My Next Webinar - Seizing the CCaaS Opportunity, with CoreDial

It’s been a busy time for webinars, and I’ve got a new one coming - Wednesday, Dec. 11 at 2pm ET.

This is another event hosted by Channel Partners Online, with CoreDial being the sponsor. I’ve worked with CoreDial in the past, and hope you’ll join us as we talk about making the case for CCaaS, particularly for MSPs, who are becoming a growing force in cloud communications, especially among SMBs. Details are here, including the registration form.

My Next Webinar - CCaaS Channel Opportunity for SMBs, with CoreDial

I’ve been doing a fair number of webinars lately, and the next one is on the hot topic of CCaaS - contact center as a service.. This time around, the sponsor is CoreDial, and it’s being hosted by Channel Partners Online.

Aside from providing my own perspectives, I’ll be reviewing highlights from some recent research by CoreDial about how channel players are approaching the contact center market with SMB customers. Lots to talk about, and I hope you can join us on Wednesday, December 11 at 2pm ET. More details are here, along with the registration form.

3 Trips to San Francisco - 3 Cloud Visions: My Latest on No Jitter

New word for the day - Throctober. October was a hectic month for analysts, and my travels included three trips from Toronto to San Francisco, with event stops for RingCentral, Talkdesk and Vonage. That’s a lot of travel for me, but the learning was worth it, and I’ve summarized that into this review post.

I’m a regular contributor to No Jitter, and for this post, I’ve distilled the takeaways into a single big idea for each company - Be Digital, Be Smart and Be Bold. To pique your interest, think about which company you’d pair each of these up with, and then see how that aligns with my thinking after reading the post.

There’s certainly more to say about each of these events, so watch for that in future posts and podcasts. For now, though, here’s the link for the post, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

October Writing Roundup

Despite all the travel and new client work, I managed to get my share of writing done during October, and here are the highlights.

While I have you, my November newsletter will be going out this week, and if you’re a subscriber, you’ll see some references there to my October writing highlights.

Vonage Analyst Event - Quick Take and Pix, my blog, Oct. 31

Why Collaboration Value Should be Based on Outcomes, Not Technology, Toolbox.com, Oct. 29

Is the Balance of Power Shifting from UCaaS to CCaaS?, BCStrategies, Oct. 28

Lessons for Success from Cloud Communications Providers, my blog, Oct. 28

Success with Collaboration Means Being Where the Work Gets Done, Toolbox.com, Oct. 24

What are the benefits of UC in a cloud-based office suite?, TechTarget, Oct. 22

One Day, Two Events - Talkdesk and Zoom, my blog, Oct. 17

Unified communications for business goes beyond telephony, TechTarget, Oct. 14

RingCentral Analyst Day - Quick Take and Photos, my blog, Oct. 4

The State of SMB Telephony, Part 2, Toolbox.com, Oct. 1

My Next Webinar - with PGi - UCaaS and SMB Customer Service

It’s been quite a month for travel to industry events, but the work must also get done. This includes client work, and I have two webinars coming in November. This post is for a webinar I’m doing with PGi, and it’s hosted by TechTalk Summits. The full title is Why UCaaS is Essential for Solving SMB Customer Service Issues, and after my presentation, I’ll be joined by Joel Kappes, PGi’s VP of Global Implementation Services.

Details are here, including a link to the registration page, and I hope you can join us. The date is Wednesday, November 20 at 1pm ET.

Vonage Analyst Event - Quick Take and Pix

Another week, another trip to San Francisco, and another conference. This was my third trip to SF this month, and am glad to be staying put for a couple of weeks now. The trip was definitely worthwhile, and as good as last year’s Vonage analyst event was, this one was even better. As has been my pattern lately, I’m just going to post some photos now, and will follow up soon with a post or two with my takeaways.

In short, this company has a clear vision, a strong leadership team, and seem to be executing very well, especially in terms of weaving their three main platforms - UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS - into a unified portfolio. The market seems to be buying it, and with an updated logo and branding, they look poised to survive and thrive in a crowded market.

CEO Alan Masarek welcoming the analysts, the new logo, Alan bidding adieu to the orange branding they had been using for so long, one of the “markitecture” slides reflecting their updated vision.

Very engaging panel session with channel partners, dramatic setting for showcasing the new logo and exhibitors for the Campus event, CMO Rishi Dave, and more of the Campus space.

