Insider

Insider Report for September 2024

October 02, 2024 by Dave Michels

Curated Enterprise Communications News and Insights from September 2024

Featured

Be Careful: For those that remember “Hill Street Blues,” which was not about blues music, Sgt. Esterhaus usually ended roll call with the warning/advice: “Let’s be careful out there.”

2024 is proving to be a year of major change. The pandemic seems distant, but the dust is still settling in many ways, such as RTO/WFH and inflation. We are seeing significant leadership changes, and AI is disrupting portfolios and investments. A wave of layoffs is reversing progress in many areas. LinkedIn is overflowing with employee departures. The homeless population is surging, having tripled in Chicago this past year.

Commercial real estate is one lease away from collapse. It’s so bad that the big banks have started to offload their commercial real estate loan portfolios. The banks aren’t healthy, either. As of the end of June 2024, US banks have closed more than 400 branches nationwide. Credit card delinquencies have hit their highest level in over a decade. Car payment delinquencies are also surging.

Restaurants that we thought would be fine post-Covid aren’t doing well. Red Lobster closed 93 locations and filed for bankruptcy. Applebee’s has closed 25 locations this year. In addition to shutting down 57 locations last year, Denny’s anticipates 10 to 20 net unit closures in 2024.

Retail is also in a slump. In June, Bob’s Stores and Eastern Mountain Sports filed for bankruptcy. Fashion retailer bankruptcies include Avon, Rue21, and Express Inc. We learned this month that the last full-sized Kmart (Bridgehampton, NY) will close in October. The brand will continue with convenience-sized stores.

A tremendous amount of uncertainty is in the air. Few have confidence that their jobs are safe. Contributing to the disquiet is the outcome of the US presidential election, given that it could cause significant swings in federal priorities.

However, there are a few positive indicators. The inflation rate is declining, unemployment rates remain low, supply chains are working, and the Fed has reduced interest rates for the first time since the pandemic.

Rate cuts have the potential to bolster budgets and could help alleviate some of the flourishing negative economic sentiment. The hope is that the rate adjustments stimulate investment and purchasing. We will know in just half a year or so.

Bottom line: Be careful out there.

General News

New EU Regulations Coming: The EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) requires financial institutions and their information and communication technology (ICT) service providers to strengthen resilience against digital disruptions like cyberattacks by January 2025. Many firms struggle to define critical functions, manage third-party risks, and meet compliance timelines. Immediate actions should include conducting a gap analysis, defining key functions, testing resilience, and updating third-party contracts. While these regulations will enhance the overall security of the financial sector, making it more resistant to systemic risks, they are also likely to have a big impact on the enterprise communications sector, increasing compliance costs and slowing innovation as providers prioritize stability over new development.

Apple and Google Lose EU Appeals: In September, the EU’s top court upheld rulings against both Apple and Google in separate antitrust cases. Apple was ordered to pay €13B in back taxes to Ireland following a decision that found the company had received unfair tax benefits. In a parallel ruling, the court upheld a €2.4B fine against Google for favoring its own shopping service over competitors. Both rulings mark significant victories for the EU’s ongoing efforts to regulate (US) Big Tech. These decisions are final and cannot be appealed.

Amazon Pulls Plug on Hybrid: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy ran to the familiar when he mandated employees get back to the office full time. As of January 2, employees must return to assigned desks only five days per week. He cited “culture” as the key reason for this. Danto sees this as the inability to evolve, a huge danger sign considering the data shows hybrid arrangements improve productivity and morale. Michels noted the hypocrisy with Amazon’s net-zero commitments. Watch Dave, David, and Metrigy’s Irwin Lazar discuss and examine the details.

September had a few headlines suggesting that RTO is winning, but Brian Elliot shared research showing the level of flexible work has not significantly changed in the last three years. This is despite multiple RTO mandates. The data shows hybrid-work has stabilized - five times higher than pre-pandemic.

Disconnected CEOs: The enormous backlash to the Amazon announcement comes in the shadow of a KPMG survey (see Goodreads #1) revealing that nearly 80% of CEOs now believe hybrid employees will return to the office full-time by 2027. Additionally, 86% of CEOs plan to reward employees who return to the office with promotions and raises. Danto points out that the divide between employees and employers is growing as trust between employers and employees disappears with RTO mandates and extensive layoffs.

