You might be wondering why last week I wrote about the Cisco VNI and this week I’m writing about the Mary Meeker report. I’m doing some strategic planning, which results in me reading a bunch of reports like this to help. Since I’m in the middle of this and it’s on my mind, I figure I’ll just send off a few key points, with some mild analysis.
The Mary Meeker report is comprehensive, covering many internet related topics. It’s all interesting, but I’m just trying to glean what is important for the enterprise communications industry I’m part of. If you have a thirst for knowledge, you can go read all the 294 slides.
First, while the report makes a big deal out of smartphone shipment growth slowing, it’s slowing because seemingly everyone has one now. This has profound implications for enterprise communications because:
- More and more people will be calling into your call center from smartphones. This means possibly more video could be utilized with them.
- And it means they’ll be accessing your website through the mobile internet. Since some people find it harder to go through websites on mobile phones, they may opt to “shorten” the process by calling. So, get those “contact me” buttons going on your website.
- It also means more and more of your employees will want to interact with other employees with smartphones, or want to interact with the PBX with smartphones. You better have a smartphone client and a Unified Communications suite as part of your business communication system.
Second, there are voice-controlled products entering the market and performing well such as Amazon’s Echo. As such, your communications strategy in the enterprise may need to take stock of this. Likely this kind of technology will be coming to your business soon to use with your PBX. Think about walking into a conference room and getting into the conference call by simply talking to the speakerphone thing on the big conference room table instead of fiddling with it for a minute to get it working properly.
And this brings me to my final point. The above could be construed as some kind of artificial intelligence. It’s not really, but real artificial intelligence is coming. Read the report
