Future of Work Expo - Quick Take and Photos

Am back now from last week’s Future of Work Expo in Fort Lauderdale, and from all accounts, it was our best one to date. I’ve been conference Chair for four years running, and we’ve got a really good mix now of familiar companies and ones you don’t know, and I think that reflects how broad the FOW moniker has become.

The first two days focused on workplace FOW themes, where we talked as much about HR, soft skills and culture as we did about how technology can support the hybrid work model. AI was a constant theme, and it’s clear that people have mixed feelings about it. For the third day, our focus shifted to the contact center, where we looked at how AI can be used to both improve CX, along with making the agent experience better, especially for those working from home.

We also had a FOW pavilion on the show floor, and on Thursday morning, many of our sponsors did live demos, which is a great way to see first-hand what’s coming to help make hybrid work viable. The speaker roster was solid, and all our sessions could easily have gone a lot longer, with plenty of audience engagement. I don’t have the luxury of time now to write a lengthy recap here, but I’ll have something coming soon. Until then, I did talk about the event highlights on my Watch This Space podcast, and the July episode comes out next Tuesday, so watch for that, or come back here on my site to give it a listen.

A quick shout-out to all the folks at TMC - thanks for having me back, and to their team for all the prep to make this event happen. Thanks also to colleagues Phil Edholm and Tom Brannen for helping out as moderators for some of the sessions. Extra kudos to Phil, who did a wrapup talk with me for the closing session.

Not only was it a nice way to end the conference, but Phil has told us he’s retiring after our event, so this ended up being his swan song as an event speaker. I felt lucky to share the floor with him for that, and his great insights will definitely be missed. You’ve had a great run, Phil, and you’ve enriched our understanding of this space. Am sure I won’t be the only analyst to offer thanks for all that you’ve done for such a long time - wow. With that, I’ll leave you with some photos below, and if you follow me on social, I posted during the event, so some of these will look familiar.

Below: Rethinking the Organization session, with Intermedia, Poly, Seekr, Coworks and Eleviant (photo: Tom Brannen); Barbara Steel from EY with highlights from their latest workplace study; and our panel on using AI to improve CX - with Avaya, Genesys, SharpenCX and IntelePeer

Below: Keith Sonderling, Commissioner, US Equal Opportunity Employment Commission; David Jodoin from Nynja (photo - Glenn Goldberg); FOW Expo program schedule

Below: Tom Brannen’s cybersecurity session with Journey ID and Connx; Phil Edholm’s frontline workers session with Twilio, Intermedia, United Office and Eleviant; Tom and I with Phil

3 Building Blocks for Greater CX - My Latest on No Jitter

For my latest No Jitter writeup, I shared some takeaways from the recent NICE Interactions event, especially the main messaging from CEO Barak Eilam’s keynote. The creativity around his talk warrants a post of its own, but for now I’m just focusing on his vision for how contact centers need to evolve. It’s running now on No Jitter - hope you like it!

BCStrategies Podcast - UCaaS and CCaaS: Better Together

Our latest BCStrategies podcast is a hot topic - is it a good idea to deploy UCaaS and CCaaS together? Lots of momentum for the “yes” side, and most vendors are definitely on board - but there are certainly plenty of holdbacks and scenarios where this isn’t likely to work.

Lots to talk about, and if you’d like to hear our collective take, here’s the replay link. While you’re there, take some time to check out our other content - BCStrategies is the best one-stop resource for thought leadership around collaboration, cloud and contact center!

May Writing Roundup

Not much writing during May - but was plenty busy otherwise with webinars, video interviews and online presentations. In fact, only one public post this month, but it’s the most in-depth analysis I’ve done in article form in a while, and if you’re following the healthcare space, I think you’ll find it a good read.

Otherwise, May was very go-go, and all of that will be covered in my June newsletter, which goes out to subscribers tomorrow. If you want join my circle for that, here’s the signup page.