Acqui-X: Elon Musk’s resistance to Brazil’s efforts to regulate X ended in a dramatic reversal. He refused Brazil’s demand to ban accounts linked to spreading disinformation, claiming it was a free speech issue (despite complying with similar requests from right-wing governments). Brazil then ordered Musk to respond through legal channels, which he defied, leading to the shutdown of “X” in Brazil — and hefty fines. Users flocked to (barely alternative) platforms like Threads and Bluesky, and advertisers continued to abandon Musk’s platform. In the end, Musk caved, blocking the accounts and paying the fines, having only accomplished further loss of credibility.

Telegram 2.0: CEO Pavel Durov has announced major policy changes following his arrest by French authorities in August for allegedly failing to cooperate with investigations into criminal activity. To combat illicit activities on the app, Telegram will now comply with legal requests for user data, such as IP addresses and phone numbers, marking a shift from its previously strong stance on user privacy.

Pause for iPhone: With iOS 18, videographers get a pause button in the iOS camera app, which changes to a Record button when users actively pause their video recording. Users can also switch between camera lenses while a recording is paused if they want to adjust the zoom or focal length. The iPhone is a prosumer photo and video camera.

MDEP Update: MDEP (Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform) is still not publicly available due to Microsoft’s delayed ability to manage it in Intune, but the firmware for partners was updated. The MDEP 2024.3 release introduces several key updates, including enhanced security features like the SOC Secure Enclave Abstraction and App Integrity Service. It also offers improved API functionalities, such as the MDEP Configuration API, to streamline device management for OEMs and developers.

Comms as a Weapon: Israel turned pagers into weapons — a fascinating development considering that comms are usually weaponized via eavesdropping or shutdowns. After Israel comprehensively hacked smartphones, Hezbollah switched to low-tech pagers. Then Israel set up a front company, licensed a brand name, and somehow got Hezbollah to buy explosive pagers. As an aside, in Brazil, the nickname for SMS messages is “torpedos” because they’re invisible until they explode in your pocket. The war (yes, it’s a war) continues to escalate despite a full year of US efforts to end or at least contain it. No peace in sight.

Bear Fight! Google has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Union, accusing Microsoft of stifling competition in the cloud computing market. Google claims that Microsoft’s practices, including restrictive licensing terms, make it difficult for other cloud providers to compete fairly. The complaint follows similar concerns raised by other European cloud companies, suggesting a broader issue with Microsoft’s dominance in the sector. Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are all under increased scrutiny from US and European regulators.

Bandwidth Reverb: Bandwidth’s Reverb conference was about expanding its Universal Platform. The Bandwidth conference highlighted programmable voice features such as anonymizing calls and real-time transcriptions; analytics for MOS and jitter; dynamic emergency services; simplified integrations with Teams, Webex, Five9, Zoom, and others; advanced messaging services for SMS and RCS; number reputation services; and more. Bandwidth took some shots at CPaaS providers because it owns and manages its own network. It cites customers like Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, and Zoom. It also claimed that it’s processing 4 billion messages per month today, and its Universal Profile announcements are not all online yet. Bandwidth isn’t interested in consumers, nor does it waste its time and money buying obsolete companies.

Zoom Pre-Zoomtopia: With Zoomtopia coming up, Zoom is starting to slow-roll some announcements. Zoom launched Zoom Workplace, Zoom Contact Center, and Workvivo in the AWS Commercial Marketplace (after two years in the Public Sector Marketplace), making these solutions easier to purchase and deploy for AWS customers. The move allows organizations to consolidate their technology purchasing and billing while leveraging Zoom’s collaboration tools and AI Companion. This expansion builds on Zoom’s partnership with AWS, aiming to enhance communication and collaboration for businesses across various sectors. Most of these customers also have free access to Amazon Chime.

Zoom also introduced new enterprise services designed to enhance efficiency, security, compliance, and reliability for businesses. Key additions include Zoom Compliance Manager Plus, which offers advanced compliance and risk management tools, and Zoom Meeting Survivability, which has an on-prem component that ensures uninterrupted service during internet outages. The platform also expands features like Zoom Mesh to optimize bandwidth usage and introduces a customer-managed key hybrid for enhanced encryption.

Zoom also announced a strategic alliance with Mitel, which is covered in the UC section below.

AI News

The AI Correction Cometh? There is a common assumption that generative AI will continue to get cheaper. It certainly has been getting cheaper, but there are three problems with depending on that trend: (1) The providers have yet to find a path to profitability, (2) The current models are very limited in what they can do, and (3) Future models will be significantly more expensive to deliver. This month, OpenAI introduced o1, which can handle multistage logic — for a much higher price.

