Tata Communications poses Global Scrapbook Challenge in leadup to next Formula 1 race

Tata Communications, a provider of a New World of Communications, has shared details of the second technology challenge intended to harness global brainpower in the US$50,000 initiative set against the connectivity innovation that defines Formula 1 racing.

In the lead-up to the FORMULA 1 GRAN PREMIO D’ITALIA 2014, Tata Communications challenges the public to create a global digital scrapbook to celebrate the richness and diversity of ‘The Silver Arrows’ extensive history in the sport. The Global Scrapbook Challenge is intended to create and sustain a virtual ‘museum’ as an engaging online treasury of anecdote, recollection and intrigue that will attract both browsing visitors as much as the broadest range of contributions from fans of the sport.

Lewis Hamilton, Driver for the MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team says, “The Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows have an amazing history in our sport. The legendary skills and achievements of drivers like Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss in the 1950s are an inspiration to me and, I believe, provide a rich tapestry for this project to bring our history alive through the hands of the fans themselves.”

Entrants are being set a technology challenge to define the capture and curation of artefact from the present season with the MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team back to Mercedes’ history in the sport in the 1950s. In addition entrants are being asked to propose a campaign methodology to ensure the Scrapbook captures the imagination of the digital generation.

Julie Woods-Moss, CMO and CEO of NextGen Business, Tata Communications says, “We are witnessing a seismic change in the way the world is engaging with digital content driven largely by user generated content. I believe the Global Scrapbook Challenge will be an enfranchising project that will allow people around the world to show their affinity to Formula One and create a fascinating archive of content delivered through cutting edge technologies.”

Tata Communications’ intention in setting the context for this challenge is to inspire entrants to creatively apply content curation and digital promotion to provide a new and novel dimension for fan engagement with the MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team.

Challenge 2 follows the success of the first task to creatively apply analytical and information technology solutions to demonstrate new and insightful information that can be derived from Formula One Management’s live data feeds. 

The judging panel is made up of Formula One Management’s CTO, John Morrison; 2008 FIA Formula One Drivers’ World Champion and MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team driver, Lewis Hamilton, Lewis’ 2014 World Championship-leading team Executive Director (Technical), Paddy Lowe; Tata Communications’ CMO and CEO of NextGen Business, Julie Woods-Moss and former F1 driver and Sky Sports F1 expert commentator, Martin Brundle. The judging panel will be evaluating submissions for Challenge 2 against the high standard set by the winners of the first round of the competition.

A full brief for the second F1 Connectivity Innovation Prize challenge can be downloaded from Tata Communications’ F1 Connectivity Innovation Prize website.

The third and final challenge will be announced on the eve of the 2014 FORMULA 1 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX.

Source: Tata Communications F1 Innovation Connectivity Prize website.

Tata Communications is a Technology Supplier of Formula 1 and provides Formula One Management with world-class connectivity to all 19 Formula 1 race locations over the world’s first wholly-owned sub-sea fibre network to circle the globe. It also provides hosting and content delivery services to Formula1.com, which is accessed by tens of millions of fans around the globe. This innovative collaboration positions Tata Communications corporately as a Technology Supplier of Formula 1 with category exclusive designations as Official Connectivity Provider of Formula 1 and Official Web Hosting and Content Delivery Network Provider of Formula1.com.

As the Official Managed Connectivity Supplier for MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team, Tata Communications also supports the data transmission over its global networks to keep Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at the leading edge of the championship.

Tata Communications refreshes jamvee unified communications platform

Tata Communications, which provides A New World of Communications, released the latest version of its cloud-based jamvee unified communications (UC) platform last month. 

Source: Jamvee website.

Built on Tata Communications’ global tier 1 network, jamvee brings together any client software and device on a single platform - providing an agnostic, secure, unified communications service. This enables easier intra and inter-company collaboration as employees, suppliers and customers can now get together via any combination of audio, video or messaging and share content in groups - across any device or through a browser.

Jamvee supports instant messaging and presence federation via SIP and XMPP that is fully compatible with the leading enterprise clients. With a subscription to jamvee, organisations gain access to a federated jamvee meeting room for internal and external business-to-business meetings. This greatly expands collaboration opportunities, while simplifying administration and security. As it is delivered and hosted by Tata Communications, it provides the security, quality and reach that only a global tier 1 network can offer.

In addition to traditional video conferencing or telepresence, participants joining virtual jamvee meetings from their enterprise clients can leverage jamvee’s full audio, video, chat and content sharing capabilities. Jamvee also supports participants joining a conference through their browsers with a quick plug-in solution for non WebRTC-native browsers, and there are apps available for Android and iOS. 

Source: Android Play Store.

John Hayduk, President and CTO, Tata Communications, said: "Delivering the ability to collaborate easily both internally and externally with customers and partners enables productivity improvements for businesses. Interoperability is key to this, and jamvee takes this to the next level. By providing an open and fully customisable foundation for future unified communications to be added, companies can realise the full growth potential of unified communications quicker and easier than ever – unified communications on your terms”.
Bill Haskins, Senior Analyst and Partner at Wainhouse Research, said: “Our survey data shows that many IT decision makers are working to integrate UC-enabled desktops with existing room systems and increase the benefits of business-to-business federation – Tata Communications’ jamvee unified communications release is positioned to address these hot-buttons directly. By delivering this experience as a service and from within Tata Communications’ multi-carrier Global Meeting Exchange, customers can gain the advantage of turnkey provisioning and quality of service without the need for additional equipment or circuit installation.”

