Insider Report July 2024

Curated Enterprise Communications News and Insights from July 2024

Feature

It’s Getting Hot! US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stressed the gravity of climate change, highlighting that an annual investment of $3T in new capital is necessary to tackle this pressing issue. She emphasized that the global shift toward a low-carbon economy presents an unprecedented opportunity in the 21st century. 

Existential threats are bad, but the silver lining here is that this is great for enterprise comms. The sector shone during the pandemic, but modern enterprise comms can reduce carbon emissions in many ways, particularly commuting. Yet the industry is pretty quiet on this topic. 

This summer has been scorching. The US Northeast experienced weeks of an unprecedented “heat dome” in July. Heat domes are an unfamiliar phenomenon for most of us, but they may become routine, as will these “1,000-year floods,” “fire-nados,” and other terrifying weather phenomena. July 22, 2024, was the hottest day in recorded history. The European climate service, Copernicus, reports that the average global temperature on that day was 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.89 degrees Fahrenheit), surpassing the previous record set just a day earlier by approximately 0.1 degrees. Notably, this new record closely aligns with previous ones, which have often been characterized as the hottest days in millennia, dating back to the peak of the last interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago.

One of the big impacts of climate change is that water isn’t where it should be. We are seeing unprecedented droughts and floods all over the globe. These changes in the climate are categorically making life harder. Climate change is driving immigration and disease and threatening the food supply. There are more fires (becoming one of the main sources of global carbon emissions), and farmable land is shrinking. 

Software companies are leading the net-zero movement. However, this month, we learned that Google and Microsoft consume more electricity than several sizable countries. According to recent reports, the tech giants’ energy usage surpasses that of nations like Argentina and the Netherlands. 

AI models boast impressive capabilities, yet their creation, upkeep, and operation require substantial energy resources, impacting profitability and leaving a significant carbon footprint poised for exponential growth. Google's recent annual environmental report revealed a 48% surge in CO2 emissions from 2019 to 2023, despite the company's commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2030. There’s some debate on how much of this is related to AI, but given the crucial role of data centers in AI infrastructure and Google’s relentless pursuit of leadership in AI, many observers attribute Google’s alarming emissions growth to AI. Google isn’t alone; Microsoft, too, has been boasting about its green initiatives and carbon neutrality, but AI’s colossal power consumption paints a contradictory picture. 

Tech giants like Meta, Google, and Amazon have aggressively invested in AI infrastructure to maintain their competitive edge, leading to a surge in capital expenditures. Microsoft, in particular, has spent billions, including a $13B investment in OpenAI. It appears Apple secured a similar partnership with OpenAI for free just 18 months later. This disparity between spending and returns is raising concerns about the widening gap between investment and tangible outcomes in AI. 

The thinly veiled divide between cost, power consumption, and ROI hasn’t gone unnoticed. Observers are beginning to question the promised value of Gen AI. Despite 96% of C-suite executives expecting AI to boost productivity, 77% of employees surveyed report increased workloads, reduced productivity, and job burnout, according to Upwork research highlighted by Bryan Robinson in Forbes. The disconnect between executive expectations and actual experiences suggests we may be nearing the end of the unrealistic expectations bubble. 

General News

The CrowdStrike Outage: A botched update by CrowdStrike, a security vendor, crashed about 8.5M Windows PCs, causing significant disruptions in banking, finance, and travel. The big news here was that it wasn’t a hack. It was a blunder. CrowdStrike is a security software vendor that many enterprises use to protect themselves from hacks. CrowdStrike implemented a routine update that not only caused Windows PCs to crash but prevented them from rebooting without manual corrections. 

The cost of an outage like this is huge. In addition to canceled flights and refunds, it took Delta Airlines four days to sort out where its planes and staff were. It’s been a while since the tech industry stepped in it like this. It’s most comparable to a McAfee blunder that took place in 2010. Both outages were caused by a security company update, and both required manual intervention to fix. Even worse, CrowdStrike’s founder and CEO, George Kurtz, was McAfee’s Chief Technology Officer during that 2010 incident.

