Insider

Insider Report January 2024

February 05, 2024 by Dave Michels

Curated Enterprise Communications News and Insights from January 2024

Feature

The Dawn of a New Epoch/Era: Fads and trends come and go, but epochs change less frequently. In terms of computing, we have gone through mainframes, minis, PCs, networked/internet, and smartphones, and generative AI appears to be next. The new tech dominated headlines and press releases throughout 2023. There’s been a lot of hype, but as the dust starts to settle, it’s not only what we thought, but something much bigger.

The smartphone era has been great, and smartphones certainly aren’t disappearing — but neither did mainframes, minis, or PCs. Generative AI is rapidly evolving and changing everything.

Many of us thought the contact center was ground zero for generative AI. It was a reasonable conclusion. Not only did most of us learn about generative AI from a chatbot, the disruptor of choice in the contact center, but the Open AI CEO said customer service agents are a prime example of a career that will be displaced. Making matters worse, AI professionals keep talking about “AI agents.”

The contact center will be disrupted, but not from a next-generation IVA. What’s really occurring is that generative AI is changing UIs and outputs to outcome-based models. While contact center providers rolled out summarization, Microsoft exceeded $100M in annual recurring revenue from GitHub Copilot. Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018 for $7.5B. Microsoft has been cautious with GitHub, as it was vendor-agnostic pre-acquisition, and did not require users to move to Azure.

Copilot allows users and organizations to create code faster. It’s rapidly becoming a necessity for programmers, akin to spelling and grammar tools for writers. Copilot is allowing Microsoft to upsell GitHub users to services that do require an Azure account. Last month, Microsoft announced that its GitHub Copilot subscribers grew 30% QoQ. It previously reported that it had 1.3M paid subscribers and 50K organizations using GitHub Copilot Business.

Last week, ServiceNow reported its Q4 results and stated, “Our gen AI products drove the largest net new annual contract value contribution for our first full quarter of any of our new product family releases ever.” CEO Bill McDermott said, “ServiceNow’s developers have been using text to code for several months. They are generating high-quality code using text to describe the type of code they want. This has increased our developer innovation speed by 52%.” MongoDB and Snowflake also announced accelerations in revenue as a result of AI.

Generative AI was visible all over CES. A great example is the rabbit r1 (branded in lowercase). This $200 AI smartphone accessory with a primitive display, camera, and low-spec hardware stole the show. The rabbit is designed to work with a smartphone. It’s a gen AI front-end for your phone. Three compelling demos in the video include:

A video of what’s in the fridge with a request for suggestions for nutritious recipes.
Here’s a table of job candidates. Can you add and populate a column “how the candidate found out about the company”?
Plan a family trip to London.

Each of these demos requires the r1 to complete a task by using multiple, unspecified applications and data sources. (You can view the rabbit demo here.) While the demos are compelling, I seriously doubt this device is as useful as the demo suggests. Successfully disintermediating apps has been an elusive goal. This convoluted approach is necessary today, but the tech will mature, and the concept is here to stay.

In the demo of a planned family trip to London, it would have to access prices and options across multiple websites and applications. The demo worked flawlessly, but realistically, we are not there yet. When the internet made it possible to bypass travel agents in the ’90s, we weren’t really ready. Airlines used specialized printers for tickets. Travel reservations were built for a professional agent who had to know the carrier routes and an esoteric UI. The rabbit can query age-specific activities, but getting this right, including commute times, ticket availability, and more, is unlikely. The rabbit can book planes, cars, hotels, restaurants, and activities, but changes will be very difficult as each has different cancellation rules.

A better example might have been a family trip to Lincoln, Nebraska — fewer options with shorter distances between them will increase the odds of success.

Over the next several years, we will clear these obstacles. Expedia, Travelocity, and Booking were each born in the ’90s with a simple UI. Also in the ’90s, airlines moved past their ticket printers, and they eliminated printed ticket requirements completely soon after. Booking travel no longer requires an expert, and travel agents have largely been disintermediated. However, generative AI may bring them back — maybe not the actual human agents, but the intermediary with a repository of travel information and options necessary to knowledgeably book and manage a family vacation. The goalposts are moving away from baby-step data toward outcomes.

Generative AI is poised to generate a new era for tech. This means new approaches, new skills, a new group of leaders, and a new wave of startups. Enterprise communications will change in many ways, but mostly in how it is architected and generated. Gen AI won’t replace humans in most jobs, but it will change the way we work in many ways. We are already seeing evidence of this, with meeting summaries, for example, that start new collaborative workflows.