On the fun side, during the analyst dinner, they had a very good artist on hand - Jeremy Sutton - who indulged me while working up this really cool digital “painting” of our gathering. I got to add some brush strokes, so to speak, and if you look closely, you can see me in the picture. Renoir would be pleased. Keeping with the French high culture theme, after dinner, a tasting of cognac and armagnac - liked ‘em both. Next day, Ken Jennings was one of the featured speakers at their Campus developer event. Great to see him there, and of course, that was topped off by a Jeopardy game where attendees could go up against him. Damn, he’s good, but he got stumped from time time - what a good sport!

Is the Balance of Power Shifting from UCaaS to CCaas?

That’s title of my latest post with BCStrategies, where I’ve long been a BC Expert. Lots to discuss, and I hope you like it. It’s running now of the portal, and just sharing it here in case you haven’t seen it yet.

One Day, Two Events - Talkdesk and Zoom

In this part of the world - San Francisco/Bay Area - attending industry events can be a full-time job for tech analysts. I don’t quite travel in those circles, but this is one of those weeks. I actually had three events to attend this week out here, but could only - barely - manage two. Am about to fly back to Toronto, and for now, will just share some photos, but there’s more to come.

The main event for me was Talkdesk’s analyst summit, and as good as it was, this was analyst-only, and with just about everything being under NDA, all I can do here is share some basic photos. Zoomtopia was my second event, and was only able to catch the tail-end, but the visit sure was worthwhile. Now that I’m on Zoom’s radar, I hope to attend their full event next year.

Talkdesk CEO/Founder Tiago Paiva, SVP Product Marketing, Charanya Kannan, and a group shot of the analysts in attendance (thanks to Steve Bell for that one)

Contact center panel with Five9, Sir Richard Branson in conversation via video with CMO Janine Pelosi, and a big finish with CEO/Founder Eric Yuan and team hamming it up with Shout! and thanking everyone for coming.

Fun time after the event - believe it or not - Snoop Dogg, followed by Leonard Skynyrd. Who came up with that one? Anyhow, Skynyrd was great, and no, there was no duet with Snoop to close things out!

Next Stop -San Francisco Area - Talkdesk and Zoom

Double-header this week, thanks to some last-minute jockeying with the folks at Zoom. Tomorrow I take an early flight to San Fran for Talkdesk’s analyst event, and will then join the tail-end of Zoom’s event on Wednesday in San Jose. It’s a long way to go for two days, but the learning will be good for both events, and I’ll have more to share soon after. As always, details of upcoming are in the Event Calendar section of my website.

September Writing Roundup

Another month, and another batch of writing - but also a batch of podcasts. I don’t usually include the latter in these roundup posts, but they’re another form of content in my mix of services. I’ve been doing a fair number of them lately, so I might as well include them here in case you missed them earlier.

Choosing the Right Partner for Cloud Services, Toolbox.com, Sept. 30

Podcast - in Conversation with 2600Hz, Good News newsletter, September issue

What are the Benefits of Contact Center and UC Integration?, TechTarget, Sept. 26

Podcast with PGi - Defining Use Cases for a Great ROI on Collaboration, Enterprise Management 360, Sept. 20

3 Value Drivers for Messaging with Collaboration, Toolbox.com, Sept. 18

EX + CX: Why They’re Better Together, podcast and guest post, RingCentral, Sept. 17

How Can You Restore Trust to Telephony?, Toolbox.com, Sept. 12

How AI in the Workplace will Affect Collaboration and Job Performance, TechTarget, Sept. 10

The Case for Cloud Contact Centers, 3-part podcast series with Vonage/NewVoiceMedia, Enterprise Management 360, posted Sept. 4

Next Stop - Plano, TX and Mitel

I’ve had a good run of staying close to home, but starting Monday, travel season kicks in for me. The road begins with Mitel’s Analyst and Consultant Summit in Plano, Texas. Definitely looking forward to that, and as luck would have it, they’re taking us to the ball game on Tuesday night, and yes, the Rangers are playing my Red Sox. I will be appropriately attired, so planning for baseball will loom large in my packing plans.

Unless plans change - and they always do - starting with Mitel, I will have travel in my schedule for every week through til December 1, with only two weeks in that stretch that I’ll be home. Good thing I just bought a new roller bag. Awayyyyyy we go…..

EX + CX: My Latest Podcast and Article with RingCentral

Thought leadership comes in many forms, and while I do a LOT of writing for my clients, I also do my share of podcasting. This won’t be news to my blog followers, so if you’re a more recent arrival, these are some of the ways I help vendors and cloud providers drive adoption of their technologies with end customers.