Another notable aspect is that the outage only impacted Windows (PCs and Cloud instances). CrowdStrike leverages a “feature” of Windows that allows it to modify the Windows OS kernel. MacOS, iOS, and Android do not allow this. In 2006, Microsoft attempted to limit third-party access to the Windows kernel but faced resistance from cybersecurity vendors and EU regulators. Apple successfully implemented stricter security measures in MacOS in 2020. Microsoft will likely use this incident to reopen the topic of kernel lockdown. 

Delta Airlines’ CEO said the company took a $500M hit from the outage. It had +5K cancellations and took days longer than rivals to get back on track as so many systems were impacted. Delta intends to pursue damages from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft, though having so many systems dependent on a few vendors raises concerns of culpability, too. Why did other airlines recover sooner? CrowdStrike’s terms likely limit liability, but this could be interesting. 

Five Nines Fleeting: 99.999% availability has never been easy. Not long ago, it was one of the factors favoring cloud. Compared to the makeshift data center in the hall closet, the cloud offered most organizations a significant upgrade in availability (as well as reliability and security). But clouds are getting complicated, and it’s the bit players that are the culprits. After this month’s CrowdStrike outage, many CIOs are asking for the first time, “Who’s CrowdStrike?” 

Availability and security are becoming much more difficult. AT&T reported a disastrous data breach that affected around 110M people. Caused by an incident at Snowflake, it allowed cybercriminals to steal phone records, such as call and text history, for a six-month period. The stolen metadata can reveal communication patterns and potentially approximate locations. The Snowflake incident impacted multiple companies. It’s another reason to use encrypted chat apps like Signal, which don’t retain this type of metadata.

The emerging story is how CIOs are so limited in their ability to deliver highly reliable services. The old way of managing availability and reliability was to eliminate single points of failure, but that has become obsolete or impossible. 

In this video, Dave and David discuss the CrowdStrike outage in the context of meeting rooms. Many of those went down, too.  

Microsoft eliminates Teams Display App: Microsoft is discontinuing its Teams Display app (a version of Teams that runs on some desktop devices). The device’s key feature was the ambient screen — an always-on and glanceable display to see important activities and notifications. The concept of an ambient workflow display is interesting, but in the past four years, second displays have become much more common and are more versatile than these small displays dedicated to Teams. Michels said to hold off on implementing them in this 2020 post, though perhaps we will see a second coming with the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP). 

Google Scraps Plans to Rid Chrome of 3P Cookies: After four years of promises from Google to cease supporting third-party cookies in its Chrome browser, Google now intends to continue supporting third-party cookies in Chrome. Third-party cookies enable ads that follow users around the web. They are essentially a breach of user privacy. Europe has responded by requiring consent, but it’s a very ineffective and annoying solution. The problem is the cookie. 

Google has confirmed that its priority and alignment is not with user privacy but with advertisers. The issue is old, but it’s becoming more important with generative AI, which is relentlessly pursuing personally identifiable information (PII). This could/should drive the adoption of Brave, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. It could also reduce the appeal of using Chrome in CCaaS. Microsoft Edge can block third-party cookies if the default setting is changed.

Alexa, What’s a Money Pit? The Amazon Gadget division that makes smart speakers is a money pit. This month, we learned that Amazon has lost $25B from 2017 to 2021. These smart speakers are among the most sophisticated kitchen timers you can get, but other killer apps never materialized. Amazon sold millions of Echoes at or below cost, assuming that a killer app would emerge. Still waiting. The good news is that we have learned from this, and we would never spend billions on say, generative AI, in hopes of finding a future — so far elusive — use case. Amazon’s Save-Alexa campaigns include leveraging advanced AI and possibly introducing a monthly fee, suggesting the company is reaching its limit.

OpenAI Board Dramas Part Deux: Both Apple and Microsoft declined the OpenAI board observer seats they previously demanded. The public narrative is to avoid regulator scrutiny (yeah, right). The bigger concern is, what’s happening at OpenAI that no respectable company wants to observe? In related news, Reuters reported that OpenAI whistleblowers have called for an investigation over the company’s NDAs. Apparently, they require employees to waive their federal rights to whistleblower protections.

T-Mobile Adds Fiber: T-Mobile and KKR have announced a joint venture to acquire Metronet, aiming to expand fiber broadband services across the US. T-Mobile will manage residential customer acquisition and support, while Metronet focuses on network deployment and engineering. The deal includes acquiring Oak Hill Capital’s stake, with Metronet expected to reach 6.5M homes by 2030. It’s refreshing that T-Mobile presumably now admits that fiber, when available, is superior to 5G. Everyone already knew this, except T-Mobile. 