Final thought: I could not help but compare the demo of the rabbit r1 to last month’s (fake) demo of Google’s Gemini AI. The two have very little in common other than a human-like, outcome-based interaction with computers.

General

Layoffs: We are starting 2024 a bit gloomier than I expected, with a tremendous number of layoffs. Duolingo cut 10%, Twitch cut 500, Amazon and Google both cut hundreds, Discord cut 17%, and Twilio did its third round of layoffs, which included its CEO. The cuts have been across sectors, too.

Déjà vu again, or is it? Last year started with big cuts, too, but they were much more significant. Google cut 1,000 jobs this month, but it was 12,000 a year ago. Google and Amazon are cutting their voice assistant teams. Amazon is making cuts in MGM studios. Everyone is hiring in AI.

Across the board, the job market is steady. The unemployment rate in the US was 3.7% in December. And tech job unemployment is lower, at just 2.3%, according to an analysis from CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for the US IT industry. There are plenty of good indicators, but they are built on a shaky foundation.

Copilot Pro for the Rest of Us: Microsoft was pretty quick to launch Copilot for its enterprise customers, but the SMB show finally dropped. It’s actually quite similar to the offer from Open AI. Microsoft launched Copilot Pro and teased a new Copilot GPT Builder for custom, specialized versions of Copilot.

Copilot Pro is $20/mo and has no minimum user requirement. It offers access to AI-powered features inside Office apps. The enterprise and SMB versions of Copilot look pretty similar. The new Pro version isn’t powered by Microsoft’s Graph technology, which means some limitations, such as generating a PPT.

Copilot Key: Microsoft wants every Copilot user to have a Copilot key on their keyboard. It really should be an AI Assistant key. Microsoft made a fortune when it added the Windows Key, or was it the Start key, back in ’95. Only MS hardware, a small yet highly profitable division at Microsoft, was prepared. The modern PC keyboard makes no sense, but it’s entrenched. I would be much more supportive of a full redesign. We’ve put up with decades of F1-F12, no keys for print, save, undo, redo, cut, paste, or search, yet the world needs a Copilot key? When I need Copilot, I naturally gravitate toward CTRL-SHIFT-F3.

The Days of Our Lives: Three new online calendars launched this month: Notion, Amie, and HEY. Notion Calendar launched with tens of millions of existing users. Each of these has some new compelling benefits in views and capabilities.

Over the past 10 years or so, I have written multiple posts about how little innovation occurs in email and calendaring. Though the apps are critical, there’s essentially a comfortable duopoly that discourages innovation. Over the past few years, we’ve seen some new ideas in both clients and servers, but these apps remain very dumb.

The primary benefit of our online calendars remains stuck on the ability to accept and decline emailed calendar invitations and the sharing of free/busy times. Other than that, our online calendars don’t do much more than their paper ancestors.

Many apps want to reduce the need for app switching — how about calendar, tasks, and notes? The focus of so many AI technologies is on individual and team productivity. Many vendors are now positioning AI technology as an assistant, yet the most common assistants in the workplace are focused on calendaring.

We should expect so much more from these cloud-delivered services in 2024. Examples include routine needs such as blocking an hour on Tuesday for an errand — any hour will do, or booking backup events that only appear if a primary event is canceled. Our online calendars have no concept of commute time (or that it can vary significantly). The calendar is absolutely overdue for a major upgrade.

S4B Forever: Skype for Business 2019 Server and client ended mainstream support on Jan. 9, 2024. We will always have Lync.

A Year of Super Bing! 2023 was a year of understanding generative AI. Just over a year ago, Microsoft was poised to disrupt Google with its OpenAI turbo-charged Bing. The idea was that Bing would simply return whatever you needed (outcome) rather than a series of links (and ads). The threat was real: Google panicked and rushed out Bard, and several posts suggested that fat and lazy Google deserved to be disrupted.

In the Insider Report last year, I wrote, “I still see disruption of Google Search, but I appreciate Google’s panic. The company has a weak track record of bringing new products to fruition, and eventually, someone will invent a better solution for search. … Rather than innovative disruption, this is a story of which company is better at missing its opportunities.”

A year later, Bing’s market share is pretty much the same. Bard is still in closed trials. The search engine making headway with generative AI is Perplexity. The company recently raised $74M, which valued the company at $520M. This is really a hard problem to solve. In addition to hallucinations, there’s also the issue that sometimes the search results are part of the discovery process.

