A full 82 percent of business leaders surveyed by Forbes Insights said cloud-based collaboration tools help businesses execute faster by shortening time to market, quickening product upgrade cycles and enabling faster responses to competitive challenges.
Cloud and mobility deals continue to drive high-tech mergers and acquisitions (M&A), according to quarterly stats compiled by accounting firm Ernst & Young.
A majority of senior-level IT professionals said they are expected to be accessible 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year, according to a survey of 200 IT professionals by IT staffing firm TEKsystems.
Long time VoIP personality Jeff Pulver, is back in the communications business with the recent funding of Zula, his cloud based mobile collaboration venture that he's starting with one of the original founders of DeltaThree, Jacob Ner-David. Pulver is best know for the VON Conference Series which he once sold, reaquired and then saw pulled out from under him by lenders, and who also was credited in playing a big part in the start of Vonage,
The initial source of outside venture capital came from OurCrowd, the hybrid VC-crowdfunding platform for accredited investors based in Israel, and which invests in companies coming out of the country.
Pulver, for many years has been cultivating and investing in companies in the land of Milk and Honey, and has established a close kinship with Yossi Vardi, best known as one of the people behind ICQ, a forrunner of today's Instant Messaging apps and services that was acquired by AOL.
If there ever was a time when Skype was ripe for being knocked off their throne, it's now. You see, Skype despite all of Steve Ballmer's promises to telecom leaders after the acquisition was first announced, and the claims that Skype will be an independent company, under Tony Bates' leadership, all signs indicate that Skype is really just another app inside the Redmond company.
The integration with Lync that's coming, as well as the recent XBox news involving group video calling continues to demonstrate just how tightly woven Skype is getting.
