Insider Report January 2026

Curated Enterprise Communications News and Insights from January 2026

Featured

The Erosion of the Global Cloud: January 2026 marked a watershed moment for the American brand. Historically, US influence rested on a tripod of military supremacy, economic stability, and technological dominance. This month, all three legs of that stool wobbled.

The geopolitical landscape was marred by the Venezuela invasion, an event that has strained international relations and invited intense scrutiny of American foreign policy objectives. Domestically, the situation is equally fraught. The US is currently grappling with stagflation and record-low consumer confidence. This economic malaise has been punctuated by violent clashes and civil unrest in Minneapolis, painting a picture of a nation struggling with internal cohesion.

In Europe, the President insulted many European countries in a single speech. During his 70-minute address at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump characterized the continent as “not recognizable” due to decades of “unchecked mass migration,” excessive government spending, and bureaucratic overreach. He accused European nations of being ungrateful for American protection, and remarked that many in the room would be “speaking German and a little Japanese” without American protection. 

The President specifically targeted Denmark and its allies due to the dispute over Greenland. He pressured NATO leaders to facilitate the territory’s transfer to the US, warning that they could either cooperate or the US would not forget their unwillingness. He further unsettled the forum by mocking French President Emmanuel Macron’s appearance and threatening a 30% tariff on Swiss watches. 

After the speech, in a television interview, the President claimed that NATO allies were “never needed” and had intentionally stayed “a little off the front lines” during the war in Afghanistan. His comments essentially erased the service of the 1,160 allied soldiers who died alongside Americans. NATO Chief Mark Rutte pointedly reminded the President that “for every two Americans who died, there was one soldier from another NATO country who did not come back.” Leaders like UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French officials labeled the remarks “appalling” and “insulting” to the families of the fallen. 

For many, the show at Davos left European leaders ashen-faced, accelerating a continental shift toward strategic autonomy and a buy-local ethos. This was more than another trade dispute; it was spitting on graves. 

Europe has been voicing concerns over exporting its data and euros to Silicon Valley. That rhetoric has finally turned into action. The French government recently took the unprecedented step of banning American video conferencing software for internal use. While specific technical details remain sparse, the intent is clear: Internal state communications will no longer transit through American servers. France is simply acting on a sentiment that has been simmering across the continent.

We are witnessing the re-bordering of the internet. While the cloud once promised a borderless world, we are seeing a steady return to location-specific policies and services. This isn’t a radical departure from global norms; in fact, the US pioneered this defensive posture by restricting Chinese firms such as Huawei, DJI, and TikTok on national security grounds. Unfortunately, national security threats are highly subjective, so it’s hard to say Europe is wrong when they apply the same logic to ringfence their digital borders.

Usually, these buy-local attempts falter because US tech is so compelling. Historically, the moats protecting American tech giants, network effects, massive R&D budgets, and proprietary codebases were considered unassailable. However, artificial intelligence is disrupting those moats. Software development is no longer the rare art it once was. 

AI-assisted coding allows local competitors to build sophisticated platforms at a fraction of the time and cost required in the past. Most regions already have functional domestic alternatives to services like Uber. Social media is increasingly viewed as a public health hazard and a threat to the local media. The appetite for localized, regulated alternatives appears to be at an all-time high.

The takeaway for American tech providers is clear: the era of the global cloud may be ending. If American firms wish to maintain their international footprint, they must pivot from a Global-First to a Sovereign-First architecture.

We are already seeing first-movers rewarded. Amazon and NiCE are gaining traction by leaning into data residency. For example, NiCE reported that a German health insurer recently deployed its CXone on its EU Sovereign Cloud. By adhering to strict EU data residency standards, they have successfully onboarded 4.5M members in a highly regulated sector that previously viewed the cloud with skepticism.

The American brand can no longer rely on momentum or perceived necessity. European providers, in particular, will likely experience stronger demand in 2025. US firms should embrace the return of borders and start building within them. Implementing localized, sovereign data centers is becoming the price of entry.

General News

Analysis of Google Trends data published by UC Today on January 14 reveals a sharp increase in search interest for “Unified Communications” at the start of 2026. Industry analysts suggest this uptick is not driven by greenfield adoption, but rather by a “lifecycle reset” as enterprises grapple with replacing aging post-pandemic deployments. The data correlates with growing complexity in the sector, where buyers are now forced to re-evaluate their stacks due to new AI compliance requirements, data governance mandates, and the need to integrate voice data into broader agentic workflows.

