Speaker Covers Unified Communications

In September, Bill Marion, chief technical officer of the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command and president of the Tidewater Chapter, addressed the chapter at its monthly luncheon at the Fort Bragg Club. Marion is responsible for providing technical senior guidance, architectures and strategic planning for nearly 15,000 communications professionals and information technology services for approximately 100,000 active-duty military and civilian members across 30 major installations in the United States and overseas. Marion is based at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. He visited Fort Bragg and spoke with the chapter about the Air Force efforts to migrate toward a unified communications (UC) environment. Marion is a strong advocate and visionary for the promise of UC. During his presentation, he elaborated on four specific change drivers, mission drivers and architectures. He stressed the need for vendors to become active partners in helping shape the future of UC for the military in general. He expressed concerns that lack of multivendor environments may hamper innovation efforts in this area, but he remained confident of reaching the end vision state in the very near future.

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