a
pace-setter and created a need far larger than it could fulfill -
further enhanced and more mobile communicating and computing
needs. A part of that need is fulfilled by services such as
Blackberry as it provides one with the critical ability to receive
and send emails when and where needed.
Unbeknown, Instant Messaging is become entrenched
and the primary means of communication in many industries - IM's
let you know who is available and provides real-time 'interaction'
capabilities - a feature not possible with email technology.
A Case in Point
Brokers
and customers at a large financial services company presently use
a popular public messenger. Cognizant of its failings, the brokers
continue to use this public messenger since it offers the most
effective means of communicating in that scenario. The possible
threats and security breaches in using public IM's are immense.
There are already SEC
regulations that require the enterprise to maintain auditable
information.This financial services company remains exposed to:
- Confidential communications with client susceptible to security breaches,
- No audit trail for orders received and recommendations made on public IM,
- Limited documentary evidence in event of lawsuits,
- SEC investigations and penalties for non-conformance.
Top
Solution Description
Tandem
is multi modal, enterprise-grade messaging platform compatible
with consumer grade messaging and SpeechDesk technology platform;
Tandem as an integration platform is designed to allow
interoperability between diverse collaborative and PIM tools
through the real-time awareness of people, places and events
enabling it for remote access via cellular and landline
telephones, PDA's, web browsers, BlackBerry, etc.
Tandem provides system wide security of varying
strengths depending on the application scenario which addresses
issues for a business having non-integrated communication tools
and their inherent security risks they present.
Tandem can be customized for industry-specific
usage. The example of Tandem DayTrader in Solution In Action
below shows usage of Tandem in a finance-specific scenario. Tandem
is available as a business-ready solution for use in Enterprise,
Engineering, Finance, and Education. Further business-specific
functionality can be provided upon request.
Top
Instant Messaging Framework
An
effective collaborative suite brings together a range of features
and functionality such as 'presence awareness' (via IM) and chat
capabilities such as one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many
audio/video/IP conferencing.
"However, this handful of features doesn't
make a collaboration system enterprise-ready. The problem these
systems are trying to solve is the real-time one-to-one and
one-to-many collaboration on a single object. People need to be
able to look at the same file, such as a word processing document
or spreadsheet, make annotations and changes, and save the final
version.
More advanced systems can even let users store
multiple revisions, letting team members revisit older versions of
the file. "Structured" collaboration allows you to
categorize, group and track messages, documents, edits, tasks,
schedules, etc. in searchable and sortable lists."
Keith Schultz is a contributing editor at InternetWeek and
president of NetData Consulting Services Inc. He can be reached at
kschultz@netdatacs.com
What Ken Schultz describes in the above article
is possible with and available in Tandem.
Top
Business Needs
- Industrial grade security,
- Audit trails for analysis and reporting/compliance,
- Secure file transfers,
- Interoperability and compatibility with public IM's,
- Application sharing,
- Collaborative Whiteboard,
- Path to growth and integration,
- Plugins 3rd party applications possible,
Other features of a real-time collaborative
system will be the ability to remotely and interactively
brainstorm on documents or a whiteboard, the ability to annotate
to help track and edit updates.
Top
Solution in Action - Tandem Daytrader
The DayTrader version of Tandem provides the ability to connect,
display and the ability to react to any stock ticker or other
information source that provides market-specific information
services.
Within the DayTrader, one can set communication to
provide automated alerts on the basis of market-driven events. The
DayTrader can also be made to perform actions such as communicate
buy or sell orders on pre-defined triggers (i.e. "sell when
XYZ reaches $ 23.25 or ZYX increases by 20%").
Tandem DayTrader can connect to any information
pool to retrieve trading information and alert you to it while you
are not desk-bound, regardless of the communication device you can
be accessed at.
Tandem DayTrader allows the user true freedom and
mobility without losing out on opportunities that normally accrue
to desk-bound investors.
Top
Summary
Tandem
incorporates a powerful suite of communication options. Tandem can
help an organization and its people to stay connected to one
another.
Tandem dramatically reduces communication costs by
allowing instant communication no matter what device you use.
Currently Tandem supports desktop-to-desktop (voice and text),
desktop-to-cell-to-PDA. Future versions will support other
portable devices, and household appliances etc.
Top
|
|
|