Another challenge is that search is an advertising-based model. Perplexity has a Pro model with added features, but none is going to out-Google Google with paid search. Ads could be inserted into search before the results, much like YouTube inserts ads before the requested video. I wonder if generative AI could be trained to insert the ads directly into its response. “What is a beach?” “A dangerous place without Coppertone sun protection.”

No More Cookies? Google has begun testing a new version of Chrome that severely restricts/breaks cookies. This was promised some time ago. Cookies sound so sweet and innocent, but they are the scourge of the internet. They are how various websites track your online behavior. We like cookies because the sites remember us and don’t make us log in on every visit, but we also hate that a simple query about new shoes has those very shoes chasing us on site after site for weeks.

Restricting cookies will increase privacy and kneecap targeted ads. Remember, Google is first and foremost an advertising company, so it’s effectively playing with fire. By the end of 2024, Google plans to remove cookies for anyone (that isn’t Google) who uses Chrome. The ramifications are huge. Google will still be able to track you, but third-party marketers, ad tech firms, and other digital players will not.

We don’t quite know where this is going. If advertisers can’t track and target, what will they do? How will this impact other use cases? Will it be a better experience? Will it spark a new browser war? All we know is that this is going to be big — unless Google aborts the project, which could also happen.

Revenue: The problem with the internet is that it keeps disrupting revenue models. It was so much easier when musicians made money by selling 8-tracks. Above, we have advertising and search revenue at risk. This month, there were significant layoffs in the news industry. Thousands of reporters lost their jobs as news revenue dried up. This is complicated, but who pays for news? Broadcast is dying. The popular streaming services don’t have news. Publishers insisted Facebook should pay, but instead, the company deemphasized news. Another form of news revenue is affiliate links. Best Toasters in Wirecutter might have affiliate links, but AI-generated search results won’t have those links — or may substitute their own.

Meetings and Messaging

ISE24: Integrated Systems Europe is a huge conference. Although it spans UCaaS, A/V, automation, and more, it has a strong focus on enterprise collaboration and meetings. There were not a lot of announcements there. Crestron and Barco had new products (covered below). A lot of the stands were showing multicamera solutions, and there’s no shortage of video bars.

Quick rundown: HP Poly showed bundles; the best was probably the R30, remote, and dock bundle. I expect new products from the combined company in 2024. Neat had its center-of-room camera on display. Note: room, not table. The last two demos I’ve seen show the camera hanging. That’s a clever adaptation; I have concerns about placing these cameras on the table. It was particularly nice seeing Janine Pelosi, the new CEO of Neat (video). Logi’s Sight AI camera (tabletop solution) is now certified for MS Teams and Zoom Rooms.

HP was showing 3 x E70s running a Zoom Intelligent Director. Crestron had a new lite version of 1 Beyond that switched between two cameras for the better angle. Cisco was demonstrating Cinematic experiences. The Cisco and Crestron multicam solutions work on multiple meeting platforms.

As I walked from stand to stand, I kept hearing “Teams and Zoom.” These competitors, likely accidentally, have created a mutually beneficial ecosystem. Even at the Cisco booth, I heard how its devices support Teams and Zoom. I don’t really get why no one mentions other apps.

Crestron is in the Microsoft and Zoom ecosystem but has a few things in common with Cisco. Both companies have developed multicamera solutions that are meeting service-independent. Also, both were showing off expanded room control capabilities.

I came across three new video bars from DTEN, Barco, and Boom (more below). This category, instigated by Poly five years ago, has become quite crowded. DTEN was showing its bar hanging vertically between two screens. This gives it an eye-level camera. Barco tied its Videobar to its ClickShare line.

ISE is a European conference, and many vendors were openly showing off sustainability features. Logi has gone all in on recycled plastics. Its commitment has expanded across its video portfolio, and it’s also documenting carbon in new labeling. Cisco was showing how Webex Control Hub can help an organization measure and reduce its emissions. Barco’s new Videobars are carbon neutral. These considerations are far more important to Europeans than Americans.

Pexip was showing a number of upgrades to its Teams experience, including a new SIP dial for legacy systems that can skip the whole composite video interface (CVI) thing. Pexip also had a new UI for Teams and some improved capabilities for highly secure meetings.

