Unified Communication Research Articles

Arkadin: Global Unified Communications & Collaboration Champion in a Dynamic Digital Workplace

Arkadin: Global Unified Communications & Collaboration Champion in a Dynamic Digital Workplace

Towards a lean automation interface for workstations

Methods and principles of Lean Production have become the major concepts to create highly efficient processes since the early 1990s. Due to its high effectiveness by reducing complexity and focusing on value-adding tasks, the Lean concept is still successful. Nevertheless, its changeability to produce highly customised products is limited. Industry 4.0 describes the vision of a smart production which can meet these future market requirements. Enablers are innovative information and communication technologies and the integration of all production entities into a common digital network. Lean Automation is the application of Industry 4.0 technologies to Lean Production methods in order to combine benefits from both domains. First proprietary Lean Automation solutions exist, but to enhance changeability in production, a common, unified communication interface is required. This paper presents the ongoing work towards an interface for digitising Lean Production methods using Cyber Physical Systems.

DEVELOPMENT OF A HETEROGENIC DISTRIBUTED ENVIRONMENT FOR SPATIAL DATA PROCESSING USING CLOUD TECHNOLOGIES

Abstract. We are developing a unified distributed communication environment for processing of spatial data which integrates web-, desktop- and mobile platforms and combines volunteer computing model and public cloud possibilities. The main idea is to create a flexible working environment for research groups, which may be scaled according to required data volume and computing power, while keeping infrastructure costs at minimum. It is based upon the "single window" principle, which combines data access via geoportal functionality, processing possibilities and communication between researchers. Using an innovative software environment the recently developed planetary information system (http://cartsrv.mexlab.ru/geoportal) will be updated. The new system will provide spatial data processing, analysis and 3D-visualization and will be tested based on freely available Earth remote sensing data as well as Solar system planetary images from various missions. Based on this approach it will be possible to organize the research and representation of results on a new technology level, which provides more possibilities for immediate and direct reuse of research materials, including data, algorithms, methodology, and components. The new software environment is targeted at remote scientific teams, and will provide access to existing spatial distributed information for which we suggest implementation of a user interface as an advanced front-end, e.g., for virtual globe system.

DEVELOPMENT OF A HETEROGENIC DISTRIBUTED ENVIRONMENT FOR SPATIAL DATA PROCESSING USING CLOUD TECHNOLOGIES

We are developing a unified distributed communication environment for processing of spatial data which integrates web-, desktop- and mobile platforms and combines volunteer computing model and public cloud possibilities. The main idea is to create a flexible working environment for research groups, which may be scaled according to required data volume and computing power, while keeping infrastructure costs at minimum. It is based upon the "single window" principle, which combines data access via geoportal functionality, processing possibilities and communication between researchers. Using an innovative software environment the recently developed planetary information system (<a href="http://cartsrv.mexlab.ru/geoportal"target="_blank">http://cartsrv.mexlab.ru/geoportal</a>) will be updated. The new system will provide spatial data processing, analysis and 3D-visualization and will be tested based on freely available Earth remote sensing data as well as Solar system planetary images from various missions. Based on this approach it will be possible to organize the research and representation of results on a new technology level, which provides more possibilities for immediate and direct reuse of research materials, including data, algorithms, methodology, and components. The new software environment is targeted at remote scientific teams, and will provide access to existing spatial distributed information for which we suggest implementation of a user interface as an advanced front-end, e.g., for virtual globe system.

Um observatório de imprensa na Amazônia: o papel educativo do Lacrima

O texto relata a experiência educativa do Laboratório de Crítica de Mídia do Amazonas (Lacrima), debatendo o papel dos observatórios de imprensa na formação da audiência ativa. Parte de uma aprendizagem não escolar, por meio dos observatórios críticos de mídia ventila-se uma superfície de comunicação unificada entre especialistas e não iniciados, em que são compartilhados saberes que podem ampliar a consciência sobre as relações entre mídia e poder. Iniciativa acadêmica associada ao curso de Jornalismo da UFAM, o observatório constituiu-se como uma mídia radical alternativa na cidade de Parintins (AM), objetivando não apenas o exercício do media watching, mas também o aprendizado do público no sentido da construção de uma contra-hegemonia comunicacional.

