The last two weeks have been particularly enjoyable here at Cypress - and since I haven't posted in a while, I thought I'd share happy news to start the holiday weekend.
Last Thursday (May 14th), we completed the deployment of our largest unified communications as a service (UCaaS) customer, representing over 2500 seats across 10 locations. The entire project from initial proof of concept to porting the final number took slightly over two years. During that time, we've had some euphoric highs, some wound licking lows. We've learned, improved, refined and honed just about everything here at Cypress, and we've forged friendships that transcend any vendor-client relationship I've ever known.
We've delivered a great product suite to a client that believed in us when perhaps many of us didn't quite believe in ourselves. And throughout the two years of the project, they made us better at what we do as we strove with our every last ounce to deliver the perfect solution for them. And at the end of the day, the entire endeavor has to be judged a success in every way you view it, quantitatively or qualitatively.
This week, Cypress also hosted a unified communications (UC) seminar focused at the legal industry at this very same client's New York City office (thanks to their gracious hospitality). Our speakers, a panel of four CIOs of some of the nation's top law firms, were moderated by a Frost & Sullivan analyst who specializes in unified communications. We at Cypress did absolutely nothing to script the content. All of the participants were free to say exactly what they thought about the hosted UC model and of Cypress as a provider.
We filled the room in New York with about thirty legal CIO "types" and had an additional eight who participated via HD video from our Atlanta office. The day's session lasted almost 5 hours. (A serious investment in time on the part of all who participated! Many thanks to all of you!) And at the end of the day, the entire endeavor has to be judged a success in every way you view it, quantitatively or qualitatively.
So how interesting it was to have both the perspective and retrospective within the same seven-day period. The conclusion of our biggest--and perhaps THE biggest--hosted unified communications project, took me down memory lane, back to our starting point 2+ years ago. As I remembered how we started down this road, I was reminded of things long since forgotten, or in some cases, perhaps just blocked from memory. Very akin to viewing the new Star Trek movie to learn how we got here in the first place (for you RY).
This week's seminar represents the "next generation" of where we are headed, with the CIO of our latest major-law-firm customer (the global endeavor I spoke of several posts ago) on the panel. And where "Large Firm One" took us two years from start to finish, "Large Firm Two" is teed up to be completed within eight months.
As I looked around the seminar room in NYC, I saw CIOs of firms who probably wouldn't have given hosted unified communications a passing thought 2 years ago, much less considered going with a hosted model of unified communications. And today, these same CIOs are interested in hosted unified communications and are sitting in a seminar, investing the better part of a day to learn more about a communications model they are now actively considering. And they are not participating in a seminar located just anywhere, but held in the fully deployed offices of our trailblazer client, "Law Firm Number One"!
The analysts and industry pundits may disagree about the actual rate of growth, but one thing is certain. They all agree that the enterprise is ready--no, not just ready, but embracing--hosted models of all types...hosted unified communications, virtual desktops, basically everything as a service or XaaS. Analyst research repeatedly cites some of the greatest growth of communications is going to occur in the unified communications as a service or UCaaS sector.
Now, while I won't say, "I told you so," let's just say that I'm awfully glad that as a company we've experienced the last 2 years and are more than ready to embrace the upcoming changes in the market. And perhaps, we're just a bit "more" ready than other vendors because we had the foresight to start on this path when it was just an incubating idea for many.
We filled the room in New York with about thirty legal CIO "types" and had an additional eight who participated via HD video from our Atlanta office. The day's session lasted almost 5 hours. (A serious investment in time on the part of all who participated! Many thanks to all of you!) And at the end of the day, the entire endeavor has to be judged a success in every way you view it, quantitatively or qualitatively.
So how interesting it was to have both the perspective and retrospective within the same seven-day period. The conclusion of our biggest--and perhaps THE biggest--hosted unified communications project, took me down memory lane, back to our starting point 2+ years ago. As I remembered how we started down this road, I was reminded of things long since forgotten, or in some cases, perhaps just blocked from memory. Very akin to viewing the new Star Trek movie to learn how we got here in the first place (for you RY).
This week's seminar represents the "next generation" of where we are headed, with the CIO of our latest major-law-firm customer (the global endeavor I spoke of several posts ago) on the panel. And where "Large Firm One" took us two years from start to finish, "Large Firm Two" is teed up to be completed within eight months.
As I looked around the seminar room in NYC, I saw CIOs of firms who probably wouldn't have given hosted unified communications a passing thought 2 years ago, much less considered going with a hosted model of unified communications. And today, these same CIOs are interested in hosted unified communications and are sitting in a seminar, investing the better part of a day to learn more about a communications model they are now actively considering. And they are not participating in a seminar located just anywhere, but held in the fully deployed offices of our trailblazer client, "Law Firm Number One"!
The analysts and industry pundits may disagree about the actual rate of growth, but one thing is certain. They all agree that the enterprise is ready--no, not just ready, but embracing--hosted models of all types...hosted unified communications, virtual desktops, basically everything as a service or XaaS. Analyst research repeatedly cites some of the greatest growth of communications is going to occur in the unified communications as a service or UCaaS sector.
Now, while I won't say, "I told you so," let's just say that I'm awfully glad that as a company we've experienced the last 2 years and are more than ready to embrace the upcoming changes in the market. And perhaps, we're just a bit "more" ready than other vendors because we had the foresight to start on this path when it was just an incubating idea for many.
Don't you just love it when life sew things up into a neat little package of past, present, and future and serves you a great conclusive realization on a silver platter? I know I do. What a great ending to a very fun two weeks, and a great start to a long holiday weekend.
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