It was nice to see Video Window at ISE. I’ve always been a fan of persistent video. Cisco had a 22:9 Samsung display in its stand, demonstrating its commitment to Samsung and its new Front Row support on Teams Rooms. Zoom stood out by showing its contact center and Events solutions; both appeared popular at the booth.

A final point worth mentioning is that the supply chain seems to be flowing again. The vendors have products available. Previously announced products, such as the Crestron Videobar 70, are now available. I even ran into Tymphany scouts seeking leads.

Boom: Boom Collaboration launched an additional HALO video bar for larger rooms. The Boom HALO features a 4K UHD camera, 120-degree wide-angle field of view, 10x zoom, six-microphone array, and high-fidelity speakers.

Barco Has a Bar: Actually, two. This is long overdue — Barco is an established leader in video and has done exceptionally well with conference content sharing (ClickShare). The company finally combined its skills with two ClickShare Videobars (Core and Pro). Among the Pro’s additional features are speaker framing, touchback, and dual screen. Both claim to be carbon neutral.

These are nice-looking, well-designed bars. I like that they are running Linux instead of Android. I like that they are carbon neutral. It makes sense that they are tied to the ClickShare brand (and base). However, the need for ClickShare is disappearing as collaboration apps have in-app sharing (ClickShare buttons are compatible and optional). But that’s why it makes sense for Barco to evolve the ClickShare form factor and value. The bars are not yet certified for any conferencing platforms.

Crestron Updates: I will highlight three product announcements from Crestron at ISE24. 1) Four new 1 Beyond Cameras. A 12x and 20x with PTZ or intelligent framing options, 2) an improved “preset” capability that uses AI instead of firm presets, and 3) access to room controls from a Zoom Room controller.

DTEN Bar: The collaboration solutions provider expanded its videoconferencing product line with the DTEN Bar and DTEN Mate. These are both intended for small, seven-participant rooms. The DTEN Bar has an AI-powered 4K camera system that can be flipped 360 degrees, a 12-microphone array, front-facing stereo speakers, built-in video meeting software, and dual-display support. The DTEN Mate is a tabletop meeting controller. The solution is bring-your-own-device capable and already certified for use with Zoom Rooms, with certification for Microsoft Teams expected in early 2024. DTEN has come a long way. The first products I saw from them were junk.

HP Poly R30 Plus: The newest bundle from HP Poly is the R30 Plus. It includes an R30 room system, a remote, and an HP G5 USB-C dock. The dock is similar to the Logi Dock but without a speaker, so it’s suitable for under-desk mounting. 2023 was really a bundle year for the combined company. I am expecting net new products to launch in 2024.

Jabra+ For Admins: Jabra announced Jabra+ for Admins, cloud-based remote monitoring and management of meeting rooms and devices. It gives IT administrators visibility and control over settings, firmware, and insights for both of Jabra’s room systems. Jabra+ for Admins for meeting rooms and video devices is currently available via an Early Adopter Program, with wider availability this summer. The platform will expand to personal devices later this year. No pricing information was announced.

Jabra intends to be the first Android video bar on Microsoft’s new version of Android. Microsoft’s MDEP (Microsoft Devices Ecosystem Platform) allows Microsoft to ensure that the loaded Android meets its security requirements. This was a blow to several early bar pioneers, such as Poly and Logi, that had invested heavily in Android. Cisco (and now Barco) use Linux, so they can load Microsoft’s Android instance within Linux without rework.

Logi Meet: Google Meet is now available on Logi Android devices. This is almost comical. Despite everyone else embracing it, Google refused to support Android-based meeting rooms on Meet. Google Meet was ChromeOS all the way, but someone finally realized they were missing features and economies of scale. Last year, Poly was the first to support Meet on an Android Bar. Now it’s Logi’s turn. Meet the Rally Bar, Rally Bar Mini, and Tap IP.

Other Updates:

8x8 Meetings AI: 8x8 announced the addition of AI-powered video meeting capabilities to the 8x8 XCaaS platform, enabling users to access real-time AI transcriptions, smart summaries, and follow-up action items for enhanced collaboration during and after meetings. Long overdue. 8x8 aggressively expanded its video capabilities in 2018 with the acquisition of Jitsi but shifted soon after to other priorities.

Apple Vision Pro: Just before a string of CES keynotes where Apple did not participate, the company announced that its Vision Pro headset would launch on Feb. 2. CES did have lots of headsets this year. Models were on display from XREAL, TCL, Asus, and Sony. But none of these are as high-end as Apple’s Vision Pro.

