Christine Wong

Expert Blogger /

Christine Wong is a journalist based in Toronto who has covered a wide range of startups and technology issues. A former staff writer with ITBusiness.ca, she has also worked as a reporter for the Canadian Economic Press and in broadcast roles at SliceTV and the CBC.

Share this article:

Recent Posts

Managed services, AI can help with IT skills shortage

News / Managed Services /

How to tackle the growing IT skills shortage

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / March 19, 2020

Tags: AI, automation, IT skills shortage, managed services, talent shortage

Since they may never find enough skilled IT pros to employ, firms are looking at technologies they can deploy to ease their staffing pain. Here’s how AI, automation and managed services might help harried IT teams who simply don’t have enough human hands on deck.

Read post

News / Customer Service /

How AI and NLP are transforming the contact centre

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / March 5, 2020

Tags: AI, contact centre, NLP

In the 21st century, when contact centres function as the navigational cockpit for customer relations, many brands are turning to artificial intelligence and natural language processing to ensure the customer experience is as free of turbulence as possible.

Read post

UC 3.0 is the next evolution of unified communications

News / Unified Communications /

UC 3.0: The next generation of communications

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / February 20, 2020

Tags: UC, UC 3.0, unified communications

The evolution of unified communications offers a modular, cloud-based architecture that makes UC more mobile, flexible and scalable—and it uses APIs to bring levels of integration and convergence that we’ve never seen before. Here’s a look at what’s ahead.

Read post

Data centre trends focus on green IT

News / IT Management /

Climate change a key focus of 2020 data centre trends

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / January 9, 2020

Tags: 2020 trends, data centre, data centres, green it

The rise of 5G, 4K video and blockchain will increase power consumption in the data centre, suggests the Uptime Institute. At the same time, we’re seeing public pressure for regulations aimed waste reduction, energy efficiency and renewable power.

Read post

2019 technology predictions

News / IT Management /

Year in review: Technology wins and fails in 2019

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / December 19, 2019

Tags: 2019 technology predictions, 2019 year in review

We take a look at whether some of the technology predictions made for 2019 actually panned out. Then we’ll flash back 10 years to check up on some tech predictions for 2009 — including two that turned out to be eerily bang-on.

Read post

News / IT Management /

How 5G will affect your business in 2020

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / December 5, 2019

Tags: 5G, UC, UC&C

Although consumers represent the main segment driving 5G development, we’ll see an increasing number of services aimed at enterprises next year—and an enriched unified communications and collaboration experience.

Read post

News / IT Management /

10 tech trends that will impact your job in 2020

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / November 21, 2019

Tags: IDC, IT predictions, IT trends 2020

IDC has unveiled its annual global IT predictions for the coming year, from connected clouds and edge build-out to a new kind of CTO. Here’s what you need to know:

Read post

News / Security /

3 cybersecurity trends that might surprise you

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / November 14, 2019

Tags: Cisco Umbrella, cryptomining, cybersecurity

While it’s no surprise that malicious traffic has skyrocketed during the first nine months of this year, research from Cisco Umbrella—the cloud-based cybersecurity platform formerly known as OpenDNS—also revealed a few surprises about today’s threat landscape.

Read post

News / SIP Trunking /

Do you have to choose between SIP and UCaaS?

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / October 3, 2019

Tags: SIP, SIP Trunking, UCaaS

SIP and cloud don’t have to be an either/or proposition. Here’s why many organizations are choosing SIP trunking — even while adopting cloud-based collaboration solutions.

Read post

News / IT Management /

5 things you need to know about SD-Branch

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / September 5, 2019

Tags: SD-Branch, SD-WAN

You might be piloting or upgrading to SD-WAN … but have you heard of SD-Branch? This up-and-coming technology, enabled by SD-WAN, can save time, resources and money — especially as you expand the reach of your networks out to remote branch locations.

Read post

News / IT Management /

Back to school: DIY skills development for IT pros

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / August 22, 2019

Tags: skills development, training

With autumn approaching and that back-to-school feeling in the air, here’s how to take learning into your own hands — and take your career to the next level.

Read post

News / IT Management /

Queue up new connections at the barbeque

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / August 8, 2019

Tags: career networking

Forget about traditional schmoozing events this summer. Here are some ways to mix career networking into the remaining days of summer as easily as blending a sweet, frosty cocktail.

Read post

News / Unified Communications /

Are you ready for next-gen UC?

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / July 25, 2019

Tags: UC, UCaaS

The disparate pieces of the UC puzzle are finally coming together as a more unified, cohesive entity for enterprise customers. Here’s what you need to know about the next evolution of unified communications.

Read post

News / IT Management /

5 ways to manage growing IT network complexity

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / July 11, 2019

Tags: digital diversity, edge computing, Gartner, serverless computing

Analysts outlined the hottest trends in enterprise IT and cloud computing at the Gartner IT Symposium in Toronto last month — and offered a few tips to help network pros manage this increasingly complex environment.

Read post

News / IT Management /

Network complexity drives need for unified standards

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / June 20, 2019

Tags: IT network, standards, telecom

Both carriers and vendors attending the Canadian Telecom Summit say the industry needs increased cooperation and standardized services to deal with an increasingly complex networking environment.

Read post

News / IT Management /

Death of the corporate data centre? Not just yet

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / June 6, 2019

Tags: data centre

Cloud is growing, but half of workloads are still run in enterprise-owned facilities and many organizations plan to use their own data centre for edge computing capacity, according to Uptime Institute’s latest survey. Here’s our take on the findings.

Read post

News / Big Data /

Why open banking isn’t open for business

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / May 23, 2019

Tags: fintech, open banking

Data sharing will allow banks to create more targeted products and services, while reducing risks like fraud. And customers will have new options for managing their money. So why hasn’t open banking extended beyond basic APIs and embraced the fintech community?

Read post

News / IT Management /

Why 5G isn’t just another ‘G’

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / May 9, 2019

Tags: 5G, SDN

There’s more to 5G than higher speed and lower latency. By harnessing NFV and SDN, both based on open source standards, it represents a ‘radical shift’ for the industry.

Read post

News / IT Management /

The shape-shifting role of the ‘new’ CIO

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / April 25, 2019

IT leaders are expected to craft a new business model around platform-based ecosystems while building strategic partnerships and spotting (and engaging) new talent. Here’s how the role of CIO is changing and how their departments can keep up.

Read post

News / IT Management /

5G claims vs reality

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / April 11, 2019

Tags: 5G, Wi-Fi 6

Technologies such as 5G and Wi-Fi 6 will help prevent potential network logjams as global mobile data traffic grows exponentially — but we’re not there yet. Here’s how to differentiate the marketing hype from today’s reality.

Read post

News / IT Management /

10 ways to reduce AI adoption challenges

By Christine Wong / Expert Blogger / March 28, 2019

Tags: AI, artificial intelligence, chatbots

Like any toddler, artificial intelligence is taking a few tumbles before it can walk and eventually run. Here are some tips for enterprises struggling to get the three most popular AI deployments off the ground: chatbots, virtual assistants and conversational platforms.

Read post