In early 2009, Skype launched the beta of Skype for SIP, its enterprise-focused offering that connects Skype to IP-PBX or Unified Communications (UC) systems.

Is this the party to whom I am speaking?

18 months later, Skype Connect (née Skype for SIP) moved out of beta after a long gestation period, and we sat down with David Gurlé, general manager and vice president of the Skype for Business unit, to find out what had changed and what the company learnt during the beta period.

Since this is Skype’s foray into enterprise sales, we weren’t surprised that this has been a learning experience.  Compared to 18 months ago, the company now has a better understanding of the expectations that customers have for support, call quality, ease of setup, and features.  For the final release, Skype added 24×7 support, a configuration wizard, and features such as conference calling.

As a result, setting up Skype Connect is now quite easy.  Using Skype Manager, users select the number of lines they need, and purchase and configure Skype Connect.  Features include outbound calling to landlines and mobile phones at standard Skype per-minute rates, inbound call reception from lines in a corporate PBX via online Skype numbers, and inbound call reception from Skype Click and Call buttons placed on Web sites.  Additionally, Skype Connect includes the ability to use call and management features from existing PBX and UC systems such as logging, call recording, auto-attendant, voicemail, conferencing, automatic call distribution, and call routing.

Gurlé noted that one of the most encouraging outcomes of the beta program was that many users (there are 2400 distinct customers, but actual user numbers are not available) began with Skye Connect as a secondary network option, but then adopted the service as their primary option.

Gurlé also stated that the option of using embeddable click-to-call buttons on Web sites had led to adoption in call center scenarios.  Also, based on user data, the number of outgoing calls and inbound calls on the service were roughly equal.

Customers who participated in the beta program included companies in finance, healthcare, travel, high tech, and hospitality, and were generally organizations with over 50 people.  A common theme that linked the beta testers was that they were organizations operating across multiple sites.

For Grulé, the next step for Skype Connect is to establish itself in the market and demonstrate to customers that they can rely on the company for enterprise-level service.  Future enhancements that are being mulled over include video support as well as the ability to place IP to IP calls, bypassing the PSTN network.

In order to gain significant traction in the market, however, Skype will need to form partnerships with telecommunications and network providers as well as the many systems integrators that now serve the SMB market.  Grulé says that Skype will be announcing some channel partners in the not-too-distant future.  In the meantime Skype has certified Skype Connect for PBX and UC offerings from Avaya, Cisco, Siemens, SIPfoundry, and ShoreTel.  It can also work with TDM PBXs and Key Systems via third-party IP gateways from AudioCodes, Grandstream, and VoSKY.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

“Pay attention in class” is something many pupils have heard from their teachers, but what exactly does it mean to pay attention? We define the phrase “to pay attention” as meaning to “heed” or “be attentive to.” In the workplace, especially when it comes to knowledge work, we need to understand it as being much more, namely as a complex cognitive ability.

Hold your head for better concentration

In 1890, William James, in his textbook Principles of Psychology, provided what has become the classic definition of attention:

“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German.”

We also know that attention has its own circuitry in the brain and that specialized networks carry out various functions, namely achieving and maintaining alertness, the control of thoughts and feelings, and orienting to sensory events.

But paying attention isn’t a simple, straightforward act. The barrage of information and interruptions makes it extremely difficult to do so.

There are, however, ways to cut back on the multitasking and interruptions, shaping your own environment and work style so that you better use your attentional networks. If you have a difficult problem or a conundrum to solve, you need to think about where you work best. Right now, people seem to hope they’ll be able to think or create or problem-solve in the midst of a noisy, cluttered, and interrupted environment. However, to optimize your attention, quiet and uninterrupted time is a far better starting point.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.

“I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.”
-Mae West

Temptation surrounds all of us and knowledge workers are not exempt; we are tempted daily by the allure of the Internet, social networking, news sites, and real-time communication with friends and colleagues.

Care for another?

These temptations must be avoided to remain productive, however, it appears that self-control isn’t a limitless resource: we can run out of it if we are not careful.