Early reviews confirm bugs and some very weird behaviors that need to be addressed. For example, the digital avatar appears to be “freaky.” The Vision Pro starts at $3,500. Some say too high, but I think it makes sense. We are nowhere near mass adoption of VR, so we may as well start the revolution with excellent devices and narrow use cases. Among the 600 or so apps available on launch are VR meetings from Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. TechCrunch was particularly impressed with Zoom’s integration. Microsoft has also made Microsoft Copilot, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Loop available on Apple Vision Pro.

Customer Engagement

8x8: The XCaaS enhancements include AI-generated post-meeting smart summaries and action items, as well as AI summarization beta for 8x8 Speech Analytics. With omnichannel upgrades, agents can now reply to SMS and WhatsApp messages, initiate SMS, and receive screen pop-up contextual information for these channels while using the 8x8 for Salesforce or 8x8 for Microsoft Dynamics integrations. Agents are getting better director search capabilities and improved email handling. Supervisor Workspace now supports seven different languages.

8x8 also made some updates to CPaaS capabilities, including a feature that evaluates the legitimacy of phone numbers. Its SMS extension in the Cognigy marketplace allows users to integrate SMS messaging into conversation workflows. A new integration with MoEngage provides automated WhatsApp campaigns.

Five9 ICX GCP: Five9 announced that its Intelligent CX Platform is now available on Google Cloud Marketplace. This simplifies procurement and billing for Google Cloud customers. The news is that the Marketplace, Five9, and Google Cloud have had a long relationship.

Balto Sees All: Balto expands from audio to vision with screen recording. This is a broad opportunity for CCaaS providers, and many jumped on the Chrome CER program; Google has not previously supported screen recording on Chrome. Balto was featured in the Innovation Showcase at EC22.

Amazon Connect Updates: CC managers can now join ongoing chats and have new granular controls for historical metrics. More granular billing improvements give customers greater visibility into their Amazon Connect bill. The Amazon task management system can now pause tasks. Amazon also updated its Skills-based routing to target the proficiency of agents. This allows for a series of timed routing steps so that when the targeted set of agents is not available, routing progressively expands to a broader pool of agents to find the best match.

Cognigy on Azure: Cognigy announced that its platform is now available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. This integration provides for streamlined deployment and management. Cognigy is rapidly expanding into enterprise accounts. With Azure, businesses can scale their conversational AI operations as required.

UCaaS

The New DISH: EchoStar finalized its purchase of DISH Network on the last day of December. The merger, which the companies announced in August, makes the DISH satellite TV service a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar again. DISH has been pivoting to 5G after buying Boost Mobile and starting Project Genesis.

The new reorg is intended to provide combined operational and engineering synergies to create a compelling global offering that connects consumers to internet, wireless phone service, streaming, and OTT services. DISH/EchoStar founder Charlie Ergen had more than 90% of the voting stock of both companies and more than 50% of the equity, so the deal marks “no substantial change of ownership or control.” DISH announced in June that it had met its goal of covering 70% of the US population. The company has to hit 75% by June 2025 to meet its next regulator-set deadline.

Starlink Calls Home: Elon Musk will become the richest man in the world many times more because of Starlink. Tesla and his rockets are cool, but Starlink dwarfs them both. He has built an extraordinary global communications network, the biggest the world has ever seen. Competitors are coming but are far behind. This month, Starlink successfully sent and received text messages through a Direct to Cell satellite launched just six days prior.

Starlink intends to launch six satellites that can provide cell transmissions to standard LTE phones. These satellites use innovative custom silicon, phased array antennas, and advanced software algorithms that overcome the limitations of cell phone antennas and weak signals. They call them “cellphone towers in space.” T-Mobile is the first to interconnect, but there will be many global partners.

Carriers and CPaaS

Affordable Connectivity Program Disconnects: The FCC will wind down the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) that offers broadband discounts to people with low incomes. The bipartisan program was not terminated, but not funded by Congress. Republican members of Congress blasted the ACP last month, accusing the FCC of being "wasteful." As of now, the FCC said it "expects funding to run out in May.” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel reported that 23M households are enrolled in the discount program.

