By Tim Greene, NetworkWorld.com, 05/09/07

Businesses say they are interested in unified communications but still face some of the same obstacles that prevented them from adopting VoIP a few years ago, according to a study by Nemertes Research.

While interviews with 120 IT executives reveal that 79% of respondents either already use or are planning to use unified communications, but 60% say their collaboration and communications staffs are separate, according to the study’s author Irwin Lazar, a principal research analyst with Nemertes.

  By Sandra Gittlen, Newsfactor.com, 04/11/07

Many companies' data center responsibilities are broken out piecemeal, but experts say that companies embracing New Data Center technologies, such as blade servers, grid computing and virtualization, will succeed by consolidating the management of all critical functions into a single role. Using these advanced technologies begs for someone capable of bringing an integrated, holistic approach to data center architecture and design, says Johna Till Johnson, Network World columnist and co-founder of Nemertes Research.

Network World Editorials  By John Dix, Network World, 03/22/07

In a recent study about spyware by Nemertes Research, Senior Vice President Andreas Antonopoulos was surprised to find that 16% of the companies examined were not concerned about the threat.

Suspecting that was because they were small companies, he dug deeper, but found they were some of the largest companies analyzed. He also discovered why they weren't concerned: they spent 6% to 8% of their IT budgets on security, twice what the average company spends.

Network World: IBM’s bet on social networking tools faces IT scrutiny
By John Fontanna

“The question is how you sell this to the enterprise,” says Irwin Lazar, principal analyst and program director for convergence and collaboration at Nemertes Research. “The enterprise manager will say, how do I manage this, how can I control it, how can I cost justify the implementation, how do I support it and what are the training issues.”

Lazar says the model around Web 2.0 tools is decentralization -- the tools get pushed out to users, who then figure out how to use them -- as opposed to the way software has been deployed for years as a big, feature-laden package that required user training.

Enterprise Storage Forum: Open Source Storage: Disruptive Technology or Distant Dream?
By Drew Robb

Andreas Antonopoulos, an analyst with New York City-based Nemertes Research, believes that Cleversafe and Amanda can change the way we do storage.

"This represents the natural evolution of storage virtualization," says Antonopoulos. "Location becomes irrelevant and availability becomes a transparent feature."

Business Communications Review: Four Key Trends In Building Better Datacenters
Drew Robb

Any number of experts will give you their opinions on the hot trends in datacenters these days. For example, analyst Andreas M. Antonopoulis, senior VP of Nemertes Research, lists consolidation, growth, availability and operational efficiency as the four main themes that come up in Nemertes surveys of IT executives. Others emphasize such

Wired News: On The Road With VoIP
Randy Dotinga
October 5, 2006

While Jajah has a potential market in families whose members are distributed across the globe, "you have to spend a lot of money to market your service, and I'd doubt that there is sufficient revenue potential for Jajah to overcome the marketing costs," said Irwin Lazar, a principal analyst with Nemertes Research.

Still, he expects VOIP companies to battle mightily over mobile users over the next two or three years, potentially leading to

C U at the meeting

GRANT BUCKLER

Special to Globe and Mail Update

Telus Corp. has built its business around voice communications, but when its sales representatives need information while talking to a customer, they needn't put the caller on hold. They can stay on the line and send colleagues instant messages from their computer keyboards.

Instant messaging (IM) has been hot among desktop-chatting and cellphone-toting teens for years now the technology has started drawing attention in the business world. IM can be a handy office tool because it's more immediate than basic e-mail, and senders know whether the person they're trying to reach is at his or her desk.

InfoWorld
by Greg Nawrocki, August 26, 2005

...Andreas Antonopoulos from Nemertes Research describes the IT architecture progression in terms of a pendulum "swinging every few decades from centralized to-decentralized and back again." In a recent column, he suggests that the mainframe isn't coming back -- next generation IT architectures are simply borrowing the most attractive qualities of mainframes.

[July 26, 2005]

SMB Owners 'Apprehensive' About VoIP

A recent Switchvox study find apprehension among SMBs over VoIP.

By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist

57% of small- to medium-sized business owners are "apprehensive" about the reliability of Voice over Internet Protocol service providers available today, according to a recent survey by Switchvox, who sells PBX phone systems to SMBs....

Instant message lockdown
Agencies grapple with control issues as users increasingly flock to IM
By Terry Sweeney
July 25, 2005

Few people are flattered when you call them paranoid or controlling. But in information technology circles, these traits are positive. We can thank viruses, hackers and spammers for that.