Technology roadmap for smart electric vehicle-to-grid (V2G) of residential chargers

Smart grid is defined as the overlaying of a unified communications and control system onto the existing power delivery infrastructure to provide the right information and the right entity at the right time. It helps even out demand spikes and uses resource mix more efficiently. It is a better integration, or “system balancing,” of variable resources, like wind power. Many of the advanced applications of smart grid are expected to develop in an evolutionary manner based on current technologies available and the needs of the market, for example, electric vehicles (EVs) or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). It is likely that we will see a simpler associated application (i.e., smart battery charger) before the market matures to support a more complex form of the application vehicle-to-grid (V2G). The objective of this paper is to develop a technology roadmapping (TRM) process for smart electric V2G technologies in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest (PNW). The research focuses on the application of V2G in the residential chargers. It introduces the market drivers, products, and technology analysis and also provides research on the necessary resources needed within R&D in the coming years (next 10 years).

Factors driving unified communications and collaboration adoption and use in organizations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reveal factors that drive the adoption and use of unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) technology in organizations.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used quantitative method to survey 296 employees from 50 different countries by conducting and international study. Partial least squares -method was used for the latent variables latent variable analysisFindingsThe authors found that unified theory of acceptance and use of technology constructs are mainly validated where results suggests that performance expectancy and social influence are the most influential drivers in employee acceptance and use of UC&C in organizations. Social presence, influence of peers and superiors are the main factors to take into consideration when implementation UC&C technology.Research limitations/implicationsThe study was not longitudinal in design, which should be addressed by a future study that includes multi-cultural dimensions with a longitudinal designPractical implicationsAwareness through education and training of employees needs to be given very particular attention in the future mobile implementations. Moreover, management and employee support is the critical component of the effective information security governance framework implementation. Finally, mobile strategy needs to go over very precise and detailed planning process to ensure the right technology acceptance by users.Originality/valueThe authors close the existing research gap by providing useful insights into organizations regarding their UC&C technology adoption and use factors

Wagon Next Point Routing Protocol (WNPRP) in VANET

VANET (Vehicular Ad hoc Network) is an emerging technique which is very challenging. It has attracted the attention of numerous researchers. Characteristics of the VANET network such as the dynamically changing topology, partitioned network and high mobility of modes makes is more challenging. There are so many routing protocols has been suggested to bring out the best communication. In order to ensure a reliable, continuous and unified communication in the presence of speeding vehicles, a novel routing protocol has been has been proposed and implemented. The wagon next point routing protocol (WNPRP) has been proposed. The topology of the VANET has also been discussed. The WNPRP outperforms the existing routing protocols. A better packet delivery ratio along with less link failures while upholding a sensible routing control overhead and lowest average end to end delay is obtained. The simulator NS2 is used to implement the proposed technique and evaluate the proposed technique.

Access to Maternal Health Care for Native Canadians on Reserves in Northern Canada

The history of abuse and isolation of Native Canadian populations has created a gap in maternal health care, resulting in infant mortality rates (IMRs) of 12 per 1000 births for on-reserve populations compared to 5.8 per 1000 births for the general Canadian population. This discrepancy is deemed a population health issue, as Native Canadian people constitute roughly 3% of the Canadian population, but have infant mortality rates similar to other third world countries. Currently, there are multiple government and non-government organizations in charge of providing maternal health care for on-reserve populations. A lack of a unified communication system linking these organizations creates a gap in the delivery of services and compromises the prenatal care in Native Canadians. The current method of caring for high risk pregnancies on Northern Canadian reserves is to fly the mothers out of their home community to a hospital that is both far away from their families and completely foreign to them. This practice contrasts with the cultural norms of the Native Canadian population, where expecting women receive antenatal care from elder women within their community. New models of care, in which midwives are the primary providers of antenatal care within a given community, have recently been implemented in Northern Quebec and other isolated areas of Canada. The midwives work with women elders of the community to provide a full system of maternal care. These new models show great promise in improving our current system of maternal health care for Native Canadians by providing more efficient and accessible antenatal care while also incorporating cultural norms of the communities.