Key TalkingPointz: The “set it and forget it” era of UCaaS is over. The 2020-2021 deployments are hitting renewal cycles just as AI is turning voice into a critical data asset. This spike in interest suggests IT leaders are realizing their current stacks might not support the data governance required for the next generation of AI tools.

Webex India: Cisco announced a significant expansion in India, with plans to launch Webex Contact Center services and new dedicated data centers in Mumbai and Chennai by Q2 2026. The India expansion is strategic, addressing data residency requirements in one of the world’s largest growth markets for CX and UCaaS. 

French Govt. Says Au Revoir to US Meeting Apps: France’s government is moving to replace Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and all other US-based real-time video communication services with a domestically developed video platform across all state services by 2027, citing security and sovereignty concerns. Visio has already been rolled out to tens of thousands of civil servants and is considered a cornerstone of France’s drive for digital independence. Visio appears to be based on Livekit, a US-based, open-source, WebRTC video solution. 

The move aligns with a broader European push to reduce dependence on US providers. The shift signals that European governments are willing to abandon mainstream services to preserve data and communications sovereignty. It also shows how destabilizing the current US government has been to international commerce and camaraderie. This exit may be the tip of the spear.

Microsoft Licensing Changes Coming in April: Microsoft is moving most Microsoft Places end-user features out of Teams Premium and into standard Teams/Office licenses, and updating the Shared Space license to reflect actual rooms and desks rather than users. Advanced town hall and webinar capabilities are now included in the core Teams Enterprise license, with separate attendee capacity packs for large events. Teams Premium survives but narrows into a bundle of security, compliance, AI recap/translation, queues, and admin tools. Most customers will gain core features but incur a new per-space cost for Places. (More info on Places below.) 

Sony TV Signs Off – TCL Tunes In: Sony has signed a non-binding MOU to spin off its entire home entertainment hardware business into a joint venture with TCL, with launch planned for 2027. Sony will own 49% and TCL 51%. TCL is one of only a few panel makers that produce large TV glass. This arrangement is TCL’s cost structure and distribution + one of the most storied TV badges coming together (watch Samsung and LG closely). While the displays are sharp, the line between these brands is about to get very blurry, marking the end of an era, regardless of how you predict the outcome. 

White House Tech: The current White House has embraced tech (leaders). Most major tech leaders have visited the White House in the past year, including those from Amazon, Cisco, Google, and Microsoft. They finally got to Z – and Eric Yuan of Zoom was summoned to a private White House screening of the documentary “Melania.” 

CES: The annual CES spectacle took place in January. AI was everywhere. We saw intelligence embedded in hardware, from humanoid robots to agentic vehicle systems, that proactively sense and respond to our needs. Local, on-device AI was a dominant theme, with new chips enabling complex processing on the device itself, significantly improving privacy and speed. The event demonstrated that AI is no longer a separate category; it is the OS for the next generation of industrial and consumer products. Danto attended; see his talkingPointz summary here. Michels shared his thoughts here. 

Introducing LeapFrogCX: Michels is launching a new series of long-form interviews with CX leaders, including executives from CCaaS providers, enterprises, and partners. The first interview was posted with Vasili Triant, CEO of UJET. So much good stuff. More or coming.

AI News

Gemini Goes iMobile: Apple has entered a multiyear partnership with Google that will see Gemini models power the long-promised Siri overhaul and other Apple Intelligence features across its devices starting in 2026. Combined with Google’s existing presence as the default assistant on most Android phones, this effectively puts Gemini within reach of a majority of the roughly 7 billion smartphones in use worldwide, positioning Google as an early front-runner in the AI assistant race. Public reports indicate that Apple explored its own models and multiple external partners before settling on Google. 

OpenAI Launches Operator: Unlike previous Copilot iterations that acted as assistants within a sidebar, Operator is designed to independently execute multi-step workflows across applications – such as scheduling, data entry, and basic reporting – without human oversight. The launch features deep integrations with Microsoft Teams and Slack, positioning the agent as a “digital employee” rather than a tool.

OpenAI wants this to be the milestone that marks the “End of SaaS” as we know it. If software can operate itself, the user interface becomes irrelevant. It’s unlikely to happen that quickly. There is too much fear that “shadow agents” will execute unauthorized workflows. Expect 2026 to be the year of “AI Governance” as companies try to put guardrails on these autonomous workers.