There’s also increasing concern about OpenAI’s viability. AI development is encountering diminishing returns as costs rise and prices keep declining. Additional limitations further exacerbate its situation, such as a finite supply of GPUs, a revolving door to the C-suite, and limited energy. OpenAI now expects to raise around $6.5B at a $150B pre-money valuation (turned down billions) in what appears to be the largest venture capital round of all time.

AI or CX: The next two AI stories are about CX. The call center and contact center vendors enjoyed protective barriers to entry. As far as Michels can tell, nothing matters in CX but AI. There are many adjacencies when it comes to the customer lifecycle, so we are seeing a significant influx of new competitors. This will not end well for some CCaaS incumbents.

T-Mobile and OpenAI are partnering to develop a predictive platform called “IntentCX,” designed to understand customer intent and take action. It’s hard to tell how real this is, because neither company is a CX company. T-Mobile (and Cisco) conquered customer service back in 2018 with its Team of Experts approach. It then lost interest in that and went back to carrier-grade CX.

There’s a lot of unknowns here. For example, does this project span across functional silos (the hard part)? Afterall, “billions of data points” can exist within a silo at T-Mobile. It is also unclear which vendor is building this. Odds favor OpenAI, T-Mobile is providing the data and there’s hints that this becomes a CX product for sale. IntentCX aligns with OpenAI’s focus on developing AI agents capable of reasoning and taking action, making it a promising use case for such technology.

Agentforce was demonstrated at Dreamforce as the future of CX. It appears to be a rebranded version of Einstein Copilot. Wait, we don’t have to call AI apps Copilot? Another description could be a chatbot that uses CRM data for responses. Whatever Agentforce is, it doesn’t appear to be a product (yet). It’s probably best described as an aspiration. Which is very similar to what most of the AI-fueled CX sector is promising.

The $64 million (inflation, you know) question is whether it’s better for a CRM vendor to combine its AI with conversational channels or a CCaaS provider to supplement its channels with CRM data. Or is it UCaaS providers that should bundle CCaaS?

Some additional, cheaper questions: What about other non-CRM databases? At what point does Salesforce become the monolithic, do-it-all, proprietary application it disrupted? How do chatbots escalate to an agent? Doh! We can agree that the Agentforce demo was great, but we also know it won’t work like that all the time, probably not even half the time.

The demo also highlighted how simple it was to fix a deficiency in the Saks Fifth Avenue deployment. A new connector was quickly added and configured on stage without coding. Why Saks didn’t implement this easy fix was not explained.

Like all generative AI chatbot demos, the best part of the demo was the bot’s human-like UI. Zero points for that. The magic is limited without access to databases that cross functions (i.e., marketing, sales, and shipping). That’s the key and the hard part to this tech. This demo raised another question: Does Salesforce intend to turn all its CCaaS partners into competitors?

California AI Veto: California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill we described in last month’s Insider, which was aimed at regulating AI. Newsom cited concerns that it didn’t differentiate between high- and low-risk AI applications and would only target the largest models. While he acknowledged the bill’s good intentions, he warned it could stifle innovation and had opposition from tech companies. Newsom is now working with researchers, including Fei-Fei Li, to draft more effective AI legislation.

Microsoft Copilot Wave 2: Microsoft announced 700 updates for what’s now branded as “Microsoft 365 Copilot” (goodbye, “Copilot for Microsoft 365”). Updates include AI tools like Copilot Chat and BizChat, which integrate into Excel, PowerPoint, and Word to automate business processes. Microsoft is heavily investing in AI-driven workflows.

This wave represents a significant leap in AI utilization, especially with its future reliance on OpenAI’s advanced models like GPT-4o and o1. However, questions remain about how well enterprises will adapt to these rapid changes in workflow, as the cavern between C-suite and knowledge workers’ perceptions of AI usefulness and effort is still widening.

Hey Google, Tell Me About It: Google’s NotebookLM uses LLMs to convert lengthy text from articles, research papers, and other documents into knowledge. NotebookLM has a new trick that turns knowledge into an audible story: an AI-generated podcast that includes playful conversations between male and female ”hosts.” It’s a new summarization trick, this time with voices. Making generative AI trustworthy is the progress we need. Hear a sample here.

Metaverse Shades: With so many AR/VR false starts, it’s easy to tune out the various product developments, but Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are looking good. Meta did a very compelling demo at its Connect conference, and the firm just may be the AI sleeper of 2024.

