I recently attended an ACCP (Association of Customer Contact Professionals) meeting where Michael Amigoni, COO of Dibon ARO BPO, gave a fascinating presentation on the virtual call center. Over 15 years ago, Michael had the vision to tap the power of the new “distributed workforce” operational model to increase his customers’ service quality and lower delivery cost. He co-authored a book, “Managing the Telecommuting Employee,” sharing best practices to help virtual call centers “maximize profit and productivity.” Michael shared with us excerpts from his book and interesting and sometimes funny real life examples of what to do and what not to do when running a virtual call center. Michael gave a comparison ROI between a regular bricks and mortar call center and the virtual call center. The total savings for the virtual call center was about $1,200,000 annually! He also shared with the group that two of the best things he ever did since getting involved in the contact center industry was moving their datacenter to 1102 GRAND and migrating to the inContact Software Platform. By moving their datacenter to 1102 GRAND and switching to inContact, it freed him and his team to focus on their core business, customer service. Now, on the datacenter side, they don’t have to worry about redundant cooling units, power feeds, battery backups, generator service, etc., they leave all that to us at 1102 GRAND. I was able to purchase Michael’s book at the event. To preview and purchase “Managing the Telecommuting Employee” go to http://bit.ly/rYZmNK. Great stuff, thanks Michael!

I encourage all who currently own or run a contact center, or are interested in the contact center industry, to come and check out an ACCP meeting. ACCP is a professional, non-profit association whose members represent customer contact organizations and the vendors who support them. The membership consists of organizations of all sizes and from a variety of industries. They have first and third-party focused members including telemarketing, call centers, collections, customer service facilities, help desks, client retention, etc. To learn more about ACCP and upcoming events go to http://associationccp.com/Home.aspx or give me a call at 816-213-7731.

I ran across this article on CIOInsight.com on the prediction that hardware spending will reach $99 billion this year. At 1102 GRAND we are definitely seeing evidence of this spending on a daily basis. We are watching customers moving gear into newly built out collocation rooms within our building, as well as existing customers adding new or upgrading existing equipment. The growth appears to span many different verticals, but web hosting, managed IT service companies, healthcare IT and call centers are definitely the front-runners this year at 1102 GRAND.

Gartner: Data Center Hardware Spending to Hit $99B in 2011

Who says the future of IT is all in software? All software has to run on some sort of processor, physical or virtual, and all those have to run on something you can see and touch. And with the continuing deluge of data pouring into servers and storage arrays, there is no shortage of processors happening anytime soon.

Thus, IT hardware sales are going nowhere but up and to the right. Gartner has some new numbers that back up this trend.

The industry researcher is projecting that worldwide data center hardware spending will reach $98.9 billion by the end of calendar year 2011, up 12.7 percent from $87.8 billion in 2010, according to a report it published Oct. 13. Data center hardware spending is forecast to total $106.4 billion in 2012 and surpass $126.2 billion in 2015.

Data center hardware spending includes servers, storage and enterprise data center networking equipment.

Back to Pre-Downturn Levels
“Worldwide data center hardware spending will finally reach and surpass 2008 levels,” said Jon Hardcastle, research director at Gartner. “Growth in emerging regions particularly Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries) is balanced by continued weakness relative to pre-downturn levels in Japan and Western Europe.”

Storage is the main driver for growth, Hardcastle said. “Although only a quarter of data center hardware spending is on storage, almost half of the growth in spending will be from the storage market,” he said.

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Thank you to all the golfers, sponsors and Deer Creek Golf Club for another successful golf tournament and IT networking event. The competition was fierce yet friendly and great connections were made.

Congratulations to the winners:
1st Place- Bluebird Network: Mike Brigman, Steve Crane, Don Gehringer and Scott Brown
2nd Place- K&W Underground: Rex Schick, Bill Reidy, Scott Plumb and Dwight Davis
3rd Place- Gary Kapperman, George Porta, Wayne Walker and Connie Walker

Longest Drive- Wayne Walker
Longest Putt- Bill Reidy
Closest to the Pin- DJ Good

Thank you again to our tournament sponsors: Rockefeller Group Technology Solutions (RGTS), K&W Underground, Stanger Industries, Lantel, Time Warner Business Class, KNK Telecom, Westhues Electric, Boulevard Brewery, Clayman Promotions, and Centriq IT Training. We couldn’t have done it without your generosity!

Have you ever wondered where all of the data in the world is located, or how much data is available across the globe? Here is an article from www.thewhir.com which includes an infographic, breaking down the best and most impressive data storage facts.

Data, Data Everywhere!

I came a cross an intersting infographic (below) from Mozy that discusses the amount of data stored worldwide, there are a couple of intersting tidbits and conculsions that can be drawn for this.

- First there are 600 Exabytes of digital data stored worldwide and this number is doubling every three years. This means there will be a Zettabyte of digital data in the world within the next three years. Wow!

- Second, the United States and United Kingdom dominate the worldwide datacenter market with 100% of the 10 largest facilities located in these two countries.

- Finally, old technologies die hard; 11 percent of all data is still stored on tape. With this level of continued data growth, hosting and cloud computing will only become more pervasive.

Just a little data (about a lot of data) to get you thinking.

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There are have recently been numerous changes in the federal government, including Steven VanRoekel being named the new chief information officer. In the midst of those changes the federal government has decided to make data center consolidation, cloud and security the main focus of its information technology spending. Here is an article from itworld.com about the government’s IT spending decision.

Report: Fed IT spending to focus on cloud, data center consolidation, security

Federal IT spending will be sluggish over the next five years, with the exception of spending on some emerging technologies, a new research report predicts.

“Federal Information Technology Market, 2011-2016”, by enterprise software vendor Deltek predicts “moderate growth in a limited number of high-priority areas,” with overall federal IT expenditures expected to grow less than 2 percent annually through 2016.

Deltek predicts “demand for vendor-furnished information systems and services by the U.S. government” will go to $91.3 billion in 2016 from $84.1 billion this year, an annual growth rate of just 1.7 percent.

Deniece Peterson, Deltek’s senior manager of federal industry analysis and co-author of the report, said, “While the administration is still focused on key cost-saving measures such as cloud computing and data center consolidation, agencies will be under pressure to execute those plans under strict budgets. This means opportunities may be rescoped or restructured as agencies struggle with funding and managing these projects.”

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Event Date & Location:
Technology Entrepreneur Speaker Series: Crossing the Clean Technology Chasm
August 16th from 5:30-7:00 p.m.
Polsinelli Shughart P.C.
Kansas City, MO
$25 Advance Registration, $30 On-Site Registration

Hear from Patrick J. Piper of QM Power and learn more about managing the risks in an early stage Clean Technology venture. P.J. will share examples from his own background and those of other clean technology entrepreneurs.

Attendees will learn about:
•Leveraging Government contracts for commercial success
•The pros and cons of venture capital
•Commercial and academic partnering
•Building your team
•The outlook for clean technologies and alternative energy

Register Now!

EVENT DATE & LOCATION:

Smart Communications Summit 2011
7:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Kansas City Convention Center
Kansas City, MO

SKC Communications invites IT and technology professionals to a day of show-and-tell and networking with top experts in the Collaboration of Unified Communications industry including Cisco, Polycom, Microsoft, Plantronics and Avaya. Come see how you can make your business work smarter. This event is complimentary, but registration is required. Please register at SKCcom.com/TechSummit