The AI Might See You Now: Google and OpenAI take different paths: OpenAI has expanded into healthcare with ChatGPT Health, a dedicated space for connecting records and wellness data to interpret lab results and prepare for doctor visits, framed as assistive rather than diagnostic and wrapped in privacy promises. Google is quietly pulling AI-generated health summaries from search after they were found to give misleading, even dangerous advice. That retreat reflects mounting concern from clinicians and regulators that these summaries are oversimplified, hard to audit, and easily mistaken for authoritative guidance. Is bad advice better than no advice? 

Google Personal Assistant: Google introduced a beta Personal Intelligence feature for Gemini that turns the chatbot into a deeply personalized assistant by drawing on data from services like Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Search to answer questions in the context of an individual user’s life. The system is pitched as a move from generic Q&A to proactive help. The beta is rolling out first to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers in the US with personal Google accounts, signaling an initial consumer focus before any broader enterprise ambitions. It nudges Gemini much closer to the long-promised “digital life assistant,” but also raises fresh questions about how much intimate data users are comfortable centralizing under one AI roof, even with explicit privacy assurances.

Azure Integrates Mistral Large 3: Presumably to appease European regulators, Microsoft announced the native integration of Mistral’s latest “Large 3” model into its Azure Europe regions. The deployment guarantees that all inference processing and data residency remain strictly within the EU, with no metadata leakage to US-based OpenAI endpoints. This allows European customers to use generative AI features in Teams and Office with a non-US LLM.

By wrapping a French model (Mistral) in an American cloud (Azure), Microsoft is attempting to create a Sovereign Shield to prevent churn to local providers. The move acknowledges that, for many EU governments, the AI’s brain cannot be American, even if the hosting infrastructure is. Cloud and AI are becoming team sports, so wear the appropriate jersey when traveling. 

Zoomthropic: Zoom’s stock jumped 11% to over $95 after Baird Equity Research highlighted Zoom’s investment in Anthropic. Insider readers may recall that Zoom invested in Anthropic’s Series C round in 2023, contributing an estimated $51M when Anthropic’s valuation was $4.65B. Today, Anthropic’s valuation is estimated at around $350B, making Zoom’s stake likely worth at least a couple of billion dollars – a significant amount for a company with a $20B enterprise value.

Waymo: An autonomous Waymo taxi hit a child outside a school. White House senior adviser Stephen Miller said the child was an assassin and intended to massacre federal agents. /disregard

Meetings and AV 

David Danto is the primary author of this section. 

ISE Pre-Announcements: As Integrated Systems Europe continues to cement its role as the AV industry’s key launchpad for new solutions, more exhibitors are choosing to unveil products and features in the weeks leading up to the show. Below is a roundup of those significant early announcements. In some cases, manufacturers are pre-announcing only a portion of their products, saving others for ISE’s opening (or keeping portions of their early briefings under embargo until then). TalkingPointz will be on-site at ISE and will cover additional and embargo-lifted news from the show floor in the February Insider Report.

• AudioCodes: AudioCodes announced that it is rounding out its MDEP portfolio with a new native Teams phone that adds government-focused features, including a physical emergency button, hardware mic-off, TAA compliance, and planned GCC-High support. AudioCodes phones now can also work with Webex and Zoom. The company also updated its modular room approach with a new medium MTR bundle built with a Nureva HDL wall-mounted microphone solution and integrated smart-gallery camera options, extending MDEP coverage from small to XL rooms. The combined message is portfolio completeness – from secure phones to modular rooms to on-prem AI – signaling that AudioCodes wants to compete as a full-stack MDEP supplier rather than a peripheral supplier.

• • Cisco: Cisco is rolling out a broad ISE 2026 refresh that includes the Room Kit Pro G2, an I/O rich codec for complex, large rooms, a dual-camera Desk Pro G2 for desks and small huddle spaces, new AI agent integrations that let Control Hub data surface in tools like Copilot or ChatGPT, and the Wi-Fi 6E Wireless Phone 9821 for frontline workers. They also announced a tighter partnership with Samsung that will let integrators drop actual Samsung LED and display SKUs into Workspace Designer, streamlining room planning and joint deals. 
  • Crestron: Crestron is heading into ISE with a refresh that is less about standalone boxes and more about a modern collaboration architecture. The new Collab Compute platform introduces Intel Core Ultra Windows compute as the anchor in the room, pairing directly with the new 80 Series MDEP touch screens and the I12D intelligent dual-head camera for speaker tracking, composition, and intelligent switching. Automate VX advances with AutoMeasure deployment tools and optional Panasonic UE-100 / 150 / 160 support for large auditoriums, while the new DM NAX Intelligent Audio stack (AP100 processor with TCCM ceiling mic array, PoE speakers, and table pods) fills out the voice experience. Taken together, the portfolio forms a complete collaboration stack engineered to deploy cleanly at scale across campuses and global estates, rather than as a grab-bag of room parts. Crestron isn’t chasing novelty here; it’s asserting the role of infrastructure provider for modern hybrid spaces – consistent, global, secure, and repeatable. 