How AI is Impacting Communication, Collaboration and Workflows in the Healthcare Market, No Jitter, May 6

Next Webinar - June 9 with Servion

I’ve been on a webinar roll lately, and this time it’s with Servion. They’re a key partner for Cisco, and we’ll be talking about the rise of digital CX, along with what contact centers need to do to support that. Attendance, however, is limited - if interested, please register here, and Servion will get back to you if you meet the profile they’re looking for.

Time for UC Awards 2022 - Back Again as Judge

UK-based UC Today has developed a pretty rich industry awards program, and the 2022 edition is now underway. There are now 12 categories of “innovation” awards for companies, and 2 categories to recognize individual achievements. While the focus is mainly around UCaaS, there are other related categories such as CPaaS, AI and compliance, so there are many ways to seek recognition.

Am happy to say that I’m returning as a judge, alongside many of my colleagues, all of whom will be familiar to anyone following this space. You can read up on us on the event website, along with all the awards categories, and the process for submitting your entry. Cutoff date to submit entries is June 17, and the ceremony to announce the winners takes place on July 28. Are you in?

New Video Interview - Future of Work for Contact Centers

I was recently a guest on First Contact, a video podcast series produced by NobelBiz. They’ve been doing this for a while, and after being contacted about being interviewed, we set up a date, and soon I was in conversation with their EVP of Client Operations, Christian Montes.

The total interview runs about an hour - and you’re welcome to check out the whole thing - but to make it easier to digest, they’ve also broken it up into several smaller segments, which you can just watch in isolation. They did a great job putting all this together, including highlighting some content from my website, so viewers can better understand what I do as an indie analyst.

Here I am during the session with Christian, and to check out the finished project, here’s the link.

Next Webinar - with LumenVox, Talking Speech Tech, May 25

If you don’t know, I present an annual update on the state of enterprise speech tech at Enterprise Connect, and I’ll be staying on that track for this upcoming webinar. This time around, I’ll be presenting and in conversation with LumenVox CEO/founder, Edward Miller on a webinar moderated by No Jitter’s Eric Krapf.

In particular, we’ll be examining the pros/cons of going with a purpose-built speech recognition platform as opposed to using the native capabilities that all the major cloud providers have. It’s a timeless topic in tech, and with speech tech coming into its own now with AI, there’s a lot to talk about. We go live at 2pm ET on May 25, and to join us, all the registration details are here.

Latest Guest Spot on ZKast - Poly and Cisco Takeaways, Plus Hybrid Work

Am back doing another guest spot on Zeus Kerravala’s ZKast, where we review the latest trends in the collaboration space. I recently attended a Poly event, and Zeus did the same for a Cisco event - right around the block from each other, and we shared our takeaways from those events. We also talked about the state of hybrid work, mainly around what’s not working, and there’s more to come on that topic. If you want to read and see more about the Poly Experience Center launch, here’s my blog post about it.

My Next Webinar - with Five9, May 26

Got a few webinars/events coming up, and here’s the first one on that list. This one is with Five9, and it’s on May 26 at 1pm EST. The topic is focused on how UCaaS and CCaaS together makes for better CX, and it’s for the Canadian market - but you’re all welcome to attend, so here’s the registration page with all the details.

I don’t have a cool banner to add here for a visual, so in honor of yesterday being Five9 Day (May 9 - doh), thought I’d use my special Five9 show-us-your-swag photo. :-)

State of AI for Communications in Healthcare - My Latest on No Jitter

Occasionally I write spotlight articles with emphasis on a particular vertical or emerging technology. Based on some current research in the healthcare sector, some interesting trends have come to light, especially around deploying newer, AI-driven applications, both for communications and collaboration.

There’s a lot to unpack, and my analysis makes for a long article, but if you’re interested in this sector, I think you’ll find it a good read. The healthcare space gets a lot of attention from AI vendors - especially those in speech tech - for many good reasons, and that’s what I’m examining in my writeup. It’s running now on No Jitter, and as always, comments and sharing are welcome.