The Ray-Ban smart glasses have audio and photo capabilities. Zuck personally demonstrated a conversation with near real-time translation. We have this tech in meetings, but this works in face-to-face (or face-to-glass) conversations. You can also look at a parking spot number and ask the smart glasses to remember it. This is AR/VR stuff that neither Google nor OpenAI can match at this time — unless you are willing to use a smartphone. Meta is offering these features for free. Meta also claimed that its Llama 3 LLM is cheaper for developers than [OpenAI?].

Meetings and AV

Neat Announcements: Oslo-based Neat held an industry analyst summit where its CEO, Janine Pelosi, and CTO, Kevin McMenamy, previewed several announcements. Subsequently, it released Neat App Hub, which offers a range of applications directly on Neat devices — with over two dozen providers already on board. These include titles like Flowscape, VideowindoW, Robin, Appspace, and more. Danto worries that some of these apps compete with Neat’s core partners — which may be tricky to navigate. (Watch a visit with Neat’s Team in Oslo here.)

Webex Expands UK Data Centers: Cisco is expanding its Webex Calling service by opening a second UK data center in Manchester to improve service reliability, meet compliance regulations post-Brexit, and support enterprise customers, particularly in regulated industries like finance and government. Counterintuitively, as Cisco sells many more devices meant for Microsoft Teams, MS users are “discovering” and increasing the use of Webex.

Crestron Bar 70 for Teams: Crestron’s Videobar 70, released with Zoom compatibility only (Danto review here), is now Microsoft Teams certified. We’ll update the review once we test the new version.

Jabra Goes To 11: While most Zoom-certified videobars can provide five streams in Zoom multistream mode, Jabra’s recent firmware update to its PanaCast 50 VBS allows it to go to six streams.

VIMT Too: Cisco also has introduced Cross-Tenant Join functionality as part of its Video Integration for Microsoft Teams (VIMT), enabling users to join Teams meetings seamlessly from Cisco devices. This new feature allows both ad hoc and scheduled meetings to be accessed directly through Cisco RoomOS devices, removing the reliance on WebRTC guest join and allowing users from different organizations to connect to Teams meetings.

Panasonic Back In US TV Market: After a decade-long absence, Panasonic is returning to the US market with new OLED and miniLED TV models powered by Amazon’s Fire TV. Back in 2013, Panasonic’s plasma TVs were highly regarded for their superior performance but were eventually discontinued under pressure from cheaper LED panels.

Sonos at Work: Sonos — known for its high-quality home audio systems — launched the Era 100 Pro, expanding into the commercial integrator market with advanced features like improved audio control, Power over Ethernet (PoE), and integration with popular commercial AV systems.

New Logi Firmware: Logitech’s CollabOS 1.13 introduces AI-driven features for the MeetUp 2 camera, including improved image processing and sound optimization. The update also adds “Smart Switching,” which intelligently switches between center-of-table and front-of-room cameras based on where participants are looking. Other enhancements include Google Meet on Android for Rally Bar Huddle, improved image quality for wider rooms, and custom backgrounds with auto room-booking features for Logitech Room Booking systems.

Meeting Owl 3 for Teams: The Meeting Owl 3 is certified as a Microsoft Teams peripheral device for small conference rooms fitting up to six people. Hard to believe, but the firm that largely inspired the new center-of-table room devices is a latecomer.

Bar Races: Yealink introduced the MeetingBar A40 — an all-in-one, dual-camera, videoconferencing bar for small to medium rooms. Their press release called it the first videobar on Microsoft’s MDEP platform, but that claim is premature. It is shipping with a non-MDEP version of Android (because Microsoft Intune is still not ready to support MDEP). Yealink will push an update after MS clears that hurdle. Yealink is clearly in a race with Jabra for bragging rights to being the first MDEP bar on the market. Jabra’s PanaCast 50 VBS is also shipping with pre-MDEP Android until Microsoft is ready. We’ll be standing with a checkered flag at the finish line to validate whichever is the actual first unit.

Sennheiser Ceilings + Q-SYS: Sennheiser announced that its TeamConnect Ceiling Medium now works with a Q-SYS plug-in. This enables cloud management and control of its audio solutions within the Q-SYS ecosystem.