• Jabra: Jabra is extending its Evolve line with new boomless units. They are the Evolve3 75 on-ear and Evolve3 85 over-ear wireless headsets, combining ClearVoice AI voice isolation, Adaptive ANC, spatial sound, and long-life LE Audio to push its headset franchise toward AI-ready collaboration wearables. Jabra also announced a new Panacast 55 videobar that can come with an accessory speaker/microphone puck to extend its useful range.

• Logitech: Logitech is refreshing its Rally portfolio with two AI-enabled room cameras that update and improve the existing Rally Camera. Rally AI Camera Pro combines a classic optical Rally PTZ on top with a new digital AI camera on the bottom, while the slimmer Rally AI Camera keeps only the digital bar for spaces where mechanical PTZ would be overkill. Both use USB connectivity, PoE power, and a shallower design that can even be mounted in-wall if desired. Together with the original Rally Camera, which remains in the line at a lower price, the range now forms a clear good-better-best stack tuned for multi-camera deployments, visible privacy covers, and Logitech’s sustainability story. The signal to the market is that Logitech expects enterprises to mix optical and digital cameras across the same estates and wants Rally-class systems to be the default choice for those standardized fleets.

• Neat: Neat announced that Google Meet now runs natively on Neat Bar Gen 2, Neat Bar Pro, and Neat Center, with Neat Board 32, Neat Board 50, and Neat Board Pro – including touch – coming soon. The integration brings all Neat features and processing directly into the standard Google Meet interface, and it works with Gemini features like automated note-taking and in-meeting queries. For customers, this creates a straightforward way to standardize Google Meet rooms across small and large spaces using a single Neat hardware family with cloud-based management. The move strengthens Neat’s position as a serious multi-platform room endpoint vendor and gives Google Meet a more competitive, appliance-style option for enterprises that want consistent, specialized room systems instead of generic devices.
• Nureva: Nureva is extending the HDL410 coverage map and automated camera-switching features to the HDL310, bringing coordinate-based XY sound location and a live coverage map to rooms up to 30' x 30'. Using Microphone Mist and the Nureva App, IT teams can define camera zones, trigger automatic camera changes as different people speak, and verify microphone pickup without extra microphone hardware, complex DSP work, or repeated recalibration when room layouts change. This update moves a capability that was previously limited to the 4xx line into the 3xx line, keeping the HDL410 positioned for the very largest rooms while giving the HDL310 the same camera automation workflow for midsized spaces. The net effect is to make Nureva’s line easier to standardize across room sizes, which strengthens its appeal for IT groups that prefer consistent, software-driven designs over bespoke pro AV builds. 
• Q-SYS: Q-SYS is expanding its Full Stack AV Platform with new RoomSuite Modular Systems that standardize and speed up medium-to-large collaboration room deployments through a web-based, no-code workflow. It is also introducing Q-SYS Connect for Zoom Rooms to better tie touch controllers to Windows compute in divisible spaces, a new tier of mid-power MPA-Q Series network amplifiers for commercial and hospitality audio, and a new X Class Server Core aimed at large-scale entertainment and high-density audio environments. Together, these additions move Q-SYS further into repeatable, standards-based collaboration rooms while deepening its hospitality and entertainment portfolio, making it a more compelling single-platform choice for enterprises and venues looking to consolidate on one stack.
• Shure: Shure has jumped headfirst into the video collaboration market with the introduction of its new IntelliMix Bar Pro, an all-in-one video bar that combines Microflex Advance array microphones, stereo speakers, and four 4K cameras with IntelliMix View AI framing to cover medium and large rooms from a single front-of-room device. Built on Microsoft’s Device Ecosystem Platform, the Android-based bar includes onboard compute and IntelliMix DSP for noise reduction and voice isolation, with IT-focused benefits like secure, large-scale deployment and remote management via ShureCloud and integrations with tools such as ServiceNow. For buyers, this means Shure is bringing its installed-audio pedigree to the premium video bar space. It is unclear how Shure’s current video partners will respond to the new competition, but it could force some to exit.
• Sony: Sony announced its Crystal LED S Series, a new mid-market modular display system in 1.25 mm and 1.56 mm pitches with 800-nit brightness for bright rooms. The thinner modules make installation easier and work with longer cable runs. Sony is positioning the S Series as a scalable and lower-cost choice for corporate, education, and commercial spaces, shipping in late spring and debuting at ISE and InfoComm. The addition fills a gap between BRAVIA and high-end Crystal LED, signaling a stronger push into the mid-market dvLED space. Sony also introduced its BRAVIA Professional Displays BZ-P Series, a 16-model 4K HDR lineup ranging from 43 to 85 inches, featuring Deep Black Non-Glare panels and XR processing for improved visibility in bright environments. The BZ-P range brings thinner chassis, SoC-based signage, and tighter integration with Sony’s device and remote management platforms, alongside lower power use and more recycled materials. Together, the S Series and BZ-P Series let Sony cover both fixed-size pro LCD and modular dvLED walls across corporate, education, retail, and public spaces.

