Boston Celtics and other NBA teams make a push towards Unified Communications

12/5/2012- Votacall VoIP – Boston, Massachusetts- Basketball has been one of the fastest evolving sports over the last 20 years. With above the rim action and high flyers replacing below the rim pushing and guys who could not jump over a telephone book, it only makes sense that teams in the National Basketball Association would want to push their technology forward as well. Eric Lundquist reported on InformationWeek that the Boston Celtics and Brooklyn Nets have both adopted some form of a Unified Communication solution.

Jay Wessel, the vice president of technology for the Boston Celtics, said he is a hardware guy who uses unified communications as something of a backup and support for the rest of the organization, but likes being able to check on the system. Mireille Viau Verna, senior director of IT for the new-look Brooklyn Nets, said she wanted services hosted in the cloud after moving over to New York from their New Jersey facility.

"Wessel's and Verna's decisions reflect what I've heard from a wide range of CIOs and technology executives choosing from a continually unfolding set of products and services offered in on-premises, on-premises/hosted hybrids, and pure-hosted configurations," Lindquist wrote.

In the case of the old-school Boston Celtics, Wessel said "I'm a big redundancy guy", adding that while he may eventually move into the cloud or a hosted service, he wants the be able to sure the system is up and running for gametime himself, as the server is located only a few feet away from the team's home stadium.

Verna said the new web-based mobile capability and other positives have offered a great chance to rethink how the organization's communications system can and should work.

"We hit the ground running, we opened the new arena and now we can go back and look at some of the features we might want to add," Verna told InformationWeek, adding that the way the system effectively handled Hurricane Sandy-related issues gave her even more faith in their decision to move toward unified communications.

Big benefits to unified communications adoption
According to a post on Network World, bringing unified communications in can offer many great opportunities and chances to improve business with minimal capital costs and an operating expenses that can be evened out by improving revenue in other areas. If a business properly implements their unified communications system it be inexpensive, effective and it can pay for itself quickly.