HP AI Meetings Again: At HP’s Imagine event, Personal Systems President Alex Cho discussed several computer AI “innovations.” Then, he re-announced (as if new) the Director AI features that Poly systems had pre-acquisition. (These features basically offer the ability to see everyone in a meeting room in their own on-screen tile.) The pseudo announcement provides more evidence that HP didn’t know what it acquired (and few are left to explain it to them). HP also introduced the X72 and X32 — the next versions of its X70 and x30 Android videobars — and V72 and v32 (USB peripherals, no-compute). These all have minor incremental updates, but one that stands out is that the X32 now can be powered by PoE++ — to our knowledge, the first multi-platform Android all-in-one bar that can power from the Ethernet port.

Pexip Launches SVPaaS: Pexip has launched a Secure Video Platform as a Service designed for industries like healthcare, government, and finance to embed secure video within apps and websites. The platform prioritizes data privacy and compliance, ensuring that no personal identifiers are stored, and offers flexible, geofenced data control. The interoperability battles nowadays revolve around data security and who can support on-prem, private cloud, and FedRAMP. Look for a TalkingPointz whitepaper on the subject shortly.

RingCentral-Pexip-Teams: In other Pexip news, RingCentral announced that its Rooms service will leverage Pexip to add the ability to join Microsoft Teams meetings directly from the platform. This is a great move for both companies. RingCentral needs more interop, and Pexip continues to emerge as the interop king (see Insider August 2024).

Video Editing for All: The need for content creation tools is expanding from specialized roles to general knowledge workers. As video editing is becoming a general skill, we are seeing several video editing tools positioned for general enterprise users. Earlier this year, we saw Google Vids. This month, YouTube and mmhmm caught our attention.

The “Made on YouTube” initiative offers AI-powered tools, including Veo on DreamScreen for dynamic video backgrounds and tools for multi-language dubbing, to help creators enhance engagement. The platform also introduced new fan engagement tools, such as “Hype” and gifting, which provide more ways for community engagement.

Mmhmm has released version 3.0, offering new features to help users create more engaging and professional content. The update includes tools for organizing thoughts, utilizing AI for suggestions, and enhancing collaboration by allowing teammates to present side by side. Founded in 2020 to address the growing need for better virtual communication during the pandemic, mmhmm aims to make video presentations feel more conversational and polished.

CEDIA/CIX Denver: TalkingPointz attended a combination CEDIA Expo and Commercial Integrator Expo in Denver. The annual conference is mostly about consumer tech but is expanding into enterprise. Multiple sessions on the future of work took place, and we’ll share those when they are posted by the event. For now, here’s a brief video of the Daves’ coverage.

Customer Experience

GoTo: GoTo has launched GoTo Connect CX, an affordable, AI-powered, multichannel customer experience (CX) solution designed for small to mid-sized businesses. It combines GoTo’s phone system with AI enhancements to streamline customer communications across platforms like WhatsApp, SMS, and web chat. Key features include a shared inbox for centralized messaging, an AI Messaging Assistant, virtual admin support via GoPilot, and advanced integrations with platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot.

8x8 Video CC: 8x8 has expanded its CC Video Elevation capabilities, which enables contact center agents to resolve issues visually and reduces the need for onsite technicians. 8x8 claims that video interactions initiated by its customers’ agents have surged by 150% quarter-over-quarter.

Verint Engage Announcements: Verint made several announcements this month at its annual Engage User Conference. A few takeaways: Verint’s specialized bots resonate. Each bot has specific training and purposes, in contrast to many of the umbrella labels that others use, such as AI, Agent Assist, or Copilot. Also, Verint is doing an excellent job of talking about operational and financial outcomes, rather than just savings. Notably, these AI-powered benefits are available to all Verint customers, including legacy implementations.

Among the announcements at Engage were the CoPilot bots that automate specific agent tasks, including the wrap-up, coaching, and transfer bots. A profiled example cut handling time in half. Verint also announced the Knowledge Automation Bot, which searches across enterprise content sources without data re-entry. And a new Genie bot is embedded in Verint Insights to supercharge the analytics team.

Verint Cloud-to-Cloud Partnerships: Five9 and Avaya announced deeper integrations to the Verint Cloud. For seven-plus years, Five9 has hosted Verint in its cloud. Five9 offers its customers a two-vendor solution as one vendor. Evidently, it has worked well. This month, Verint awarded Five9 Partner of the Year for the fifth consecutive time. So why mess with success? Speed! CX, cloud, and AI are moving quickly. This new cloud-to-cloud integration eliminates the inherent lag between Verint’s native cloud and Five9’s instance while maintaining a single-vendor experience for its customers.