Barco ClickShare Hub Bundle Teams Certified: Barco has announced that its ClickShare Hub wireless room bundles with the Sennheiser TeamConnect Bar S and Bar M are now certified for Microsoft Teams Rooms. The bundles position ClickShare as a modular wireless room system rather than just a BYOD accessory, with certification supporting enterprise deployment at scale. The broader takeaway is that we do not expect this to be the only ClickShare-related MDEP announcement in the near term.

MDEP Digital Signage GA: At NRF 2026, IAdea, MediaTek, and Microsoft jointly announced the first commercial digital signage solution built on the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP). The solution pairs IAdea’s new DSM (Display Solutions on MDEP) platform with MediaTek’s Genio 720 SoC and Microsoft’s Android-based OS. The solution is aimed at menu boards, high-traffic advertising displays, and interactive kiosks. This is the first MDEP use case outside of Teams, but many more are expected. 

New Brand Pleneo: AV vendor Xilica has spun out a new brand, Pleneo, positioning it as a collaboration technology company focused on simplifying medium and large meeting rooms. In an increasingly crowded room-hub category, Pleneo gives Xilica a cleaner story for large-room standardization at scale, but it will need to prove that its system-level approach can stand out against established solutions. 

Meet, meet Gemini Voice: Google has updated Gemini for Workspace with Real-Time Voice Agent capabilities during Google Meet sessions. Unlike standard transcription, this feature allows the AI to verbally participate in the meeting when prompted, summarizing discussions or answering data queries aloud. It places an assistant/participant in every corporate meeting.

The verbal bot trick hasn’t been a big hit in meetings, but Google’s likely more interested in training users to talk to Gemini. If they can make voice the primary interface for Workspace, they might have an advantage over Microsoft Office dominance. It does make sense to leverage Gemini in meetings because Gemini is so well regarded, though Meet is barely viable. /Michels

More Upheaval at Diversified: The PE-backed top-tier AV integrator has undergone four major pivots. First, the transition from reseller to services; second, an unexpected and unexplained CEO change; third, an HQ move from NJ to TX; and now a sudden round of layoffs. The endgame at Diversified is murky at best, especially in an era when legacy AV integrators often merge or sell themselves.

MS Places GA: It took a while, but Microsoft fully released Places, its new app within the Teams ecosystem designed for hybrid work coordination. The app integrates with Outlook and Teams to manage desk booking, in-office days, and wayfinding. It uses AI to suggest the best days to come into the office based on the schedules of frequent collaborators.

Desk booking is a relatively new need associated with hybrid work styles. MS Places significantly overlaps with Zoom Reservation and Cisco Spaces. As interesting as Places looks, the category seems better served by MS partners. There are many strong vendors in desk booking and e-signage. Does MS really need to own calendaring, documents, and desk-booking? If MS wants to improve scheduling, a complete redesign of Outlook seems like a better use of its resources. Several new calendar apps use known priorities and AI to improve scheduling and reduce reliance on EAs. /Michels

CX 

Five9 and Google: Five9 and Google Cloud are expanding their partnership by adding a joint Enterprise CX AI solution that combines the Five9 Intelligent CX Platform with Google’s Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, Gemini models, and Vertex AI to unify AI, analytics, and workflows across voice and digital channels. The offer targets large enterprises already invested in Google Cloud, is sold via the Google Cloud Marketplace through private offers, and includes a coordinated go-to-market motion across verticals such as retail, financial services, and healthcare. 

