Cisco demonstrated Spark, which I thought was for SMB, but is being pitched to Enterprise especially with its big hook into Salesforce. The demo that I got at the booth was rather disappointing. Not very visual. Looked like a console.
"Cisco Spark delivers cloud-based business communications that enables customers to message, meet and call anyone, whether it be on their mobile device, desktop or meeting room end-points." [PR] Isn't this what all the UC&C platforms promise? And keep in mind that this is re-branded Squared.
Not that Slack is the end-ll-be-all, but if you can't at least offer that type of look and feel and functionality (what I refer to as UX and CX or simply user or customer experience) then what are you doing? With two million daily users in 2 years, there is something they like about it besides the way it decreases internal email that people like.
Atlassian HipChat has a similar UX. The room or container or locker or folder or whatever you want to call the holding space for documents, conversations, recordings and notes around an event - sales call, project, meeting - is about organization and working on it when I want to or can as well as a depository for everything about the event in one easy to use, share, store space. This is a long time coming - and it still needs some improvement but it is getting better.
I still am waiting for a single inbox for email, texts/SMS, IM, etc. One place for all my comms. Maybe some day. Right after SSO (single sign on), which we haven't heard about since FOWA 2007.
I did hear more talk about APIs, SDKs, and integrations. Zapier and IFTTT weren't there but maybe in spirit.
Genband had some news. It has re-organized its product portfolio under Kandy. Now fring and other products that are monthly recurring revenue are under Kandy. Genband is in a patent dispute with Metaswitch that some have speculated leads to a merger. Genband is also doing co-marketing for its customers - see here.
And XO touted that it is using GenBand for advanced real time communications. When XO becomes Verizon in 2017 that means Alex Doyle will have one more platform to deal with!
ThinkingPhones came out as Fuze at this show with a marketing campaign playing on Unified.
NETSCOUT has a platform to measure service delivery issues in a multi-vendor environment. This platform looks at Voice and video media performance; Call signaling and UC server performance; as well as Network and enablers' infrastructure performance.
One big announcement came out before the show: Switch.co re-branded as Dialpad. Craig Walker was a keynote speaker at the show. Dialpad was in the Sprint booth talking about mobility and enterprise. (They gave away nice jackets.)
Another big deal was Avaya launching Zang.io, in what at first glance looks a little like Kandy's logo (and font and colors) and at second glance looks like they are trying to put one up on twilio. It is kind of a mixture of the two. "Zang connects popular collaboration apps like Google Hangouts with business solutions like Salesforce.com or SAP for a seamless user experience. Zang comes with simple SDKs, sample apps and the ability to use other third-party communications apps, which speed adoption and value creation." (You can read the rest here.)
This either works for Avaya and they move beyond premise PBX - or it fails and they file BK. Those are the only 2 options because while telcos like Windstream still sell Avaya, from what Avaya partners tell me, it is more about old logos, not new logos. And there is too much competition in the Enterprise space. Lot of big booths (20x20 and larger) at the #EC16.
One cool toy came from Oblong. "The result of more than 20 years of research at MIT Media Lab, OblongĀ“s flagship product, Mezzanine, is an immersive visual collaboration solution defining the next era of computing: multi-user, multi-screen, multi-device, multi-location." It was a total immersion telepresence system that could be controlled by something like a Wii game controller or an IOS device. It was a nifty toy that brings Minority Report to life.
Voxbone was serving up international DIDs, right alongside Belgian chocolates and expresso! Thanks!
Yesterday (3/8) was International Women's Day, so here are some forgotten women in tech history.
Today's GapingVoid cartoon is about silos in organizations and collaboration. Ha!
]]>Your business probably relies on some research online, right? We don't go to a library or have too many reference books or get the daily newspaper or monthly trade journal, so the news and info come from the web.
Payroll, QuickBooks, FreshBooks, and other online accounting and bookkeeping services are probably a daily occurrence for someone in your business.
Email is still the killer app. How about IM/chat? Companies are using a variety of services for this: Google Apps, Gmail, Office 365, Zoho, Hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, and Lync.
If you have VoIP, three-way calling, conference calls, and voicemail retrieval all put a load on that broadband connection. Webex, GoToMeeting, Join.me, and other collaboration and conferencing services also put a load on the broadband pipe.
Do you blog? Do you update your website with new copy or new products?
How do you do credit card processing - over a POTS line or online? Also, for supermarkets, real-time inventory management software and the point-of-sale platform are constantly connected to the server at the data center.
Are you using VPS or testing apps in the cloud?
Do you have a sales team that are using CRM? Where is your customer database stored? Without access to Salesforce (or other CRM) how would you view your customer database without Internet?
Customer support is sometimes done via Zendesk or some other trouble ticket system.
Social selling and marketing means being connected to LinkedIn, facebook, twitter, Hootesuite, Hubspot or similar sites. And if you are running a pay-per-click campaign, don't you want to monitor that spend in real-time?
How much of your business depends on the Internet?
How much would an hour of outage cost your company?
It isn't a bad idea to have a dedicated connection versus broadband, especially for real-time apps like VoIP, Video or Collaboration. At the very least, have a backup like DSL or 4G or fixed wirless.
]]>Broadsoft is pushing not just Hosted PBX but services they are calling CAAS (Communications-as-a-Service). Broadsoft released BroadCloud - video conferencing, web collaboration and IM/Presence, sold as a hosted service to the Broadsoft service provider, who then sells it to the end user. Um, there might not be enough margin there for that many hands in the chain.
The Service Provider needs
"Cisco phones are not as spectacular as you would think
I met a Technology Efficiency Specialist from Hula.
it has been a long month on the road for me. Sitting through presentation where the presenter is kind of bored, plowing through slides of stats and graphs. We all get that Hosted PBX is growing. It has no where to go but up, so the chart should be a hockey stick. What the industry needs to hear is as follows:
What are the sales triggers? How do we duplicate the successes that are out there? What are the hurdles?
These questions were answered in the 10 UC Go-to-Market Strategies breakout session. Some attendees said that it was common sense, but:
"UC is best served Hosted."
Keys to selling Hosted UC is Execution.
Basic VoIP revenue erosion is coming. Service Providers will need to sell value adds to increase ARPU. (It's all about total telecom spend.)
Agents, VAR's, and the rest of the Indirect Channel will have a difficult time selling Hosted UC, unless they drink the kool-aid and using Hosted UC. Anyone selling this stuff has to know it to sell it.
The keynote from Don Tapscott was about the Age of networked intelligience. We are in the middle of a Digital Revolution - go profit from it!
Some sponsors have some new gear to show off. (Aastra has some stuff to show me). And a familiar face showed up at OneAccess Networks: Dennis Gatens formerly with ADTRAN.
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