Daily Video: Alcatel-Lucent Launches Cloud Communications Platform

Today’s topics include enterprise business opportunities from Alcatel-Lucent, new features for Android Wear users, updates for Microsoft Intune and results from a significant study on Gen M workers.

Alcatel-Lucent may have sold the bulk of its enterprise business to a Chinese investment company, but that does not mean the company is getting out of the enterprise IT Infrastructure business.

The company’s April 21 launch of Rapport is part of that greater focus on IP communications. Rapport is a cloud-based communications platform for private cloud environments.

Businesses can use Rapport to better manage the rapid changes in technologies and applications, offering voice, chat and video conferencing services from a single platform to a broad and changing array of applications, Websites and connected devices.

Android Wear users will soon be able to incorporate new WiFi and wrist gesture capabilities when using their Android smartwatches, thanks to several additional features that Google is rolling out in the Android Wear platform over the next several weeks.

The updates will arrive as Google continues to expand Android Wear’s features to give smartwatch owners more ways to get the services they need and want from their devices.

Microsoft Intune, the company’s cloud-based, multiplatform mobile-device management service, is getting new updates this week, including features that allow organizations to get a better handle on their workers’ Android devices.

In February, Microsoft rolled out Office mobile (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) management capabilities for Android smartphones. This week, Android tablets can get in on the act.

Gen M, the global generation of hyper-connected workers is bringing a new set of preferences and worries to the workplace, according to a MobileIron study of more than 3,500 full- or part-time workers who use a mobile device for work.

On average, Gen M workers do 26 percent of their work on smartphones or tablets and use mobile for “shadow tasking,” or blending personal and work activities throughout the day, the survey found. In addition, 82 percent of Gen M does at least one personal task a day on mobile devices during work hours.

However, 61 percent of Gen M employees suffer from “mobile guilt” when receiving work communications during personal hours, and 58 percent suffer from mobile guilt when receiving personal communications during work hours. Users feel a sense of guilt when they perform a mix of personal and work tasks on their mobile devices throughout the day.