There is no impact on the Google/UJET relationship. Google resells UJET CCaaS but has always worked with multiple providers. This improves the Google/Five9 relationship beyond APIs. CCaaS providers are hitching their AI story to hyperscalers, which boosts credibility and procurement ease for big buyers, but also narrows the differentiation gap as everyone leans on the same LLM engines. 

Genesys Pilots “Outcome-Based” Pricing: Genesys has launched a limited pilot for a new billing model that charges customers based on Successful Resolutions rather than the traditional Named User or Concurrent Seat license. This shift aligns with its Agentless CX features, where Generative AI handles tier-one interactions. The model effectively decouples revenue from headcount.

The seat tax is dying, and is not compatible with the (desirable) and near-term goals of automation. Genesys is the first major player to admit this might be a problem. Other providers are expected to follow suit, but what should be charged for, and what customers are willing to buy, remains a mystery.

The DACH Blue Lights: UK-based Content Guru announced a strategic expansion into the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) region, securing a major contract with a German state emergency service. The win was attributed to its “sovereign-first” architecture and proven resilience in UK emergency services (999/111). 

Content Guru is capitalizing on the expanding “Trust Deficit” created by US geopolitical volatility. While US competitors fight over commercial features, Content Guru is selling continuity and legal immunity. For high-stakes European infrastructure, “Made in Europe” (or at least “Not Made in the US”) is becoming the decisive buying criterion. 

NiCE Launches “Auto-Medical” Agent for Healthcare: NiCE has introduced a specialized AI agent for the healthcare sector designed to handle patient intake and triage within CXone. The agent utilizes a specialized small language model (SLM) trained on medical terminology and HIPAA/GDPR compliance data, allowing it to pre-diagnose call intent and update electronic health records (EHR) without human intervention.

Typically, vertical strategies lead with an integration. This is the verticalization of AI. This leverages NiCE’s experience in healthcare and offers more than general-purpose LLMs, which are too hallucination-prone. It’s also a defensible moat against the hyperscalers.

RingCX Momentum: RingCentral leadership highlighted that its native CCaaS solution, RingCX, is now its primary growth engine. The company announced new AI-based Supervisor Assist features for RingCX. RC also continues to offer CXone from NiCE. 

Avaya Files Suit Against C1: Avaya has filed a lawsuit against its former top partner, C1 (formerly ConvergeOne), alleging breach of contract and patent infringement regarding legacy contact center integrations. Almost all substantive pleadings are under seal by court order. Typically, a dispute like this would be resolved in arbitration; however, a court order may be necessary to enforce the arbitration. Both companies have recently emerged from separate Chapter 11 restructurings. It feels like Blockbuster suing a VCR repair shop. Both Avaya and C1 are fighting for the scraps of the laggards while the rest of the world has moved to an AI-native cloud. This litigation consumes capital that neither company can afford to waste. It is a distraction from the existential crisis both firms face: irrelevance amid the AI revolution.

Vonage Omnichannel Messaging for Agentforce: Vonage has announced the launch of Vonage Conversations for Agentforce, a deep integration that allows Salesforce’s autonomous AI agents to trigger and manage two-way conversations across WhatsApp, SMS, and RCS. This follows the recent integration of voice capabilities into Agentforce, enabling Salesforce’s digital agents to speak and text via Vonage’s CPaaS platform without leaving the Salesforce architecture. Vonage hopes to become the native feature of the Salesforce ecosystem, but it will have fierce competition for the role. 

Talkdesk Orchestrates Commerce for Consumer Goods: Talkdesk has introduced its Consumer Goods Experience Cloud, adding Commerce Orchestration to enable human and AI agents to process transactions, manage orders, and recommend products within the service interaction. By integrating the contact center directly into e-commerce backends, customer support conversations can more easily turn into real-time sales journeys rather than purely post-sale service. It is a smart play for Talkdesk because it moves the conversation from the COO’s cost line to the CRO’s growth agenda at a time when general-purpose CCaaS is increasingly commoditized.

Unified Communications

Zoom Local Mode: Zoom has released a Local Mode for its Zoom Phone and Meeting products, specifically for EU public-sector clients. This architecture ensures that media and signaling data do not pass through US-based nodes, even for failover. The solution is designed to meet strict Schrems II compliance requirements that have previously hampered Zoom’s adoption in German and French government agencies. For sovereignty purists, the fact that the parent company is in San Jose will remain a dealbreaker.