Exercising self-control is critical to being a productive worker.  Schedules must be kept, non-work activities must be kept to a minimum, and distractions must be filtered out.  Unfortunately, self-control is also finite.  Studies in both humans and animals have shown that resisting temptation depletes glucose levels, which in turn reduces the ability to focus on challenging tasks.

In one study, human volunteers were divided into two groups.  One group was told they may eat the provided chocolate chip cookies while the other group was told to not touch the cookies but to instead snack on some radishes.  Needless to say, the group eating the cookies was not exercising self-control by resisting the charms of the radishes, but the radish-eating group had to resist the appeal of the tasty cookies.

Both groups were then asked to complete an impossible puzzle, and the length of time they would commit before giving up was measured.  The cookie group lasted an average of 19 minutes before giving up, faring much better than the radish group who on average gave up after just eight minutes.

The study was repeated with dogs where one group did nothing and the other was asked to sit still for ten minutes (a mentally exhausting task for a dog), and then attempt to remove treats from a chew toy that had been altered to make it impossible.  The results were the same, the dogs who had already exerted self-control had far less patience for the new task.

The studies demonstrate two things.  One is that our ability to exert self-control is tied to glucose levels (so eat more snacks). The second is that the act of restraining ourselves is mentally and physically taxing.  By subjecting ourselves to temptation that we must actively resist, such as online distractions and constant communication, we degrade our ability to be effective at our jobs.

For reducing Information Overload and its impact, the answer (aside from more glucose), is that perhaps we have to remove temptation altogether, so we do not expend valuable energy controlling ourselves.  Basically, keep out of temptation’s way until you are done working.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

Warning: Information Overload bots at work?

Information Overload is often thought of as an annoyance and a productivity killer – but there are far more nefarious aspects to it, such as spreading disinformation that misleads competitors, which can in turn disrupt markets.

Alexis Madrigal, writing in the Atlantic, reported that Jeffrey Donovan, a software engineer at Nanex, a data services firm, uncovered the activity of trading bots in electronic stock exchanges that send thousands of orders a second. The orders have buy and sell prices that are not near to market prices, meaning they would not ever be part of a real trade. The activities of these bots are not noticeable unless viewed on an extremely small time scale, in this case just milliseconds.

Donovan noticed the strange activity when looking for causes of the May 2 “Flash Crash” in the Dow, when it plunged nearly 1,000 points over a few minutes. He managed to plot the activity, and found distinct patterns emerge. The patterns show that the bots are making these extremely quick and non-serious orders (meaning with no intention of buying or selling anything) at almost all times.

Donovan’s theory, although not universally supported, is that rival trading companies could use the bots to introduce noise into the market, and use the delay caused by the noise to gain a millisecond advantage in trading, which in high frequency trading, may be significant.

There are other theories to explain the activity, including that the bots are actually real trading algorithms being tested, that they are a financial radar that is probing the market, and even that they are an emergent AI of sorts. Ultimately, no one really seems to know what the bots are doing or whom they belong to.

Regardless of the motives of these mysterious bots, they raise the specter of using Information Overload as a weapon, whereby you distract your competitor with information noise.

It is possible that the introduction of these orders on a timescale small enough in order to avoid detection may have played a part in the May 2 crash, and may play a role in future crashes. However, Madrigal notes in his article that, although Donovan believes that this kind of bot activity may have been a factor on May 2, he also stresses that there were many other variables, making assigning blame next to impossible.

Can Information Overload be used as a disruptive tactic? The answer is, of course it can. As we introduce more and more information into our lives, the potential to spread misinformation and to game the systems that filter and manage that information grows exponentially.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

Having written extensively about the problem of Information Overload for over 15 years, I never thought it would be difficult to write a book on the topic.

So many chapters, so little time

Little did I know…

I knew going in that I would want the book to be relatively brief, concise, and clear – I would never want to be accused of contributing to the problem by virtue of having written a book on it.

Of course, that was life p.b. – or pre-book.