My latest update comes via the work I’ve been doing with RingCentral, where I’ve been a guest blogger off and on for some time. There are two new thought leadership offerings to share; namely an article of mine, and a podcast with me in conversation with RingCentral’s Robert Murphy and his Connection podcast series.

These pieces build on recent research done about the combined value of EX and CX - employee experience and customer experience. Each is important on its own, but they complement each other, which leads to greater agility, better productivity and happier customers.

The companion piece is our podcast, which covers this ground, but quite a bit more thanks to Robert Murphy’s thoughtful narrative. If the EX + CX equation piques your interest, I think you’ll find both of interest, and the starting point is here for the article. From there, you won’t have to look far for the podcast, but if you want to start with that, here’s the link.

Newsletter Time Again - September Issue

Just thought I’d share this before the week is out. The current edition of my newsletter - JAA’s Communications and Collaboraiton Review - went out to subscribers yesterday. If you’ve had a chance to check it out yet, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and for everyone else, subscribing is real easy - just go here.

Aside from the regular content recapping highlights from my research and industry activities, is our monthly podcast - Watch This Space. I do these in conversation with long-term colleague, Chris Fine, and this time around, our focus was on robocalling, which has been in the news lately on several fronts. The core issue is what I view as “restoring trust in telephony”, and it has major implications in our space, especially around customer care.

If that piques your interest to listen to our podcast right now, then the sooner you subscribe, the sooner you can do that. Otherwise, I’ll be postiing it publicly in a couple of weeks, where you can find it along with our earlier podcasts in the Podcast Archive on my website.

Also, if you’re new to our podcasts, I’ve recently added real-time transcription (shout-out to Otter.ai), where you have the option to read along if not convenient to listen. What’s really cool here is that by clicking on the transcript page, the words are highlighted in blue, so you can follow along in real time, word-by-word, both reading and listening.

The transcription isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good, and I love doing this to showcase how good AI speech-to-text is getting. I don’t mind you seeing the typos - warts and all - since there will always to be tricky words and phrases that AI doesn’t quite catch - but once corrected, the learning gets hard-wired, and those errors don’t come back again.

Finally - I know, I know - we’ll soon be publishing our podcasts on public platforms like iTunes - it’s very much on the to-do list!

New Podcast Series with NewVoiceMedia and Vonage for Cloud Contact Center

Cloud is the dominant trend these days in the contact center, so there’s a lot to talk about. As a regular contributor to UK-based Enterprise Management 360, I get involved in various projects, including podcasts. My latest was a 3-part podcast series, where I was in conversation with Vonage CMO Rishi Dave about various trends driving cloud-based contact center, as well as how IT needs to be thinking about embracing all that comes with that.

Our discussion was mainly through the lens of NewVoiceMedia, which forms the basis of Vonage’s contact center offering, but also the broader value proposition that comes from integrating this with the other two big cloud pillars, UCaaS and CPaaS.

Am catching up from being away last week, and all three episodes can be accessed from EM 360’s website now. Here’s the link to Episode 1, and you can follow the links from there for Episodes 2 and 3. We cover a lot of ground, but I think you’ll find it informative. As always, comments and sharing are welcome.

August Writing Roundup

Aside from attending two industry events in August, it’s summer, and I was on vacation and largely offline for the last week of the month. This made for lighter-than-normal output on the writing front, but there was still a fair bit of activity, especially with some things that were in the works earlier, and found their way to being published in August.

State of the Smart Speaker Market, Part 1, Toolbox.com, Aug. 21

4 UC Benefits that Improve Productivity, Tech Target, Aug. 20

What SMBs Really Want with Collaboration, Toolbox.com, Aug. 20

Owning Customer Engagement, the Twilio Way, No Jitter, Aug. 19

3 Trends in Mobile Collaboration, Toolbox.com, Aug. 16

Adtran Connect - Quick Take and Photos, my blog, Aug. 14

How UC Technology Works and Why You Need it, Tech Target, Aug. 12

My Q&A with Mavenir - Wireless Challenges for Security and Fraud, EM360, Aug. 9

Twilio SIGNAL - My 2 Main Takeaways on No Jitter

I attended my second Twilio SIGNAL event earlier this month in San Francisco, and as good at my first one was, this was even better. Bigger too, but also full of many updates that shows how far and wide their capabilities keep evolving.