Notes on process and data analysis in electro-coagulation—The importance of standardisation and clarity

Electro-coagulation (EC) is an alternative method to standard chemical coagulation, which is one of the most common water and wastewater treatment processes, employed to remove a wide range of contaminants through (co)precipitation processes. Despite the attention EC has received over the last decade, misconception regarding key process parameters exists and a lack of standardised procedure impacts on the progress of this promising field.It is demonstrated here how, unlike frequently reported in the literature, a fundamental process parameter – current intensity – is the process determining step with regards to extent of contaminant removal (rather than current density). Furthermore, terminology is proposed with a view to unify communication and to facilitate performance interpretation and comparison of datasets whilst the jar-testing procedure is presented as standardized method for process evaluation with the same objective in mind. Finally, shortfalls and solutions to experimental design are discussed and presented.

Intelligent Optimization of Modulation Indexes in Unified Tracking and Communication System

In the unified tracking and communication system, the ranging signal and the telemetry, communication signals are used in the same channel. In the link budget, it is necessary to allocate the power reasonably, so as to ensure the performance of system and reduce the cost. In this paper, the nonlinear optimization problem is studied using intelligent optimization method. Simulation analysis results show that the proposed method is effective.

DIVIDE OR CONVERGE?

Gilbert Gonzalez, founder and CEO of Mission Critical Solutions (MCS), was reflecting on the path forward for his company. MCS maintained and updated a five-year strategic plan each year since its inception in 1990. In the early years, the strategic plan focused on the key strategic factors (KSFs) and resulted in a narrow mission. Year after year, that focus on the KSFs was rewarded by the market. Doing the most important things well kept the organization focused and efficient. The consistently evolving mission of the organization necessitated adding new products, services, and solutions. In the early 1990s, deploying PCs, implementing local area networks (LANs), and providing onsite support met the challenges their customers faced. A few years later, the company’s clients’ needs led to the addition of a Wide Area Network (WAN) solution to aggregate offices and link applications. By 1996, information technologies (IT) and telecommunications began to converge. Common structured cable plants and digital trunks sharing voice and data traffic were new and mandatory elements of the clients’ solutions. Subtly, the technologies evolved and converged. Internet Protocol (IP) Telephony and Unified Communications converged onto the clients’ LAN/WAN networks. It was clear that most technology would speak IP in the future. In the early 2000s, building automation, audio video (AV), security, surveillance, and control system endpoints converged onto the network. The trend of unusual devices converging onto the network, also known as “the Internet of things,” will continue. Wireless innovations and mobility meant that technology could move not just around the facility, but also around the world. For MCS, the end result of this phenomenon was a group of specialized departments and teams: information technologies, passive cabling systems, electrical systems, building automation and controls, audio video, security and surveillance, and unified communications. All of these departments, staffed 200 associates strong, were coordinated by the project management team, and collaborated to meet the requirements of the company’s clients. Thus, the marketing elevator speech for MCS required a tall building! Their clients expressed surprise and confusion at the breadth of services offered. While the devices had converged, the clients’ perception of their vendors and providers had not. The question at hand was whether MCS should stay converged in a functional organization strategy with capability-based teams, or organize into separate standalone entities with unique identities and separate overheads, focusing more on the individual capability-based technology specialization.

The entire network topology display system of terminal communication access network

Now order terminal communication access network is network technology in Shanxi Province is diversiform, device type complex, lack of unified technical standard, the terminal communication access network management system of construction constitutes a great obstacle. Need to build a “unified communication interface and communication standard, unified communications network management” of the terminal communication access network cut in the integrated network management system, for the terminal communication access network of shanxi electric power company and subordinate power supply company comprehensive management standardization management, the integration of the auxiliary support.