Layoffs Continue: Reductions in force and layoffs continue to plague the collaboration space and tech in general. These cuts are driven by a mix of pressures, including the continually high interest rates, soft demand, and uncertain outlook. Perhaps the biggest culprit is that investments in generative AI are requiring cuts everywhere else. This trend creates a vicious cycle — an Ouroboros — where declining numbers of employees in these companies leads to decreased demand for software licenses and hardware, which in turn reduces revenue and necessitates further layoffs. As tech firms shrink, the repercussions ripple across other firms, perpetuating the cycle of contraction.​

Meetings and AV

Collaboration Between Cisco and Microsoft: As we discussed in a recent TalkingPointz Chatz, Cisco’s entry into the MTR marketplace has had some profound effects on the space. The actual numbers haven’t been released yet, but it is clear that many Microsoft Teams customers really like the idea of being able to buy equipment for Teams from Cisco. These large enterprise users likely have big contracts with MS at the desktop and Cisco in the network. The ability to consolidate purchasing around only two good partners is attractive. 

New HP|Poly OS Announced: Poly has announced the release of Poly VideoOS 4.3, which introduces a range of new features to enhance meeting experiences. One notable addition is third-display support on Poly Studio X52 and G62 in Zoom mode, which finally adds a feature that Neat has had for years. The update also expands support for the Poly Studio E70 over IP, enabling more versatile multi-camera configurations in both Zoom and Poly modes. Poly also added AI-based presenter tracking on Poly Studio E60, and some new management capabilities.

Google Meet Expands Interop Features: Google has expanded interoperability between Google Meet and Zoom to include presenting content via a wired HDMI connection. This allows users to present HDMI content from Google Meet or Zoom Room hardware into the meeting. The feature is enabled by default and can be managed by admins in the Workspace Admin console. Google has begun rolling it out to Google Workspace customers with Google Meet Chrome-based devices.

No Teams Today: A Windows 365 outage this month prevented people from talking. Depending on how you count, the outage concurrent with the CrowdStrike issue marked the eighth Teams outage this year. The disruption was eventually attributed to a configuration change in Azure. Then, closer to the end of the month, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattack triggered a ninth Teams outage. These incidents mark yet another stumble for Microsoft after a similar outage last month that lasted over eight hours. 

This recurring pattern of failures has not gone unnoticed. In June, after an email hack, the Department of Homeland Security released a report on Microsoft that identified operational and strategic decisions at Microsoft that “collectively pointed to a corporate culture that deprioritized enterprise security.” Microsoft clearly wants to change this image, but it won’t be easy. Certainly, the CrowdStrike incident didn’t help. This also ties into MDEP — Microsoft is arguing that by building a better honeypot, it can secure Android better than others. For a brief period, Microsoft and Cisco presented a united front that businesses should have two solutions for meetings. That messaging has disappeared, but should probably return. 

Now You Hear It, Now You Don’t: Jabra announced its exit from the consumer earbuds market immediately after releasing its upgraded Elite 10 and Elite 8 Active earbuds. The company’s parent, GN, decided to wind down the Elite and Talk audio product ranges to focus on more profitable areas within its Hearing, Enterprise, and Gaming businesses. 

Two big changes since Jabra launched earbuds in 2016: The FTC reduced regulation and created a new OTC market for hearing aids. Jabra quickly expanded into hearing with its Enhance Plus and Eargo hearing aids. Also, the Jabra board appointed Peter Karlstromer as the Group CEO in 2023. The Elite headsets weren’t bad, and better than many earbuds available today. 

ClickShare Video Bar Update: Barco updated its new ClickShare Video Bar to support stereo sound and added Miracast for content sharing. Additionally, the ClickShare Desktop App now has preset user experiences. Stereo is table stakes, so glad to see this correction.  

New Gallery Options in MS Teams: Microsoft Teams unveiled a new meeting gallery aimed at providing a more streamlined and customizable meeting experience. The gallery displays 16-49 (16 default) participants in equally sized tiles, regardless if camera is on. The gallery also enhances meeting engagement by automatically optimizing visibility for active speakers and participants with raised hands. Users can prioritize those on camera and hide or remove their own view from the main gallery. Tiles for Teams Rooms are larger, which raises equity questions (Rooms are bigger regardless of the number of participants), though users can also manually adjust tile sizes. 