Now that I am fully immersed in writing it, I have found several problems – all of which are traceable to Information Overload.

First, there’s the question of defining both information and the problem of Information Overload – easier said than done. To borrow from a comment made by Justice Potter Stewart in his opinion on the obscenity case of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), information is hard to define “but I know it when I see it.” The same holds true for Information Overload.

Then there’s the question of concentration. As a student of workplace productivity and interruptions, I know I must absolutely positively concentrate on one thing at a time.

Also easier said than done.

Finally, there’s what I call Shiny Object Syndrome. I think of something that would make for a fantastic chapter (the “shiny object”) – and start writing about it, neglecting all of those other half-written chapters (which themselves started as shiny objects) that are just begging for attention.

It’s time now to instill some discipline in the writing process (this is a variation on what software developers call “eating your own dogfood”). I’ve given advice to others for years. It’s time to start following it myself.

[Editor's note: Jonathan Spira's book on Information Overload is scheduled to appear in 2011 - presuming he completes it.]

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.

The term “expletive deleted” entered the lexicon in the 1970s when President Richard Nixon provided edited transcripts of internal White House discussions to the public with profane words and phrases indicated thusly.

President Nixon announcing his resignation in 1974.

Although most knowledge workers wouldn’t need this type of redacting, the problem of profanity in e-mail at Goldman Sachs has apparently reached critical mass and the firm announced that it will enforce a strict policy of no dirty words in electronic messages.  This action is notable because a June 2007 e-mail from a Goldman executive was extensively quoted at Senate hearings this past April, including the phrase  “that … was one s—– deal.”  The firm’s policy covers instant and text messages in addition to e-mail messages.

Our research tells us that the typical knowledge worker will receive 93 e-mail messages each day in addition to dozens of instant and text messages, not to mention phone calls and messages sent via social networks.

Knowledge workers have long complained that there is simply too much e-mail but, until recently, profanity in e-mail was not a huge concern.  However, the use of naughty words in some organizations has reached epic proportions.  The news about Goldman and e-mail has been making headlines in the business press and one comment posted on the Wall Street Journal Web site was telling.

Arun Nisargand wrote: “I am amazed at the lack of professionalism on the Wall Street and the investment banking community.  In the engineering community and large Fortune 500 corporation where I work, profanity has never been a issue.  It is not used or tolerated.  In verbal, written or e-mail communication.  There is no written policy or directive.  We just know how to behave.”

While cleaning up one’s language may indeed be an admirable pursuit, the emphasis on dirty words (think George Carlin) obfuscates the real problem, which is that we send too much e-mail period.

Perhaps, however, some good will come out of this, namely that the 34,000 people will, as a result of the new policy, end up sending fewer e-mails messages each day, and that the practice will spread beyond Wall Street.

Expletive deleted, maybe eliminating obscene e-mail is the silver bullet we’ve been waiting for.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.

More than ever before, information is all around us and, while most people take it for granted, few can define the term. The word “information” in English is rather flexible and it means many things to many people.

The Urra-hubullu encyclopedia, one of the earilest of its kind

To borrow from Justice Potter Stewart, who was writing about the difficulty of defining “obscenity,” I know information when I see it.

When we need a phone number, we dial “information” (well, we used to, before the Web). We get information about a specific event (a party, a wedding) and we get information when we read a newspaper (be it online or a printed version).

We get information when we chitchat and we get information when we attend meetings and conferences.

The American Heritage Dictionary has one of the better definitions I’ve found, namely “knowledge derived from study, experience, or instruction.” It goes on to add “Knowledge of specific events or situations that has been gathered or received by communication; intelligence or news” and “A collection of facts or data.”

A brief look at the roots and origin of the word “information” also helps us to better understand it. The word comes from the Old French “informacion,” which in turn came from the Latin “informationem” (nominative “information”), which means an outline, concept, or idea. Informationem was the noun of action from informare, from which we derive our verb “inform.”

But I digress.