Avaya announced that Verint’s solutions and AI-powered bots are now integrated into the Avaya Experience Platform (AXP). The integrations bring 50-plus AI-powered bots (including the newest ones announced this month) to Avaya’s premises-based and cloud subscription customers. This is consistent with Avaya’s “Innovation Without Disruption” vision and strategy and is likely the direction Verint will take with more providers.

Vonage: Vonage has joined Salesforce’s Bring Your Own Channel (BYOC) pilot program for CCaaS. This integration allows Vonage Premier customers to enhance their contact center solutions with voice, SMS, chat, and social messaging apps like WhatsApp. The BYOC for CCaaS program also offers Workforce Engagement Management tools like Verint and Calabrio. Vonage CCaaS has always offered solutions to expand or complete Salesforce.

UC and Messaging

The New MiClouds: Mitel is ramping cloud-delivered services again. In addition to its partnership with Zoom (below), Mitel announced the Common Communications Framework, intended to promote interoperability across on-premises and customer, partner, or Mitel-hosted cloud models. It also launched the Mitel Secure Cloud for organizations requiring higher security, compliance, and data and operational sovereignty.

Mitel and Zoom: Zoom and Mitel have announced a partnership to deliver hybrid cloud solutions, combining Mitel’s telephony expertise with Zoom’s communication platform. This is a very interesting partnership, similar to the Avaya-Zoom alliance announced last March.

Mitel and Avaya have thrived in a voice-first communications world, and that model still exists. However, there are also video-first and messaging-first buyers that have allowed Teams, Webex, and Google Workspace to do well. While video and messaging thrive in a cloud-provided model, significant demand remains for private (managed, hosted, and controlled) voice. Zoom + Avaya or Mitel gives the provider a leg up over Microsoft and Google that completely disregards hybrid cloud. Mitel significantly benefits from portfolio expansion (enterprise-grade video, meeting rooms, workspace reservations, Zoom Phone, and more). There are still a few unanswered questions as the teams work things out. GA is expected in 1H25. (Dave’s take and Danto’s take.)

RingCentral and Zayo: RingCentral announced another carrier offering: Zayo UC+ with RingCentral. The offering combines Zayo’s robust network infrastructure, integration planning, and engineering expertise with RingCentral’s native, AI-powered, UCaaS and CCaaS solutions.

RingCentral’s partnerships with PBX makers have not met expectations (round 3 at Avaya could be the one), but its service provider programs have done very well. Zayo has a strong presence in Canada (Zayo acquired Allstream) and an impressive global fiber network. It also has many customers with premises-based infrastructure. Check out the new video from the RingCentral SP team.

RCS: The big news this month is RCS messaging: It’s arrived. It will significantly impact CX and, potentially, messaging apps such as WhatsApp. Apple, Twilio, and Vonage are the vendors that made big moves with RCS in September.

Buried within Apple’s iOS 18 announcements, RCS made its debut. Supported by Android phones for years, RCS brings next-gen SMS capabilities with features like typing indicators, read receipts, and enhanced photo and video quality. Sure, it’s next-gen, but it took about 10 gens to arrive.

Despite the green text bubbles (in contrast to the blue when using iMessage), RCS improves interoperability between iOS and Android. Also, iPhone 14 and newer devices now offer texting via satellite, ensuring privacy with end-to-end encryption (E2EE). The Messages app received additional upgrades, including the ability to schedule messages.

Vonage RCS is a new business messaging solution that provides rich, secure, and verified real-time communications capabilities for customer interactions. It offers branding capabilities, rich content (such as videos, images and audio files, typing indicators, location sharing, and more), and conversational marketing and commerce (Jumper.ai).

Twilio expanded its RCS offerings with more tools for branding and building trust. These services are now global. RCS fits with Twilio’s broader offering of trusted, branded communications across channels.

Both Vonage and Twilio were way ahead with RCS but reasonably lost interest as the tech seemed like a lost cause. Recent actions from Google and Apple have given this left-for-dead technology new life.

New Ericsson API Initiative: Global telecom leaders, including América Móvil, AT&T, and Deutsche Telekom, have partnered with Ericsson to form a new company aimed at promoting the global adoption of network APIs. This venture will provide common network APIs for developers across multiple telecom networks, enabling faster innovation and monetization opportunities. The initiative aims to unlock advanced network capabilities for use in sectors such as financial services and media. The company is expected to launch in early 2025, pending regulatory approvals. (See Dave’s thoughts on this here.)