Poly Experience Center New York Launch - Quick Take and Photos

Poly brought a small group of analysts and media to New York for the launch of their new Experience Center, right by Madison Square Garden. Branding is critical for maintaining visibility in a crowded market, and Poly has done a great job here. Their recent brand refresh was a good move, and while Plantronics is still in the picture, the branding is all Poly. While it remains to be seen how all this plays out with Hewlett Packard, the Experience Center is a great environment to showcase their broad portfolio.

Poly is still very much a product company, so if you’re into hardware and communications endpoints, this is the place to be. Visually, all the devices are great eye candy, but more importantly, this is where you can experience first-hand how all their products work, look, feel, etc.

Given that this is expensive real estate, and you only get one chance to make a first impression, I was kind of hoping to see some space set aside to showcase the company’s rich history. Poly has plenty of that in spades, but today’s younger tech buyers and influencers may not have a sense of their rich pedigree. Given how quickly companies rise and fall these days, the marketer in me says this could be a good way to distinguish Poly as a company you feel good about and confident doing business with.

That said, Poly is struggling - along with everyone else - to figure out the recipe for making hybrid work work. It’s a common theme among the vendors, as well as the events I’ve been attending recently. There are no right answers, but plenty of wrong answers if you don’t read the room correctly. They talked about their research showing a strong preference for workers to remain at home and not come back to the office very much - if at all.

I don’t doubt that sentiment for a second, but you can’t generalize across all verticals and all age groups, as well as personas. It’s a moving target, and that sentiment could easily swing the other way, especially for people who aren’t cut out to work in isolation at home full-time. In that regard, Poly is actually in a great position to make work from home a permanent fixture of this milieu we call hybrid work. Their offerings are precisely what these workers need, and we saw an impressive range of products built to make this a great experience. Without that, work from home wouldn’t be a great experience, and that makes the return to office scenario more palatable.

Of course, Poly must support both markets, so they also have a strong mix for office settings - including - you guessed it, desk phones. Maybe not for home use, but there are still plenty of office-based use cases for them. That said, there’s no doubt that video is the big focus here, and we saw demos for both personal desktop use and room-based meetings.

Also notable is Poly Lens, which can track all kinds of endpoints usage and performance, but I think it’s early days for that. We didn’t hear much about how this data is being used to help optimize IT operations or track feature adoption, but that will no doubt come. All told, there’s a lot to like here, and while most of this is familiar for analysts, I can see how the Experience Center strengthens the brand, and helps drive the top line. That’s my written take for now, and here’s a bit of what I saw.

CEO Dave Shull during the ribbon-cutting photo op.

Below, Beau Wilder with product updates, in-office endpoints - note the desk phone! - and home office endpoints - note the light bars on the edges of the screen to improve video image quality

Below, video screens showing how cameras automatically track the speaker, and compensate for speakers who are far away in a big room - lots of other cool features too. Nice homage to the NY’s iconic subway system for wayfinding across the floors inside the Experience Center. And… jazz time Monday night at the Flatiron Room - that’s a big draw for me!

April Writing Roundup

The workflow continues to be varied across all types of media, and here’s a summary of my public writing for April. Just two to report, but I’ve already got more than this in the queue for publishing during May.

Turning Pandemic Cloud Investments into a Full UCaaS Migration, TechTarget, April 25

Channel Partners Expo - Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas: Be Careful What You Wish For, No Jitter, April 19

Next Webinar with Light Reading - Harnessing Innovation to Overcome Uncertainty

I’ve been on another level of busy since Enterprise Connect, and here’s the latest. I’m speaking on panel with some Huawei USA executives about the importance of innovation for addressing a variety of global challenges. This goes beyond workplace productivity and customer experience, where technology innovation can be a force for global change that impacts everybody.

Should be an interesting discussion, and will be moderated by Light Reading’s Ken Wieland. There will be a lot of talk about how Huawei is innovating, but also to take a broader look at the role big tech companies can play in making the global economy more sustainable. The webinar is a live event, running next Friday - April 29 - from 11am to 1pm EST. Registration details are here - and hope you can join us.