A New Bird: MessageBird rebranded as Bird and dropped its pants. As I wrote last month, CPaaS is racing to zero, so you’d better have low costs or a compelling bundle. MessageBird is betting on the bundle. Founder and CEO Robert Vis told TechCrunch, “Our view is much more that the ability to do something with the channel is way more important than actually the channel in itself.” His goal is for Bird to provide conveniences on top of the channel. Pricing on Bird CRM for marketing, sales, and payments on email, SMS and WhatsApp is being slashed with a 40-90% discount, with SMS at 90%. This is going to put tremendous pressure on most, if not all, CPaaS providers — including distressed Twilio.

Separately, CEO Bird posted his intent to acquire a firm currently in receipt of an electronic money institution (EMI) or payment institution (PI) license — ideally, a firm with revenues up to $5M. So, among those conveniences on top of the channel are payment capabilities.

Infobip AI Journeys: The CPaaS provider launched an AI Hub. It enables brands to build end-to-end conversational customer journeys with minimal to no coding knowledge. It leverages an integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model through Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.

CC architects can use CPaaS to plug some gaps in their CC/CCaaS solutions, but it seems likely that every CC/CCaaS solution will offer a similar suite of generative AI solutions. Given that there is no shortage of options to solve these problems, the question becomes, is it better to solve these challenges with the agent platform or the provider of channels?

Verizon RCS: Following AT&T and T-Mobile (US), Verizon announced it will switch to Google Jibe for RCS. Verizon is upgrading from its own RCS backend to Google for improved reliability and interoperability. With iPhones supporting RCS “sometime in 2024,” businesses will soon be able to reliably send richly formatted text messages to customers, including barcodes. This will likely become an important channel in CX in 2025.

The Business Section

Nextiva and Thrio: Nextiva (UCaaS) acquired Thrio (CC software). The deal aims to help close the customer experience technology gap between small and large companies. The acquisition follows Nextiva’s 2023 purchase of Simplify360 (AI). Thrio offers a variety of message services, including inbound and outbound voice, SMS text, chat, email, and social interactions.

Bloomberg: Nextiva, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, was valued at $2.7B in 2021 after it announced a $200M raise from Goldman Sachs. The company’s revenue at the time was $250M and has since increased by $100M, a spokesperson said. Thrio, which was valued at $60M in 2022 following a $12M Series A funding round, had substantial growth prior to the acquisition, the spokesperson added.

Genesys and Radarr: Genesys announced its intent to acquire Radarr, a Singapore-based provider of social and digital listening services. Not a lot of details on Radarr; Genesys is acquiring 60 employees, so looks like a small acquisition. Genesys has become a FrankenCCaaS, built primarily on acquired assets. Remember, its core product, Genesys Cloud, was also acquired. It ended development of its native solution, Genesys Multicloud. The acquisition gives credence to Sprinklr, which started in social listening and expanded into CX. Digital channels are rapidly gaining on voice.

Evidently, the Genesys 360-degree view of customers was missing a few degrees. Upon integration of Radarr, Genesys Cloud customers will have more access to conversation streams from public social media posts across multiple platforms, including Apple App Store, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Google Play, Google Business Profile (formerly Google my Business), and more. However, Genesys acquired Pointillist in 2021 and is still working on that integration.

Zendesk x 2: Zendesk acquired two companies this month. The acquisition of Klaus, plus its June 2023 acquisition of Tymeshift, creates its WEM suite. Klaus provides AI-based quality monitoring. It can score 100% of customer interactions and potentially pinpoint positive or negative issues, sentiment, and identity drivers of churn. Klaus is a low-risk acquisition as the companies know each other well. Klaus is an alumnus of Zendesk’s startup incubator program. Also, the companies had a preexisting partner relationship.

Also this month, Zendesk acquired Zopim chat. The combined engineering team is creating a new, native, embedded version of the chat agent experience (expected in May) that will be available to customers under a freemium model. Zendesk chat will continue to be supported for now.

Permira is a major investor in both Zendesk and Genesys. I had assumed the two companies might start to share IP or even combine. Instead, both companies are building out their portfolios with separate acquisitions.

Archtop Fiber/Warwick Valley Telephone: Archtop closed its third acquisition of a regional carrier with Warwick Valley Telephone. Archtop intends to provide telecommunications services to customers in several NY and NJ regions via high-speed fiber. Archtop previously acquired Hancock Telephone and GTel, both in NY.

CX with a Bang: VC Anand Chandrasekaran at General Catalyst hatched a new CX provider this month. The investment firm has a strategic focus on “scaled, legacy sectors where technology – and especially AI – can have an immediate, transformative effect.” The VC firm believes the Contact Center sector has been “slow to innovate.” This is based on CCaaS penetration (of legacy) being only 12-15%. That’s low compared to the CRM sector with cloud adoption at 50-55% (General Catalyst cites Gartner, but these stats seem low). GC cites Statista estimates for the value of contact center billings to grow from $460B in 2022 to $741B in 2030.