Spectralink S1000 DECT: Spectralink released the S1000, a new IP-DECT platform designed to simplify wireless voice for frontline workers. Unlike traditional multi-tier DECT architectures that require separate rack-mounted servers and controllers, the S1000 combines the server, base station, and media gateway into a single edge device. The platform supports up to 4,000 users and integrates natively with Teams SIP Gateway.

DECT is more suitable than Wi-Fi in almost every regard, but it loses when it comes to setup because it requires a totally separate network. Wi-Fi phones tend to perform better in enterprise environments, but DECT is more suitable for complex environments (Europe tends to prefer DECT as well). By collapsing the entire infrastructure into a “single box” that plugs into the cloud and Teams, Spectralink reduces the DECT tax/burden.

Yealink Acquired a DECT vendor: Yealink has acquired a specialized European DECT handset maker (name undisclosed) to strengthen its foothold in the warehouse and retail verticals. The move is seen as a play to bypass potential future hardware tariffs by acquiring established European manufacturing and distribution channels.

Hardware remains the “hard” part of UC. Frontline workers still need ruggedized plastic. Yealink is aggressively consolidating this space, betting that even as office workers go virtual, the factory floor will always need a physical handset.

Business

Deepgram announced $130M Series C funding at a $1.38B valuation. Deepgram was recognized in the Innovation Showcase at EC18. 

8x8 Acquires Singapore’s Maven Lab: 8x8 acquired Maven Lab, a Singapore-based CPaaS and enterprise messaging provider, to accelerate its APAC growth. The deal brings Maven Lab’s “Moobidesk” platform, which specializes in integrating regional messaging apps like WhatsApp, Line, and WeChat. The “Moobidesk” platform will replace 8x8 Converse, a lightweight digital contact center.

This development will bolster 8x8’s customer engagement capabilities, potentially globally (WhatsApp), but especially in Asia, where text-first communication dominates. 8x8 is well-positioned for international growth. It is less American than many competitors, with a third of its employees based in Europe and a strong CPaaS presence in Asia. 

Parloa Raises $350M: Parloa has raised $350M in Series D funding led by General Catalyst, tripling its valuation to about $3B and bringing total capital raised to more than $560M in under four years. The company plans to use the funds to expand in the US and Europe, scale its AI Agent Management Platform, and roll out its Parloa Promise reliability and responsible AI program, building on a customer base that includes Allianz, Booking.com, SAP, and Swiss Life. 

BCM One Rebrands Enterprise Segment as Pure IP: The rebranding pulls together managed UCaaS, Webex, and Teams voice, network connectivity, and CCaaS integrations under a single label for mid to large customers. 

Ricoh Buys PPI: Ricoh has acquired New York-based Presentation Products, Inc., an audiovisual integrator of roughly 100 AV design, engineering, integration, and managed services specialists, to deepen its workplace collaboration and AV services. Folded into Ricoh’s digital services organization and building on its Cenero-managed AV platform, PPI will help scale integrated AV-IT-collaboration solutions across North America.

SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $30B in OpenAI. That could double its investment in the ChatGPT maker, making it the largest shareholder.

Risotto, a San Francisco-based AI-powered IT help desk startup, raised $10M in seed funding.

Leadership Changes

FirstComm named David Battaglia Vice President of Customer Experience, a strategic hire to strengthen customer experience and operational excellence at the advanced communications and managed technology services provider.

Sunshine in Interaction added former Zoom Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim as Senior Strategic Advisor; the longtime Google and Microsoft leader will help shape its AI-driven product design as the company works to define a differentiated collaboration and human-interface story.

Jeff Cantor moved from NiCE to RingCentral as its new Chief Customer Officer. RingCentral appointed Mahmoud ElAssir, a senior technology executive at UnitedHealth Group, to its Board of Directors to bolster governance of its RingCX and AI-first initiatives and better align its roadmap with Fortune 500 CIO requirements. RingCentral also named Paul Herdman Customer Experience Transformation Officer (CXTO), underscoring its focus on modernizing end-to-end customer journeys. Invoca appointed Katherine Starros as SVP, People & Culture, and promoted Ben Sullivan to CRO.

Supio hired Niki Hall as Chief Market Officer to help the legal AI startup, backed by Bonfire Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and Thomson Reuters Ventures. Curtiss Singleton joined Mimo as Executive Vice President of Global Sales. Gary Anselme has left Microsoft and accepted a role at Diversified as Financial Services lead. 

