Telephony continues to remain the dominant form of customer interaction for most businesses today, and is certainly a fundamental component of effective service.

...occasionally I run into press articles that "round up" a half dozen such marketing misdirections from various marketing departments in one place. The December 1 BusinessWeek article called "Cost-Conscious Companies Turn to Open-Source Software" is such an article. And it's the second such multi-marketing-oriented misdirection article I've seen this week.

We are in an economic downturn, perhaps even a full-blown recession. Any doubts I had about that were removed by two related, recent phenomena.

Sun Microsystems will hold its first-ever kernel conference in Australia later this year. Perfect timing, says a company spokesperson, as more and more companies turn to Open Source to remain innovative in harder economic times.

Now here is a dissenting opinion if I've ever seen one. Andrew Keen is arguing that the economic crisis will "give open source a good thumping." That flies directly in the face of our prediction that open source will flourish in the downturn, and we're not alone in predicting that.

During the current economic downturn, enterprises are increasingly adopting open source systems due to their significant cost advantages and their liberal license policies. Below are 10 questions you can ask to evaluate open source maturity.

Even as the global economy tanks, open-source companies continue to soar. A range of open-source companies reported sales and community growth this past week, including...

New York University anthropologist Gabriella Coleman says the open-source software movement has emerged relatively unscathed from the economic downturn.

Given the momentum behind open source, and how it has grown through the economic downturn, it's not surprising that an increasing array of vendors is getting involved to commercialize open-source projects.