Intermedia Blues: NEC continued its withdrawal from voice. Last April, NEC announced that it was withdrawing from the PBX business (outside of Japan) but would continue to offer Univerge Blue UCaaS. That’s now been revised, and NEC has exited UCaaS (outside of Japan) and transferred customers, sales, and support to Intermedia — the logical destination as Intermedia powers NEC Univerge Blue. NEC is one of many partners that private-label the Intermedia Unite UCaas and CCaaS suite. Alianza, Intermedia, and Crexendo keep winning SPs. It appears private-label is back, which is consistent with UCaaS maturity. NEC’s exit from telephony (outside of Japan) deserves a moment of respect. NEC has been in the telephony business since 1898. (Read Dave’s take)

Gamma and Webex: Gamma and Cisco have launched “Horizon with Webex,” a solution designed to elevate communications for small and medium-sized enterprises. The service integrates Gamma’s Horizon phone platform with Cisco’s Webex, providing enhanced collaboration tools and business scalability. Gamma has also expanded its European footprint through acquisitions, including Placetel and BrightCloud Group, to strengthen its unified communications services.

No Slack for Mickey: Disney is phasing out Slack for Microsoft Teams. Slack is taking the fall due to a security breach last year. Realistically, if we changed vendors every time we had a security breach, we would run out pretty fast. Microsoft Teams is a far bigger honeypot than Slack, and Teams has avoided a major hack so far, but no firm in its right mind would market that. It’s asking for trouble. Remember where the “unsinkable” Titanic is parked. Don’t tell Mickey, but Russian state-sponsored hackers targeted specific Teams accounts in 2023. Microsoft itself accidentally exposed 30,000 internal Microsoft Teams messages last year when it published open-source training data on GitHub.

Slack Updates: At Salesforce’s Dreamforce event, it announced new innovations for Slack, transforming it into an agent-powered work operating system. Slack now integrates AI agents, customer data, and CRM functionalities into one interface to enhance productivity and collaboration. Key features include Agentforce AI, third-party AI agents, and Salesforce channels, allowing seamless integration of data and task automation. These changes aim to streamline workflows, reduce time spent on low-value tasks, and centralize all necessary tools and data within Slack.

Mozilla Exits Fediverse: Mozilla announced that it would be ending its experiment in running a server on Mastodon. Users can download their data or migrate their accounts to another Mastodon server before Mozilla.social shuts down for good on December 17.

The Business Section

Verizon Buys Frontier Fiber: Verizon is acquiring Frontier’s fiber network assets in a $20 billion deal, expanding its fiber coverage for residential and commercial customers. This move allows Verizon to enhance its competitive position in the broadband market with faster and more reliable services. The acquisition may also help Verizon reclaim some of the Fios business that Frontier took over in 2015. With the deal, Verizon will gain access to a broader infrastructure, boosting its market reach. The acquisition is pending regulatory approval.

NWN Carousel Buys Leverage Information Systems: Integrator NWN Carousel acquired Leverage Information Systems, strengthening its federal market presence and enabling it to serve agencies like NASA and the Department of Energy.

UJET Series D: UJET completed a Series D fundraising round. Its existing investors participated, including Google, Kleiner, and Ericsson, plus a few additional investors. UJET can be seen as two companies. It has elements of an agile startup and a tech behemoth (within Google). Although both companies offer the same core solution, each appeals to different buyers. What drives UJET are generative AI, a mobile-first approach to CX, and Google branding (regardless of which UJET you work with). UJET says the new funding will be used to expand CX orchestration, hyper-personalization, and hiring.

Gladly Raise: Gladly provides customer support management solutions that aggregate interactions into a single record. Venture capital firm AVP led a $40M funding round. Gladly targets retailers and direct-to-consumer brands with legacy, ticket-based systems.

Gemini CX: Google announced Gemini as a core part of its CX solutions — I think. Michels isn’t clear what they announced at the Gemini at Work showcase event, which highlighted Gemini-powered CX CCAI and CCAIP solutions. My favorite demo was how the Gemini bot left the customer with a low sentiment score, but after a seamless escalation, the human agent was able to improve things.

HP Buys Vyopta: Vyopta (a company specializing in collaboration intelligence and analytics) announced that it was purchased by HP. This is a deal Vyopta has sought for years. Danto wonders if other manufacturers will be as open with their APIs and as willing to work with Vyopta once they are a part of HP. This seems like a huge opportunity for other independent collaboration monitoring firms, like IR, for example.