The reason information is important is because human beings simply have had to communicate with one another since the dawn of civilization. From cave paintings and oral history to the beginnings of a written tradition, mankind has documented and recorded that which is important and left it for future generations.

An increase in the human population, combined with improved tools for sharing information (starting with the tablet, paper, movable type, and going all the way into the computer age), has resulted in more information being created today than perhaps anyone had ever anticipated. What haven’t been developed in lockstep with this are tools that allow us to filter information so we get not only what we need but also that which we can absorb.

Despite great technological advances, we actually understand very little about how to manage information. Until we do learn more about managing what really has become a flood of information, all we can do is try to cope with the reality of Information Overload.

This Analyst Opinion is also available online at

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.

It’s hard to avoid information. Not only do we live in a world full of it, making it nearly impossible to escape, but for some perverse reason, we actually like it.

Is it too much yet?

Indeed, we like it so much that we continuously create more of it and have even designed machines to do this for us as well.  In addition, we frequently compile information into metrics and ratios that describe other information.

A recent survey by a computer company showed that 90% of information was only looked at once after it was created.  The current Basex survey on how knowledge workers work already tells us that 50% of us spend one to two hours of our days creating information – and 15% spend more than three hours.  (If you haven’t already taken the survey, click here to do it now .)

Is this figure simply too high and are we in fact simply creating more information, not for its value but purely for the sake of making the pile bigger?

As we go about our day, it might be wise to cast a critical eye on our work that results in the creation of more information and ask ourselves some hard questions.  One, what is the practical purpose of the information that we are creating, and two, is it important enough to justify burdening others with it?

A quote generally attributed to Albert Einstein notes that “[N]ot everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Perhaps it would do us all good to think about why we are creating so much information, and whether perhaps we could get by with a bit less of it.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.

Time to say good-bye

Believe it or not, until Tuesday, Windows 2000 was still a supported operating system as far as Microsoft was concerned.  Starting yesterday, however, Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 officially got dragged into the recycle bin as Microsoft ended support.  What this means is that the company will no longer provide new security fixes or provide any technical support.  If you do want to keep using one of these operating systems, you are on your own.

If you are still using Windows 2000, you might want to consider that it looked obsolete as long as five years ago.  As for Windows XP SP2 (the service pack update Microsoft issued in 2004), keep in mind that Microsoft released XP SP3 a little over two years ago and will only continue to support it under what the company calls “extended support” (patches for vulnerabilities) through April 2014.

It may be time for a change.

If you’re hiding in the shadows, still on Windows 2000 or even on XP because you were dreading Windows Vista, it’s now safe to come out.  We’ve been running Windows 7 on multiple machines here since its launch and it’s an entirely different breed of operating system.  While we’ve come up with a few things that won’t work (XP Power Toys for one), those are the exceptions, not the rule.  We’ve found Windows 7 very user friendly, easy to use and manage, and a worthy successor to the venerable Windows XP platform.

David M. Goldes is the president of Basex.

To find out a bit more about how knowledge workers spend their days and how Information Overload impacts them, a few weeks ago we launched a brief survey that asks you to look at your most recent full day at work and answer a few questions. If you haven’t already taken the survey, please stop here and take it now.

And how was your day?

Now that a few hundred people have taken the survey, we would like to share some preliminary results with you.

— 63% of knowledge workers feel they don’t have enough time to get all of their work done.

— 49% of knowledge workers feel that the amount of information they are presented with on daily basis is detrimental to getting their work done.

— 58% of those surveyed feel overwhelmed by information to the point of incapacity at least several times a week.

— 29% of knowledge workers have no time at all for thought and reflection during their day, and 58% had only between 15 and 30 minutes.

Please also help us get the word out about the survey by posting a link to it on your company’s intranet, your blog, your Facebook page, and anywhere else where knowledge workers might congregate. The more people participating in the survey, the better we will be able to take the first steps to increase our own productivity.

Participants will receive an Executive Summary of the survey’s findings and can also enter a drawing to win a set of Dilbert CubeGuard information overload blockers (three sets will be awarded).

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.