From photo storage to UC, the reasons for moving to the cloud are the same.

On a recent weekend, after years of mulling it over, I made the decision to upload all of my photos, new and old, onto a shared, hosted drive. Over the next few weeks, as I began the process of locating and uploading photos from variety of devices going back several decades -- which included everything from a Mac, to thumb drives, DVDs from photo printing services, and paper photos scanned into drugstore photo machines -- I pondered the similarities between my reasons for moving photos to the cloud and the reasons our clients are making similar decisions for their communications platforms.

If you think you're in the business of communications technology, think again.

Sometimes we need to pull our minds out of the here-and-now and engage in some deep thinking about the future. So for your next thought exercise, how do cloud inflation, subsidiary membranes, and information surfaces strike you as topics worth mulling over?

5G will change the industry in positive and significant ways, but don't believe everything you hear about it.

A lot has been written about 5G and its promise for changing the world -- a world with unlimited bandwidth everywhere, where everything is connected, and cars drive us. But beyond the hype and hyperbole, a few myths have crept up, some even encouraged by carriers.

The point of technology is to improve the business.

Last Friday afternoon, almost everyone who could had taken off to get a start on the holiday weekend. That was my plan, too... but then I got a call from a client with a problem.

Five key questions to ask, investigate, and discuss around your cloud journey

Cloud services are nothing new, but for many midmarket companies, the cloud approach has been to tread carefully. Large enterprises have IT departments that can research, test security, and support cloud deployments -- and the budgets to ensure their success. For small businesses, cloud migrations have been driven by cost benefits and the ability to minimize the internal resources needed for IT infrastructure. With more complex requirements than small businesses and fewer resources than large enterprises, midmarket companies are sometimes hesitant to take the leap.

A recent No Jitter Twitter chat brought analysts and consultants together to discuss the top questions around collaboration endpoints.

I participated in my first ever Twitter chat last week, focused on discussing some of the major questions around collaboration endpoints. It was a great experience, and a lot of ground was covered in what felt like a short amount of time. If you missed the live chat, I'm here to give you an overview of what I found to be the highlights of the conversation.

A city uses technology planning to expand and improve information technology services in order to meet citizen demands while maintaining its historically strong financial standing.

Located in the Denver metropolitan area, Commerce City is Colorado's fourth fastest growing city. Between the years of 2000 and 2015, its population grew from 20,000 to nearly 54,000 citizens. With a surging population, strong financial standing, and many ongoing and planned redevelopment projects, the city faced great opportunities and difficult challenges in its efforts to maintain a balanced and vibrant city economy, financially-sound government, and a quality community.

The human firewall is the first and last line of defense for an enterprise, and investments should be made in security awareness training across the enterprise.

In the security landscape, there are few easier opportunities for hackers to compromise an enterprise than by targeting the human beings that make up the workforce. People in an organization (employees, contractors, senior executives, and board members) are almost always the weakest link in the security ecosystem. They have been taught since they were toddlers to be helpful, curious, and, as adults, customer focused. Hackers take advantage of these ingrained traits using a wide variety of social engineering techniques to exploit access to an organizations' resources and assets.

Finding the newsworthy and notable took a lot of sifting through the glitz and sizzle of the show floor.

Barcelona, which just might be my favorite city in the Europe, one again served as host to one of the largest mobile-focused conferences in the world, Mobile World Congress. With more than 100,000 attendees and thousands of companies present, the late February-early March event provided easy access to the heart of the mobile industry for a glimpse of where we are and where we are going.

Taking time to create and implement a good end-user training program is an essential step not to be overlooked.

We heard the word "experience" a lot last week at Enterprise Connect 2017 in Orlando, Fla., mainly in terms of either a user experience or a customer experience. The discussions centered mostly around the use of technology in creating a favorable experience.

A review of current federal and state initiatives around issues relating to emergency services

A few weeks ago at Enterprise Connect Orlando, I was lucky enough to take part in a panel discussion led by Irwin Lazar of Nemertes Research on issues associated with 9-1-1. For those who weren't in the room, it's important to know that there was heated discussion as two animated vendor representatives discussed their different approaches to identifying, managing and providing useful location information to first responders behind an MLTS (multi-line telephone system). Aside from the in-room fireworks, however, the session reminded me that it might be time for a review of some useful and relevant 9-1-1 policy information.