Cvent Buys Splash: Cvent announced that it acquired Splash, an event marketing technology company known for its tools that enhance attendee engagement and streamline event promotion. This acquisition is set to strengthen Cvent’s portfolio by integrating Splash’s capabilities in event marketing, providing more comprehensive solutions for event planners. Michels would prefer to see these acquisitions be by UCaaS providers.

Playvox by NICE: A few months ago, there were unconfirmed rumors that NICE had acquired Playvox. It’s true. The “Playvox by NICE” website has been updated to say, “Follow us at NICE for updates that can help drive success in this dynamic landscape.” This summer, Playvox was recognized as G2 Global Leader in Contact Center Quality Assurance and Workforce Management.

Leadership Changes

UJET named Vasili Triant as co-CEO with Anand Janefalkar (so Founder Anand can focus more on product and engineering). At its annual user conference in Las Vegas, Calabrio announced a permanent CEO, Dave Rhodes. Joel Martins continues as CTO.

Sonalee Parekh has resigned as CFO at RingCentral. The company has initiated a search to identify a successor; the search will include internal and external candidates.

Dorthe Krogh Jensen, the CMO at EPOS/Demant, has announced that she is leaving the organization. She disclosed that EPOS has been undergoing a “strategic review,” which probably means looking for a buyer or investor.

Channel leader Nick Tidd, redundant at HP, has joined Zoom as its Head of Global Channels GTM.

The drama continues at OpenAI. CTO Mira Murati announced she’s leaving the firm ”to create the time and space” for herself. Soon after, OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and Vice President of Research Barret Zoph also announced their decisions to exit. So much turmoil, and before a new funding round in the billions? OpenAI is really putting HBO’s “Succession” to shame. There’s something evil in the hottest AI startup that’s determined to change the world.

Google is spending $2.7B to rehire Noam Shazeer, a former employee who played a key role in the rise of AI before founding Character.AI. He will work on Gemini, Google’s next-generation AI technology. Google also licensed Character.AI’s technology as part of the deal. Despite recent widespread layoffs in the tech industry, leading companies are investing heavily in hiring AI scientists. In 2023, OpenAI made headlines by offering Google employees lucrative pay packages of $10M to join.

Goodreads

KPMG CEO Outlook Global CEOs surveyed say “never mind” to the talk of a hybrid future.
Europe’s new resilience regime: The race to get ready for DORA EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act
Verizon looks to expand Fios with $20 billion purchase of Frontier The deal may see Verizon claw back some of the Fios business that Frontier acquired in 2015.
Google and Apple Face Billions in Penalties After Losing E.U. Appeals The EU’s highest court delivered the 27-nation bloc a major victory in its yearslong campaign to regulate tech.
Facial recognition firm Clearview fined €30.5M and banned from using ‘invasive’ AI in the Netherlands Dutch authorities fined US facial recognition firm Clearview AI €30.5M for “illegally” creating a database with billions of photos of faces, which they called a “massive” rights breach.
Bluesky grows to 9M+ users Bluesky says it had over 9M users as of September 6, after adding 3M new users in the week or so since Brazil blocked X.
How the federal government became a CX champion The Biden-Harris administration’s “Time Is Money” initiative is an effort to crack down on businesses that purposefully provide poor customer service.
WhatsApp will send messages to other apps soon — here’s how it will look WhatsApp and Messenger will eventually allow calls from third-party services, too — but only in the EU.
California Schools Must Restrict Phones Under New Law Signed by Newsom Calls for crackdowns have mounted with reports of cyberbullying and studies indicating that smartphones are harmful to children’s mental health.
Asking the wrong questions With fundamental technology change, we don’t so much get our predictions wrong as make predictions about the wrong things.
Using Microsoft Copilot Was a Bad Idea I stopped using Copilot after two months. And it’s because of this.
Return to office and dying on the job Cory Doctorow calls out Wells Fargo in the RTO mess highlighted by Denise Prudhomme’s death. Her body wasn’t discovered for four days, despite massive in-office surveillance.
In their plaintive call for a return to the office, CEOs reveal how little they are needed Like New Year’s resolutions, these RTO announcements are quickly forgotten. Despite the increasing rate of RTO mandates, the rate of remote work has barely changed since lockdowns ended three years ago.
‘Three New York Cities’ Worth of Power: AI Is Stressing the Grid Across the nation, utilities are worried about expanding the overburdened power grid, citing high costs and concerns about commitment from data center projects.
Touch Screens Are Over. Even Apple Is Bringing Back Buttons Product designers are (thankfully) embracing physical buttons again.

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By Dave Michels

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