경찰의 재난위기관리 개선에 관한 연구

With about 75% of the population of Korea criticizing the government's disaster policy and a failure to respond to large-scale emergency like the Sewol ferry sinking means that there is a deep distrust in the government. In order to prevent dreadful disasters such as the Sewol ferry sinking, it is important to secure a prime time with respect to disaster Improving crisis management skills and managerial role of police officers who are in close proximity to the people is necessary for the success of disaster management. With disaster management as one of the most essential missions of the police, as a part of a national crisis management, a step by step strengthening of the disaster safety management system of the police is necessary, as below. First, at the prevention phase, law enforcement officers were not injected into for profit large-scale assemblies or events, but in the future the involvement, injection should be based on the level of potential risk, rather than profitability. In the past and now, the priortiy was the priority was on traffic flow, traffic communication, however, the paradigm of traffic policy should be changed to a safety-centered policy. To prevent large-scale accidents, police investigators should root out improper routines and illegal construction subcontracting. The police (intelligence) should strengthen efforts to collect intelligence under the subject of safety. Second, with respect to the preparatory phase, on a survey of police officers, the result showed that 72% of police officers responded that safety management was not related to the job descriptions of the police. This, along with other results, shows that the awareness of disaster safety must be adopted by, or rather changed in the police urgently. The training in disaster safety education should be strengthened. A network of experts (private, administrative, and police) in safety management should be established to take advantage of private resources with regard to crisis situtions. Third, with respect to the response phase, for rapid first responses to occur, a unified communication network should be established, and a real-time video information network should be adopted by the police and installed in the police situation room. Fourth, during the recovery phase, recovery teams should be injected, added and operated to minimize secondary damage.

The Saccharomyces Genome Database: Gene Product Annotation of Function, Process, and Component.

An ontology is a highly structured form of controlled vocabulary. Each entry in the ontology is commonly called a term. These terms are used when talking about an annotation. However, each term has a definition that, like the definition of a word found within a dictionary, provides the complete usage and detailed explanation of the term. It is critical to consult a term's definition because the distinction between terms can be subtle. The use of ontologies in biology started as a way of unifying communication between scientific communities and to provide a standard dictionary for different topics, including molecular functions, biological processes, mutant phenotypes, chemical properties and structures. The creation of ontology terms and their definitions often requires debate to reach agreement but the result has been a unified descriptive language used to communicate knowledge. In addition to terms and definitions, ontologies require a relationship used to define the type of connection between terms. In an ontology, a term can have more than one parent term, the term above it in an ontology, as well as more than one child, the term below it in the ontology. Many ontologies are used to construct annotations in the Saccharomyces Genome Database (SGD), as in all modern biological databases; however, Gene Ontology (GO), a descriptive system used to categorize gene function, is the most extensively used ontology in SGD annotations. Examples included in this protocol illustrate the structure and features of this ontology.

Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Unified Communications on-premises and over the Cloud

Unified Communication (UC) is the integration of two or more real time communication systems into one platform. Integrating core communication systems into one overall enterprise level system delivers more than just cost saving. These real-time interactive communication services and applications over Internet Protocol (IP) have become critical in boosting employee accessibility and efficiency, improving customer support and fostering business agility. However, some small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are far from implementing this solution due to the high cost of initial deployment and ongoing support. Cloud based UC solution, UC as a Service (UCaaS), is now itself a maturing technology in the marketplace and it has revolutionized the IT industry, being the powerful platform that many businesses are choosing to migrate their on-premises UC solution onto. UCaaS solution has the potential to reduce the capital and operational expenses associated with deploying UC on their own. In this paper, we will discuss and demonstrate an open source on-premises UC solution, viz. “Asterisk” for use by businesses, and report on some performance tests using SIPp. This paper also discusses and demonstrates an open source UCaaS solution. The contribution from this research is the provision of technical advice to businesses in deploying UC and UCaaS, which is manageable in terms of cost, ease of deployment and support.