By Paul Taylor
Published: July 27 2005 10:38

Once a sleepy IT backwater, identity management has been thrust into the spotlight over the past few years...

According to a recent report prepared by Nemertes Research, the US based research firm, 38 per cent of all enterprises cite identity management as a top-funded security initiative.

Real-time communications tools speed the pace of communication and boost productivity while delivering hard dollar savings.

By Patricia Schnaidt
May 2005

Brainstorming sessions around the water cooler are a relic of the pre-Internet age. Today, 90 percent of employees work outside of their company’s headquarters and one-third work in locations away from their managers and the workers they interact with on a daily basis, according to Nemertes Research.

Regulatory Compliance Skewing Security Budgets
5/16/2005
By John K. Waters

Between 30 to 60 percent of the security budget increases in the last two years can be tied directly to compliance, according to analysts at Nemertes Research.

4/20/2005

By John K. Waters

Instant messaging, the sometime consumer-driven technology for sending and receiving text messages in real time, now rivals e-mail in its rate of adoption among business users. For some organizations, IM has become a cornerstone communications technology. Companies that once complained about the IM assault on the corporate networks now encourage their employees to use it to interact with customers, partners and suppliers. “I could give up my phone before my Blackberry,” a San Francisco exec told AppTrends....

The downside, says Nemertes analyst Melanie Turek, is that the federated model is more vulnerable. Federated IM increases malware risks, which are on the rise and growing more complex every day. Spam, viruses and phishing scams are all showing up on IM systems, and companies that open their networks to more users need more powerful and sophisticated security solutions.

Analytics Powers Soft-Pedal Microsoft Realtime Reporting Threat

By Barbara Darrow CRN
Thu. Apr. 07, 2005

Microsoft's planned entry into real-time reporting will either spell Armageddon for business intelligence competitors or is no big deal, depending on whom you ask.

March 18, 2005

Security concerns are causing IT managers to block IM services; study also shows only a small number of companies have implemented presence technology elsewhere in their operations.

No Longer a Nicety: EIM
By Jeanette James

March 16, 2005: Instant messaging is everywhere and growing. Without a company-sanctioned, enterprise solution in place, companies may find themselves wide open to security risks and regulatory headaches....

By Tony Lock, IT-Analysis
Published Friday 18th February 2005
On the whole, surveys do not often provide "scientific data" but sometimes they can throw up some interesting observations on differing trends and how ready the world is to follow up on new developments. With this in mind, it is worthwhile taking a look at the results of a small survey performed by Nemertes Research at the Network World 2005 IT Roadmap Tech Tour conference, where attendees were quizzed on the state of their storage, virtualisation and open source deployments.

Storage Market Shrinks...As It Grows? -- Expect continued consolidation as demand increases, study finds

By Luc Hatlestad
7 March 2005
VARBUSINESS

One of the key buzzwords in the IT industry this year will be consolidation. In addition to such megamerger deals as Oracle-PeopleSoft and Symantec-Veritas, plenty of smaller companies also will join forces in 2005.

Johna Till Johnson, president of Nemertes Research, New York, highlights one of those deals in a recently released report. She says McData's impending acquisition of Computer Network Technology (CNT) exemplifies the ongoing trend of storage consolidation and virtualization across data centers. McData, which develops Fibre Channel-based storage-area networks (SANs), bought CNT for roughly $235 million. CNT provides channel-extension storage solutions for mainframes.

March 1, 2005
Communications.com

This from Nemertes Research, one of our favorite analysts in our market. Say what you may, they at least seem to have deep knowledge of the telecom space, unlike some firms that throw a fuzzy bone to it now and then.

Anyway, its new study, "Convergence: Reality at Last," says that IP telephony is now providing enterprises with considerable business benefits, and that these advantages are only going to increase.

Factors organizations cite as VoIP migration drivers break down into three broad categories: raw cost savings, productivity enhancements, and business improvements.

VoIP Lessons
Learn how to get around potential problems.
Entrepreneur magazine - January 2005
By Amanda C. Kooser

VoIP is big news for growing businesses. The cost savings, convenience and features are well-known, but there are a few drawbacks that you should be aware of. The good news is that many of these issues can be dealt with through proper planning and implementation.