AVIXA Leadership: AVIXA announced that CEO David Labuskes will retire at the end of 2026, concluding more than 13 years at the helm. 

On the AR side: Jason LoGuidice is now an AR employee at Dialpad. He previously worked at Guyer Group, providing AR services for Intermedia. 

Meet Us

Dave Michels is the founder and chief protagonist of TalkingPointz and the editor-in-chief of the Insider Report. [email protected]. David Danto is AV Aficionado at TalkingPointz. [email protected]. 

Goodreads

1. The Razr Fold Adds a Book-Style Foldable to Motorola’s Lineup
2. Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold Is a Phone-Tablet Hybrid With a Clear Purpose
3. Lenovo Unveils Breakthrough Personal AI Super Agent
4. Why AI Hallucinations Are So Convincing – and Why That’s the Real Risk
5. Dell admits consumers don’t care about AI PCs
6. Meta Plans to Cut Around 10% of Employees in Reality Labs Business – Where the NY Times buried the lede: Meta killing expensive Metaverse that went nowhere
7. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang Wins IEEE 2026 Medal Of Honor
8. Lenovo Tech World at CES 2026 – Lenovo CEO and Chairman Yuanqing Yang, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, AMD CEO Lisa Su, and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan all share the same stage
9. Velocity Is the New Authority. Here’s Why – Feeling overwhelmed by information has less to do with any single media entity and more with structural changes in the information ecosystem.
10. Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds – By analyzing $4T of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s US tariff increases, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.
11. The Trump phone just missed another release date 
12. Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft – Microsoft sells GitHub Copilot to its customers, but it increasingly favors Claude Code internally.
13. The ‘big bazooka’: How Europe could hit the US tech industry if the Greenland trade war blows up – The European Union could use what has been described as its “big bazooka”: the so-called Anti-Coercion Instrument.

Other Recent Stuff

Effective in 2025. This is free content, and Substack makes things easier for everyone, but you will need to subscribe separately here. Insider Lites typically publish 3x a month.

• CES from Afar (Insider Lite)
• CCaaS to CX: Surviving the shift 
• Upcoming Events (Insider Lite)
• LeapFrog CX Strategies with Vasili at UJET
• The New Anatomy of Room Videoconferencing – ODMs + MDEP quietly reshaping who is a video manufacturer.
• Upcoming Spring Events (InsiderLite)
• Pre-ISE Announcements and Analyses – The Daves chat before leaving for the conference (video).
• MDEP – A Check-In Before ISE 2026 – The latest on Microsoft’s Android platform in enterprise comms.
• CES 2026: The Last Word – A bunch of industry analysts discuss what they saw there (video).
• Welcome to (The Death of) the Metaverse (InsiderLite)
• Video updates (playlist) from CES 2026 – David Danto went to CES so you wouldn’t have to.
• CES 2026: A Show of Relevance, Restraint, and Real Use Cases – Danto’s Written CES summary
• ‘Tis the Season – and the Show Cycle Is About to Begin Again (InsiderLite)
• 5 Unexpected Realities of Deploying AI CX Agents
• Webex innovation is quietly winning 
• Zoom Seizes the Zeitgeist (InsiderLite)
• Reading the CES 2026 Tea Leaves (InsiderLite)
• The State of Videoconferencing at the End of 2025: 30 Years In, Still Not Done
• Our Chat with Cisco’s Snorre Kjesbu (video) 
• The Silence Around UC Speaks Volumes (InsiderLite)
• Center-of-Table Cameras: Back to the Future of Meeting Equity
• Why Orchestration Is the Word of the Year – Thoughts from the fall conference season
• UC Weekly News Analyst Year-End Wrap Discussion – Video chat
• MDEP at Ignite 2025 – The Line in the Sand Is Now Crystal Clear
• RingCentral’s Kristen Koenig on RC Video – TalkingPointz Chatz
• Tech Perspectives: Does Zoom Have a New Trophy Wife?

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Insider Reports offer timely, curated, and opinionated news. The Insider Report is published in the first week of every month. Enterprise subscriptions also include TalkingPointz research notes. These reports are geared toward the industry itself, though some enterprises subscribe, too. Core subscribers are vendors, providers, consultants, and (financial and industry) analysts. TalkingPointz offers enterprise vendor, channel, consultant, and personal subscriptions. Insider Lite is a free Substack newsletter.