The new firm, Crescendo, is being billed as a “vertically integrated, AI-native contact center business.” The key execs are Andy Lee, Matt Price, and Dr. Slava Zhakov. Andy founded Alorica, a Gartner MQ Leader in BPOs. Matt served time at Zendesk. Slava escaped from Genesys. Other executives include Tod Famous, Slava Sayko, and Luke Derrin. Zhakov’s current company, Enegel.ai, was absorbed into Crescendo. Don’t confuse Crescendo with Crexendo.

Leadership Changes

Twilio promoted Khozema Shipchandler as its new CEO. Shipchandler succeeds Jeff Lawson, the company's co-founder, who is stepping down as CEO and board member.

I think it’s tragic when a founder is voted out. That didn’t quite happen in this case, but the threat was real. The activist investors were Legion and Anson Funds, and they only held about $40M-$50M of the stock each. Lawson had a hell of a run, though. He founded a company 15 years ago, and the world had never seen anything like it. He’s fought off software giants and carriers, and his efforts created a new Gartner MQ where Twilio occupies the top right.

I like to think Jeff was tired and chose not to fight. The past few years have been exhausting. When the pirates insist on a plank walk, sometimes a swan dive is appropriate. Twilio’s stock has dropped by 90% since early 2021. His super-voting shares expired (his voting power shrank from 21.8% to 3.7%) last June. He has more competitors on the trad CPaaS side than ever, and his pivot up the stack requires much more capital in a dry market. He just did his third round of layoffs, and he’s been dismembering his company with asset sales and shutdowns. To the ungrateful investors: “Have fun storming the castle.”

Financial analysts and industry analysts look at companies very differently. The stock went up 7.5% on the news of Jeff’s departure, but the company’s long-term opportunity diminished by much more. CPaaS is a race to the bottom, so you better have low costs or a powerful bundle — and there lies the rub. Jeff was counting on free money to build hooks with Flex, Segment, and other data-intensive applications. Shipchandler is the logical successor, but he will be under equal pressure, with less experience and vision.

Jeff is too young and too smart to hang up his coding gloves. Maybe he will reunite with Bezos at Blue Origin. Perhaps, like Jobs, he will eventually return to Twilio to return it to glory. I can’t wait to see what Jeff builds next.

Niklas Heuveldop was named CEO of Vonage. He succeeds Rory Reed. The stated strategy of the acquisition was for Ericsson to leverage Vonage’s extensive CPaaS capabilities to enrich its 5G network services. Last year, the company launched a new reseller program aimed at wireless providers. Wireless providers could also complement 5G programmability with Vonage’s powerful and brandable communications applications.

Heuveldop had headed Ericsson NA since 2017, and during his term won a $14B deal with AT&T. In Q4, Vonage reported a 2% increase in revenue YoY, so Ericsson is likely looking to Heuveldop to accelerate revenue. Though Heuveldop hasn’t indicated any changes yet, presumably he will target growth from Ericsson’s channel more than Vonage’s SMB-enterprise efforts.

Rich Veldran was promoted from CFO to CEO of GoTo — the third CEO of GoTo in two years. Veldran replaces Paddy Srinivasan, who is stepping down from his role after nearly a decade with the company. Mr. Veldran has experience in finance and operations. He previously held positions at Dun & Bradstreet, ADP, and Procter & Gamble, and most recently was a Senior Advisor and Executive Coach with Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

The cofounder and CTO of Slack is finally leaving. I figured Slack was more or less done last year after 1) CEO and cofounder Stewart left, 2) Bret Taylor, the Salesforce co-president and sponsor of the Slack acquisition, departed, 3) the new Salesforce veteran that was appointed CEO of Slack departed to head an also-ran online dating app, and 4) activist investors pressuring CEO Benioff to return focus on core CRM. The piece that didn’t fit was why Cal Henderson was (well hidden and) still at Slack. Technically, he remains at Slack until March 1, but I bet someone has already measured his office. Salesforce co-founder and CTO Parker Harris will become the new CTO of Slack.