Spring VON3 - Virtual Event Next Week - Web3, Creator Economy and Future of Communications

If you don’t know Jeff Pulver, then, well, that’s your homework. Nobody explores what’s next like Jeff, and all of a sudden, it’s VON3 next week. Apologies for not getting the word out sooner, but it’s a packed lineup, and all the details to register and attend are here on the event website. Hope to see you there!

I was part of the last VON3, which ran in January, and several of those speakers are back, along with many new faces. This time around, I’ll be speaking on three sessions, one for each day:

Monday - 3:30 PM - 3:45 PM - Workstream Collaboration: A New Approach to Serve the Modern Workforce, in conversation with JR Guerrieri, CEO of Nynja

 Tuesday - 3:40 PM - 4:10 PM - Future of Work, back again with long-time podcast partner Chris Fine, Founder & CEO, Integrative Technologies

 Wednesday - 3:40 PM - 4:05 PM - Voice in the Metaverse Roundtable, with Bret Kinsella, Founder & CEO of Voicebot.ai & Roger Kibbe & David Colleen, CEO SapientX

Channel Partners Event - My Takeaways on No Jitter

As per my quick take blog post and photos last week, I said there would be more to come about the Channel Partners event, and that’s running now on No Jitter. Not many analysts attend this show, so you might find my take a bit different, and hopefully, that’s a good thing. As always, comments and sharing are welcome.

Channel Partners Event, Las Vegas - Quick Thoughts and Photos

I recently attended Enterprise Connect, and now I’m at Channel Partners in Las Vegas. No Covid yet, phew - it must be true, because I’m the only one wearing a mask here. Both events are produced by Informa Tech, and between these two, I sure am seeing the bigger picture in the communications technology space.

It’s pretty go-go here, and my next panel session is coming up, so I just have time to squeeze out a quick post. The following pix provide a flavor for the vibe here, and it’s very upbeat. These are good times for the channel - lots of new opportunity and businesses are spending. The show has never been bigger, so there’s a lot to see here.

That’s the silver lining, but there are dark clouds forming in the form of private equity. That’s really the big story at Channel Partners - seems like every sales organization here has been approached to sell. Consolidation is a big theme in my work these days, and things are really heating up here.

On one of the better sessions I’ve seen so far, the motif was that this space is in a struggle now for its soul - do you turn down the money to stay independent, or take the money and leave things to big capital? More to come on this topic, but it’s time to go, and I’ll leave you with some photos.

Welcome from Kelly Danziger and Bobby DeMarzo, M&A panel, Callie Field of T Mobile Business, CIO panel, Top 50 Channel Influencers (am in there - yay)

Newsletter Time - April Issue, Podcast Too

My April newsletter went out yesterday, and aside from the regular updates, there’s a lot in there about Enterprise Connect - and that was also the focus of our latest podcast. If that piques your interest, you can subscribe here for JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review, and check out our Watch This Space podcasts here.

Next Stop - Channel Partners Conference, Las Vegas

Been a long time since doing a “next stop” blog post, but it’s looking like we’re finally back to travel for industry events. Next week, I’ll be in Las Vegas for the Channel Partners Conference, and am moderating two sessions with UCaaS themes.

This post is a shout-out for the second one, on Wednesday, April 13 at 10:45am. Joining me will be Mark Sher from Intermedia, Frank Lauria from IntelePeer, and Wayne Cochrane from RingCentral. Details about the session are here, and maybe I’ll see you there! Oh, hashtag is #CPExpo.

March Writing Roundup

As expected, writing activity picked up last month, and here’s a digest from that front.

Empathy in Action, My Book Review, BCStrategies, March 29

What’s the Difference Between Speech and Voice Recognition?, TechTarget, March 29

State of the Market Update, Speech and Voice Recognition, No Jitter, March 1