UCaaS: Rough Road Ahead
UCaaS: Rough Road Ahead By Dave Michels, August 27, 2020 1. Overview The unified communications as a service (UCaaS) industry is about two decades old, and it’s had a glorious run. The industry has consistently experienced +20% annual growth as…
When 75M Isn’t Enough
Last month, Microsoft reported that its Teams product hit 75M daily active users. It’s a significant achievement that suggests Teams is a wildly successful product. While 75M DAU is clearly impressive, I suspect the figure is significantly lower than what…
Microsoft Acquires Metaswitch
It was a real Brain Game when Microsoft announced that it acquired Metaswitch Networks this month. The last time I met with team Meta was at partner event in NOLA. The event had a cerebral theme and the guest speaker…
TalkingPointz Research: NEC and Intermedia
This week, NEC announced a strategic partnership with cloud-provider Intermedia. NEC has a long, glorious history in communications. The company was founded in 1899 and originally worked closely with Western Electric to create the Japanese telecommunications infrastructure. The company is…
TalkingPointz Research: Verizon and BlueJeans
This week, Verizon announced its intent to acquire BlueJeans: NEW YORK- Verizon Business today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire BlueJeans Network, a trusted enterprise-grade video conferencing and event platform. The acquisition expands Verizon’s immersive unified…
Has the Video Interop Cold War Ended?
All year, I’ve been describing 2019 as the year of video-first communications. It’s the year that UCaaS providers decided to lead with video. It’s the year that video communications truly became mainstream. It’s the year that video became much more…
TalkingPointz Research: Avaya-RingCentral Partnership
My intense focus on Avaya began unexpectedly during the RingCentral analyst event last week. RingCentral choreographed it perfectly. We spent the morning in product road map presentations, broke for lunch, and returned to hear from its CEO Vlad Shmunis. There…
Magical UCaaS Providers Without a Quadrant
This TalkingPointz research note describes three, top-of-mind providers that didn’t make the 2019 UCaaS Magic Quadrant Report: Verizon, Vonage, and Zoom. Each have a compelling, differentiated take on UCaaS that deserves a look. The report also discusses Magic Quadrants in…
Cisco Nabs CloudCherry
Today, Cisco announced its intent to acquire CloudCherry, a Customer Engagement Management (CEM) company that will soon reside in Cisco Collaboration’s Contact Center division. San Jose Calif. – August 26, 2019 – Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced its intent to acquire privately-held…
Firstline and Deskless Workers
There’s a quiet revolution occurring in enterprise communications that’s changing the use case. This industry has been all about servicing the knowledge worker. It’s kind of hard to define the knowledge, but he/she gets most of their work done with…
TalkingPointz on Google Next 2019
The big news is Google Voice is now GA, but it’s just the latest piece into a larger strategy on Google’s approach to enterprise communications and collaboration. Overview This report focuses on G Suite announcements and momentum related to enterprise…
TalkingPointz Research Enterprise Connect 2019
Obtain this 9 page report on Enterprise Connect 2019 Overview Enterprise Connect is the largest industry event for enterprise communications. The conference takes place annually in March in Orlando, Florida. This year, the vendor keynote presentations were from Amazon, Cisco,…
Microsoft Teams 2019
At the beginning of 2018, Microsoft unveiled an aggressive roadmap for Teams, which only a few months earlier celebrated its one year birthday. The roadmap was so aggressive that I didn’t believe it would happen — it did. Make no…
Slack Frontiers 2018
Slack hosted its second user conference last week, and I was able to attend. This was the first Frontiers, in San Francisco, there’s two more coming up: NYC and London. The event was well done and provided a good check…
Google Next 2018 – TP Research Note
Google Next took place in July and the company shared a lot of news. Very likely more news that you heard as there are only so many headlines. In this report, I provide a deep dive into two of the…
Contact Center 2018
I have been focused on enterprise communications for about 20 years now. During that time, there has been no topic more boring than contact center — until now. Suddenly, the contact center is where it’s at. It’s not just me,…
TalkingPointz for Cisco Collaboration 2018
Spark is dead, long live Webex Teams. That was just one of the headlines from the Cisco Collaboration Summit in April 2018. There was a whirlwind of announcements. Why? Because: The Cisco Collaboration team has been very busy Cisco didn’t…
TP Research Note: Enterprise Connect #EC18
Enterprise Connect is an event unlike any other. I affectionately refer to it as the busiest week of the year. I attended 42 booked meetings and sessions in five days (Sun-Thurs), and who knows how many ad-hoc conversations between meetings…
TalkingPointz for Avaya
Avaya is the most misunderstood UC and contact center company in the industry. That’s because everything just changed, and the dust is still settling. One of the lines in my new research note on Avaya is that the company has…
Vidyo Embedded in the Cloud – 2Pager
No other vendor in enterprise communications solicits such broad reactions as Vidyo. I think it is one of the most misunderstood companies simply because it’s not quite like any other vendor. Some people see their enterprise solutions and see a…