The current CEO of Slack is Denise Dresser, a 12-year Salesforce veteran. The Chief Product Officer, Noah Weiss, is an eight-year Salesforce veteran, and now the CTO is a Salesforce founder. They closed the recently remodeled Slack offices. Of the eight leaders listed on the Slack leadership page, only one was at Slack before its acquisition by Salesforce. Cal has not indicated where he’s taking his plaid shirts next.

A lot of changes at Dialpad. Cari Goodrich was named VP of Marketing. She previously was Head of Growth and Customer Programs for a division of Google Cloud. She replaces Morgan Norman. Norman was there for three years. I expect Dialpad will announce a NASDAQ IPO in 2024. Also, J.P. Walti is no longer the VP of Corporate Marketing. John Finch also left Dialpad and returned to RingCentral to lead product marketing customer engagement, which includes RingCX and RingSense. Finch has also worked at Zendesk and Serenova in product marketing roles.

Leadership of the HP Poly Division changed. Helen Sheirbon was named SVP Division President of HP Hybrid Systems and will be speaking at Enterprise Connect. Andy Rhodes is now SVP of the India & Growing Markets business unit. Service provider UniVoIP named Dean Manzoori as its new CEO. Cloudli Communications named Jamie Minner as its new CEO. Minner previously held the role of CRO at Sangoma. Brian Paterson joined 8x8 as Global Vice President of North America Sales. Jonathan Buckle joined Mitel as SVP Americas. Venkat Nagaswamy departed his role as CMO at Mitel. Anurag Aggarwal has joined Global Message Services as CRO. As you may recall, Robert Locascio resigned as CEO of LivePerson. We learned this month that his successor will be John Sabino. His experience includes roles as Chief Customer Officer at VMware, Chief Customer Officer at Splunk, and COO of GE Digital. Contact Center guru Laurent Philonenko (Alcatel, Genesys, Cisco, Avaya, Servion) has departed as CEO of Servion.

Goodreads

A Comprehensive Survey of Hallucination Mitigation Techniques in Large Language Models
Huawei Ends US Lobbying Operations After Years of Fighting Ban After spending $13M+ on US lobbying in the past decade, Huawei quietly shutters its in-house lobbying operation, ending an effort to overturn the US bans.
Wi-Fi 7 quietly took off while everyone was looking at AI One of the biggest benefits of Wi-Fi 7 is that it allows one device to connect to your router on multiple bands.
Microsoft is upgrading Copilot to GPT-4 Microsoft has quietly updated its Copilot artificial intelligence assistants with the latest version of OpenAI’s large language model GPT-4-Turbo.
Woman records ‘slap in the face’ firing by San Francisco tech company Remember when the movie Up in the Air came out and how foreign the concept of firing over video was? Normal now. Welcome to the age of livestreaming.
AI Girlfriends Are Here “Your devoted girlfriend, always eager to please you in every way imaginable.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
At CES, everything was AI, even when it wasn’t Whether new products use generative AI or not, slapping the AI label onto something gives the impression that a feature is new and exciting.
How design drove $10M in preorders for rabbit r1 AI hardware Lyu realized that the rabbit r1 should be “exactly not like a phone.” At this stage of AI hardware, two devices are required: a phone and something new.
The Modern AI Stack: Design Principles for the Future of Enterprise AI Architectures We are in early days, but AI is rapidly changing everything, including the enterprise tech stack. Machines are more capable of reasoning, creation, and creativity than ever before, and these new capabilities are driving enterprises to reimagine their infrastructure.
Herman Miller’s OE1 Powerbox and Power Tray A set of large battery packs that you can move around an open-plan office to power screens or PCs.
Apple is finally allowing full versions of Chrome and Firefox to run on the iPhone Apple is allowing full versions of Chrome and other browsers in iOS for iPhone and iPad — for Europeans.
Apple Takes Messaging Crackdown to Customers’ Macs Beeper Mini customers were using their Mac computers to connect to iPhone messaging on their Android phones. Now, they say Apple has blocked the messaging service on their Macs.
Social Media Is Getting Smaller—and More Treacherous Fragmented and focused social platforms might be good for helping you find a knitting community. But extremist groups are also using them to normalize darker content.
Forget Apple Vision Pro — rabbit r1 is 2024’s most exciting launch yet The r1 aims to be as close as you can currently get to having no UI at all.

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By Dave Michels

Dave is an independent analyst and founder of TalkingPointz which is focused on enterprise communications. In addition to this (free and paid) content on TalkingPointz, he contributes to industry sites, can be found at major industry events, and provides advisory services to vendors and financial analysts.