Counting the security cost of cheap calls

The decision to move to SIP trunking appears straightforward: reduced costs, greater scalability, improved disaster recovery options and access to the productivity benefits enabled by Unified Communications (UC). But, as ever in the world of technology, the truth about SIP trunking is a little more complex than it may appear at first glance. How much up-front investment is required to migrate from the existing ISDN trunk? How big is the hardware investment? How scalable is the solution? And, critically, is it secure?But is it secure? This issue is too often overlooked by companies wanting to move to SIP. The result is a ticking time bomb for businesses, with threats ranging from denial of service to toll fraud (also known as call jacking); and the liability lies squarely with the business, not the provider, as Paul German of VoipSec explains.

Design and implementation of communication architecture in a distributed energy resource system using IEC 61850 standard

A distributed energy resource (DER) system uses renewable generation and energy storage to provide power and ancillary services directly to users in the distribution system, and benefits the power grid by offering a solution to the energy crisis and mitigating the waste pollution to the environment. A key challenge in implementing a DER system is how to ensure the standardization of its communication network. The goal of this paper is to study and propose a common approach to standardize the communication network in the DER system using IEC 61850 and includes a design and implementation of the communication architecture. Two prototypical testbeds for the DER system have been developed in the SMERC laboratory and at KIER, with the aim to demonstrate a case study using the proposed approach. The testbeds contain various DERs such as photovoltaics, energy management systems, and electric vehicles. The procedure of integrating the IEC 61850 standard includes the system architecture configuration, data set design, test file write-up, and deployment of the gateway/client for communication. In the data set design, the specification of logical nodes, data object names, data attributes and common data classes are explained in detail. The research results and data collected from the current testbeds indicate a quality integration of the IEC 61850 standard with stable power flow and unified communication architecture in the DER system. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Brand credibility measurement: A new measure for brand equity/brand value: Part 2

A company's brand credibility is an important measure that should determine the value of the company, replacing goodwill and other similar brand equity measures that are too nebulous to measure. ‘Brand credibility’ is more specific because ‘credible’ means ‘expertise’ and ‘trust’ — traits that can be measured. More importantly, being credible is also the key to persuasion in supporting important company messages, while ‘goodwill’ is only a part of the persuasion process. The premise for brand credibility measurement is based on how we persuade in all communication, whether interpersonal, company to person or company to company. The premise for brand credibility is based on the familiar communication persuasion model of credible source>message>channel>receiver. The source must be credible if the purpose is to persuade. The more credible the source, the more likely the persuasion-based message will be accepted. This paper explores credibility principles in communication persuasion, introduces credibility-based logo design, reviews the extension of credible logos to all branding elements to achieve brand credibility, compares branding measures, reviews what ‘the totally credible company’ means, and summarises findings, leading to the premise that brand credibility is a viable management strategy and a better measure of brand equity. The author also compares credibility-based logos with non-credible logos. The findings support the hypothesis that credibility-based logos induce higher conversion rates, which are important in supporting company messages, leading to product and service purchases. The company logo credibility traits can be extended to the creativity of all branding elements. Consistency in credibility-based branding is also important in order to achieve an image of brand credibility. This is Integrated Brand Credibility Promotion. Therefore, how much credibility a company has achieved with consistent Integrated Brand Credibility Promotion is the proposed measure of brand equity. The implications involve developing a credibility based brand strategy. Companies must establish company defined credibility traits, both verbal and visual, and should commission designers to develop company logos and other visual and/or verbal and credibility based branding elements. Then, the basic brand management premise of consistency as Integrated Brand Credibility Promotion should be applied to all branding elements as a unified communication expression of the company's desired credibility traits in order to achieve a clear recognition of the company's unique brand image or brand credibility. The first part of this paper was published in Journal of Brand Strategy Volume 4 Number 2.

해상 VoIP 서비스를 위한 통합 커뮤니케이션 기술 개발

해상 VoIP 서비스를 위한 통합 커뮤니케이션 기술 개발