For the collaboration space, I focused on two in particular, and they are addressed in my latest No Jitter post, which is running now. The conference also had lots of strong visual elements, and if you didn’t see my earlier post here with some photos, here’s the link. As always, comments and sharing are welcome.

Twilio SIGNAL 2019 - Quick Take and Pix

Last year was my first SIGNAL event, and impressive as it was, this year’s was bigger and better. Twilio is on a roll for sure (transparency alert - I’m a happy shareholder - but that doesn’t color my take here), and being on home soil, this was a loud and proud gathering in San Francisco. It’s an understatement to say that things are just different here - for better or worse - and if you were going to build a successful business at scale from the bottom-up for today’s digital economy, it would look a lot like Twilio.

As I often do when these events wrap up and I’m about to fly home, I just have time now for some photo highlights while everything is still fresh. There’s lots more to talk about, and over the next few days, I’ll have a more reflective set of takeaways, so check back here soon.

If you believe bigger is better, this was the place to be. The event planning team clearly had a mandate to spend and make sure you couldn’t miss SIGNAL. But in this case, I think Twilio lived up to the buzz.

The seating area for analysts was off to the left, so not great for getting photos during the keynotes. Above, CEO Jeff Lawson bringing vision, energy and passion. This sure sounds like a guy you’d want to work for, esp if you get behind their mantra of “we can’t wait to see you build”. Jessica Popp updating us on Flex, and Christine Roberts talking about Verified by Twilio. I’ll have more to say on both of these soon.

“Papa Vic” - Jeff really nailed the importance of personal relationships talking about his grandfather, and connecting that to Twilio’s vision to create the same at scale with their technology. Erin Reilly, as she did last year, showcased Twilio’s commitment to social good, with great examples of how they bring communications to vulnerable people and make a big difference in their lives. Boost - Jeff giving yet another example of pervasive messaging has become, and clearly, Twilio is on to something here. Final picture - a really good panel session on email - and the risks around spoofing, spam, etc. The acquisition of SendGrid for email was very strategic, and it’s an important part of Twilio’s story.

Sensoneo demo - yet another layer to Twilio - IoT. This was a smart city application, mapping out all the waste bins across San Francisco, and thanks to sensors placed inside all the lids, the sanitation department gets a birds-eye view of which bins are full and need pickup. This helps optimize their routes, and they’ve 30% cost savings as a result - that’s a great use case. Later, a session on blocking robocalls - Twilio has a fix for that now. Then some fun onstage with rapper Macklemore, the performer for the big party last night. The hash #freemacklemore” quickly became a thing, but I think we’ve moved on now. Last shot - yes, it’s what you think. The party was held in a parking garage, retrofitted to an event space. Seemed strange at first, but very cool, and very Twilio. Can’t wait to see what they build for the next SIGNAL!

Next Stop - San Francisco and Twilio

About to head to the airport for San Fran and Twilio’s SIGNAL event. This will be my second time going, and this time around, I know more what to expect. Of all the events I attend in my ongoing travels, this one is the most developer-centric, and it’s a different crowd - or maybe I’m just getting older. :-)

Anyhow, there will be lots to catch up on, and am looking forward to getting updates on Flex, their contact center offering, especially for how AI is fitting into all this. I’ll be tweeting and blogging as time allows, and you can follow me @arnoldjon, and the event directly using the #SIGNALconf hash.

June Writing Roundup

June sure was busy, as I attended four events, plus had a short getaway trip/family event. Writing still goes on, though, and here’s a digest of what I had on tap last month.

Maximize Huddle Room Technology with Collaboration Metrics, Tech Target, June 27

My Poly Voyager 6200 Headset Review, my blog, June 20

3 Ways AI Adds Value to Collaboration, Toolbox.com, June 19

Thinking Differently About Managed IT Services for SMBs, BCStrategies, June 17

Employee Engagement: Collaboration’s Hidden Value, Toolbox.com, June 17

What Role Does UC Mobility Play in Digital Transformation?, Tech Target, June 14

Deciding Between Best-of-Breed or Integrated Platforms for Collaboration, Toolbox.com, June 3

My Latest Podcast, with Talkdesk on EM360

I get involved in various projects with UK-based EM360, and this time around it was a podcast with Talkdesk. Our topic was how the cloud brings new value to the contact center, and my accomplice was Talkdesk’s Director of Product Marketing, Stephen Bell.

The podcast was just just posted on EM360 today, so here’s the link if you’d like to give it a listen. As always, sharing and comments are welcome, and if you’d like to do something similar for your company, am sure the EM360 folks will be happy to hear from you.