"The biggest downside is reliability. [VoIP] requires smart network design," says Robin Gareiss, principal research officer with Nemertes Research, a New York City tech research firm. Gareiss has been studying VoIP and listening to business concerns as the technology becomes mainstream. Businesses must have power over Ethernet capabilities and a large enough UPS to handle the combined data and voice network. If the power goes out and you don't have a proper UPS, your phones can go down. Fortunately, you can save by investing in one large UPS rather than in two smaller ones for voice and data.

by Ian Foster
DECEMBER 23, 2004

We saw a dramatic increase in the volume of industry discussion and media and analyst attention around commercial-level deployment issues. We heard announcements from major vendors about large enterprise initiatives. And we saw some important discussions start to unfold around practical issues related to grid adoption on the enterprise scale -- issues such as how to best secure a distributed grid environment, as well as software licensing issues.

As we look ahead to 2005, I thought it would be interesting to catch up with some of the leaders from the grid industry and have them weigh in on what they consider to be important issues to watch in the coming year. Responses varied from specific concerns to philosophical perspectives about the implications of grid technology.

November 17, 2004

Survey also finds that ShoreTel and Nortel offer the lowest start-up costs, while Avaya and Cisco prices were the highest.

By Matthew Friedman Networking Pipeline

A new study has found that it costs an enterprise between $525 and $1,512 per user to implement VoIP, but the eventual savings can be substantial, ranging between $9,600 and $28,000 per site annually for large enterprises. The study also found that ShoreTel and Nortel offered the least-expensive start-up costs, while Avaya and Cisco prices were the highest.

The study, "Convergence: Reality at Last," by Nemertes Research, asserts that startup costs are dependent on a number of variables, include enterprise size and which vendor companies chose to supply the VoIP solution. It found that size does matter, and that the average initial cost of a VoIP deployment, including hardware such as IP PBXs and handsets as well as planning an implementation services, was $525 per user in deployments of 1000 users or more, and $763 in deployments of 100 users and less.

Open-Door Collaboration — helping engineers and product developers gain new levels of efficiency

By Terry Sweeney

When collaboration goes beyond e-mail, engineers and product developers gain new levels of efficiency...

Many business professionals and knowledge workers are stuck in their thinking about what collaboration is or how the enterprise takes advantage of it. "When you ask an IT executive what collaborative tools they use, they always say e-mail," said Melanie Turek, Principal Research Analyst with Nemertes Research. "It's not a very good collaborative tool, but it's a way for employees to send information back and forth, and it's where people often keep their project documents."

By TODD BISHOP
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

October 20, 2004

A computer on every desk and in every ... phone?

That rewrite of the old Microsoft Corp. motto might not fit precisely, but the Redmond company yesterday showed its ever-expanding ambitions with new software that connects the desktop computer to the traditional telephone next to it.

The product is an on-screen communications hub for office workers. It creates a central place for instant messaging, file transfers, audio and video communication, computer-based conferencing and advanced "presence" technology that indicates whether others on the system are available to meet or talk....

October 19, 2004

Nemertes On Microsoft's Istanbul Announcement

New moves support Nemertes prediction of convergence of IM, presence, and IP Telephony, making new competition for the desktop.

By John Dickinson Messaging Pipeline

As so often happens whenever there is a major messaging announcement, Nemertes Research does a quick impact study so you can see what the new product or technology might mean for you and for competitive players in the market. Microsoft's announcement of improved presence awareness and IP telephony capabilities in its forthcoming Istanbul IM client provoked such an analysis, this one from principal research analyst Melanie Turek.

By John Fontana
September 6, 2004

There is a killer on the loose under the covers of instant messaging, and no, it isn't malicious; it's a killer application that has the potential to revolutionize the way companies collaborate and communicate.

The killer app is presence. IM users see evidence of it every day in their buddy lists as a little icon that shows someone is online. But down the road, experts say, presence will separate itself from IM and evolve into a network service tapped by applications and corporate communication services, including telephony.

"In the future, presence will be the underlying [network] capability, and IM will just be one of the apps that takes advantage of that," says Melanie Turek, an analyst with Nemertes Research. "Presence is the killer app."

By Web Services Pipeline, InternetWeek
Aug 6, 2004

A research benchmarking study by Nemertes Research indicated that 75 percent of enterprises were using Web services to communicate with trading partners, customers, and suppliers. The study, "Extending the Enterprise" interviewed in-depth IT executives from 35 companies in a broad range of industries about their current "externalization" projects as well as planned initiatives. The firms were primarily mid- to large-size companies with annual revenues exceeding $500 million.

"We were primarily interested in how enterprises are externalizing the networks and building B2B and supply chain applications that reach outside the enterprise," said Andreas M. Antonopoulos, principal research analyst at Nemertes. Some of them were user-to-system applications, typically users using browsers to manipulate an internal application such as placing an order or seeing the status of a shipment, he said. Others were machine-to-machine interactions where internal applications talked directly to partner applications.