Enterprise Communicationsquipz

December 2017 News Quipz

by Dave Michels

Happy New Year. May your 2018 be better than your 2017. That shouldn’t be too hard as 2017 wasn’t that great a year. I don’t think any UC company was actually profitable in 2017. That’s because there’s a whole lotta of transitioning going-on. Whatever you sold in 2015 is totally obsolete — at least from a marketing perspective. Of course, the UC story from 2015 is exactly what organizations are still primarily buying, they just aren’t happy about it.

But I’m done with year-end reflections (see My 2017). Although last month was indeed last year, this post henceforth shall be limited to what occurred in December. That’s because the new monthly recap for December is out, and buried within all that Santa crap was some interesting industry news. That’s what get’s covered in my monthly Quipz reportz.

The December report contains short quipz and takez on the following events of December. 

  • The big story of December 2017 was Net Neutrality.
  • In the UC section included content on Avaya, free UCaaS, SfB, and Digium.
  • The Messaging section features news quipz on persistence, ISO certifications, Twitter, Teams, TicToc, Messenger, and Snap.
  • Video has news from Vidyo, a new video meeting server, a Norwegian video company gets funding, and what can happen without a visa.
  • The Contact Center news in December features WFO with AI, the most popular call center for being on hold, SendBird, and Enghouse.
  • In mobile news Huawei is back, Sprint has a new cluster, Google has designs on BYOD, and Microsoft’s new solution for Mobile.
  • On the Provider front, Twilio had its first investor day, Spark gains traction, Uber prioritizes Blackberry, and SpaceX makes its first appearance in a Quipz report.
  • The above categories are blurry enough, but Miscellaneous has IDC on the cloud, microsoft’s new whiteboard, Hilton’s connected room, AWS SSO, and batteries at Amazon.
  • Four acquisitions announced in December
  • One company announced its quarter
  • 15 links to good reads in December

There was no actual industry news related to the new tax plan, but it will be the cause for big stories in 2018.

International, US-based vendors get to pay lower taxes when they bring cash home. To minimize taxes in the past, many firms got creative such as when Microsoft bought Skype with overseas funds. Now they can buy companies here with overseas profits.  There is a 40% chance Apple will acquire Netflix, according to Citi and  influential tech analyst Gene Munster predicts Amazon will buy Target in 2018. I expect to see lots of acquisitions this year in communications, and the buyers are likely Microsoft, Amazon, Avaya, Cisco, and Mitel.  The carriers too – Verizon might actually buy something smart as they had to resort to buying Yahoo last year. AT&T might find something better to digest than Time Warner. Glen Post has one more year as CEO of CenturyLink to acquire companies (his favorite thing to do).

Another option is companies will use these funds to pay down debt instead. Microsoft could pay off its LinkedInn acquisition with overseas funds.

Quipz is a newsletter that recaps and interprets news from the prior month. It’s bundled with TalkingPointz research notes. The annual subscription is still available at the introductory price.

Happy new year.