Tata Communications worked with technology partners including Acano and Synergy SKY to develop the new jamvee unified communications platform which now includes an always-on collaborative workspace where virtual teams can meet, share documents and show video in real-time. The jamvee rooms also act as permanent ‘war-rooms’ where users can be confident that their messages will always remain instantly available, safely secured within the platform.

OJ Winge, CEO, Acano, says, “Jamvee combines interoperability and ease of use with the scale and resilience of Tata Communications’ tier 1 network. Co-workers, suppliers and customers at organisations around the globe will benefit from the collaboration opportunities now possible with jamvee.”

Real-time collaboration tips for communications nirvana

Source: Tata Communications. Bartolo.

Today’s employee is expected to leverage on information to be more productive and make better decisions, but the sheer volume of information available and the lack of tools which can easily locate and make use of that information are twin challenges that need to be addressed, says Anthony Bartolo, Senior Vice President, Unified Communications & Collaboration, Tata Communications.

“While enterprises don’t lack tools for communication, very often, the problem is fragmentation at the level of the individual desktop. No single application or platform encompasses all needs: search, knowledge management, workflow and collaboration. In addition, where collaboration tools do exist, they frequently stand alone or are proprietary tools,” he explained.

Unstructured data remains locked up in documents like emails and images that cannot easily be located or used, Bartolo added. “Whether it involves locating a document or an excerpt, searching for information is often a deeply frustrating process,” he said.

There is a lot of potential for solutions that help workers become more productive with access to the right information, in the right context and at the right time, Bartolo observed. “The potential for ubiquitous real-time collaboration inside enterprises as well as with customers and partners, using voice, video calling, instant messaging and data, remains vast,” he said, listing several examples:

i) Global collaboration: collaboration platforms allow enterprises to bring together internal teams and to work together more effectively with their partners and customers, regardless of location constraints

ii) Bounded co-creation: companies can solve more challenges and do so rapidly, by integrating trusted partners, customers, collaborators, contractors and freelance workers into tightly-knit, ad hoc teams

iii) Workflow collaboration: giving employees the ability to discover internal experts and partners who can improve their performance by sharing knowledge on the go

iv) Sharing tacit strategic knowledge: by allowing access to recordings of past meetings and presentations, companies can make life easier for team-mates, new employees and newly promoted employees alike

v) Sharing tactical knowledge: for example, by popularising wikis containing employee-generated guidelines, workarounds, what-if scenarios, hints and tips

vi) Recognition: widely-used collaboration platforms can be used to recognise and thank colleagues and partners for their work

vii) Recruitment: social media is a great external recruitment tool. Social collaboration platforms inside the enterprise can help managers and HR executives to identify candidates for staff projects or promotion

viii) E-learning: in the academic world, universities are starting to capitalise on the potential of massively open online courses (MOOCs), to extend teaching activities far beyond campus-based lecture halls. Enterprises can do the same, developing their own collaborative learning courses, free from the constraints of time zone and location
“All these elements together create my kind of communications nirvana,” said Bartolo. "While we do not have the tools to achieve all this today, it truly is within reach now."

Find out more about turning communications nirvana into reality here.

Browsers poised to increase business productivity with WebRTC

If you've visited websites on the Internet on your phone or your computer, you very likely have used a browser. Common ones include Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Mozilla's Firefox, as well as Safari on the iPhone.

While they were built to visit websites, some companies believe that they can do a lot more, and simplify our lives in the process. According to Tata Communications, the right functionality added into browsers would allow any business to add new features that would help employees become more productive.

"Despite some welcome advances, the majority of us are still struggling with parallel and separate communication platforms. Most startling of all, integration with workflow internally - and especially externally - remains the exception rather than the rule," said Anthony Bartolo, Senior Vice President, Unified Communications & Collaboration, Tata Communications, listing instant messaging, telephony, video conferencing, voice-mail, email and text messaging as some of the platform examples.

New browser-based functionality such as WebRTC could provide a shortcut to creating communications features that will work on any device, allowing access to the shared information anywhere, said Bartolo. 

Made publicly available, or 'open sourced' by Google in May 2011, WebRTC is today an industry-wide effort to transform browsers into hubs for real-time* communication. WebRTC is already found in the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox. 

Businesses can make use of WebRTC to allow employees to call each other via video or voice, or conduct instant chats from within their browsers. There would be no need to source for, or install separate software as is required today, and employees would be able to collaborate in the way that works best for them.

"If enterprises want collaborations to succeed, they need to listen to their employees and understand their needs and to experiment persistently. Like a start-up, IT departments developing collaboration tools for the enterprise need to launch minimum viable products and watch to see what works and what doesn’t. Increasingly, the reduced costs associated with API-based development will allow enterprises to work this way," Bartolo predicted.

While WebRTC is still in its early stages, software developers are taking notice, Bartolo said. "I am confident that open, well supported, APIs are the missing link enduring developers to focus on what really matters: building collaborative tools."

To find out more about the world of communications – past and present – and how APIs are about to become the game-changer, download a white paper from Tata Communications here. 

*Responses to real-time communications occur immediately, similar to a face-to-face conversation, against relatively delayed communications such as email or postal mail, where responses will not be received until after the message is opened.