As video meetings become more pervasive, the inability to customize our views becomes more frustrating. These adjustments are important, but it’s hard to evaluate implementation from the description. The jury is out on whether these changes improve the experience, especially when the room system joining already has multiple tiles (such as with Poly’s Director AI or Neat’s Symmetry.) It may become confusing to understand which tile is adjustable and from where.  

Microsoft Ups Its Events: Microsoft has introduced new updates to enhance the user experience for Teams event organizers and participants. Organizers now have improved controls to manage presenters during town hall events and webinars. Presenters have a “live” indicator when on screen. Government users can now host large-scale events with features like a meeting template, support for up to 20,000 attendees, and third-party eCDN support. Microsoft Mesh has also received updates, including new event templates, the ability to revisit past event links, additional avatar reactions, and a personal boundary feature. These enhancements are available in both Teams and Teams Premium.

As described in this TalkingPointz Note on Digital Events, UCaaS is expanding into events. The research note primarily covered Cisco, RingCentral, and Zoom, as they have expanded the most. Microsoft’s updates do not indicate an expansion into physical/on-site events, but enhancements to online events make sense. Events are a logical adjacency to meetings and webinars. 

Google Vids Now in Beta: Google has soft-launched its previously announced “Vids,” an AI-powered video creation app designed to integrate with its Workspace suite, aimed at simplifying video production for work-related tasks. Users in the Workspace Labs program can now test the app, which utilizes Google’s Gemini AI to help create and edit video content from prompts and templates. This new tool is part of Google’s effort to enhance productivity by enabling users who don’t have professional video editing skills to create polished videos. Google’s announcement demo was more flash than substance; we’ll have to see if the tool proves useful or is just a spectacle without real-world applications.

Panasonic Mostly Exits Projectors: Instead of outright selling its projector division as it originally discussed, Panasonic will sell 80% of the business to ORIX Corporation and retain a 20% stake. The new company will continue to use the Panasonic brand for now.

Microsoft MDEP: TalkingPointz is watching the development of MDEP. It’s been a shockingly slow development, but it appears MDEP is upon us. MDEP is better understood as Microsoft’s flavor of Android, and it’s coming to a Microsoft Teams Room near you (someday). 

August has us awaiting the promised release of the Jabra PanaCast 50 VBR system, which (if we actually see it in GA) will be the first implementation of this platform for public use. For background discussions, watch our interview with Microsoft’s Ilya Bukshteyn, David Danto’s chat with Tom Arbuthnot, and Dave Michels’ speculative article on why MDEP might make Android great again.

Our takeaway is that MDEP will be very disruptive for MTR partners that moved quickly to Android. MDEP could nullify a significant portion of their investment. This partially explains why none of these early adopters are among the initial MDEP partners. Also, MTRs may be the camel’s nose in the Android tent. 

Two New Video Bars: Sennheiser has announced that its TeamConnect Bars (TC Bars) are now certified for Microsoft Teams and Zoom. The firm, better known for its headsets and microphones, has jumped into the “we make a videobar, too” pool with this approximately $1,300 device. It’s probably OK, but Danto struggles to understand why businesses would choose a video system from a legacy audio company without video expertise. Similarly, the next firm with a me-too videobar is Kramer with its KAC-BAR-81 — certified for MS Teams. At first glance, we didn’t see anything differentiating about this unit, either, but we’ll be sure to let you know if any compelling reason to look at it comes up. 

At the rate these functionally identical video bars are coming onto the market, manufacturers should consider creating a vending machine so people can pick their favorite flavors or colors like cans of soft drinks. The bigger question is best stated as an analogy: Would you buy a bicycle from a bookstore because they carry stories about cycling? In the case of videoconferencing, buying a product from a company with no experience in the space is highly unlikely to yield good long-term results. 

Customer Experience

RingCentral and Vodafone: RingCentral announced the expansion of its strategic partnership with Vodafone Business to include RingCX. Vodafone Business Contact Center will be introduced in the UK, followed by Germany later this year, and then will progressively roll out to other markets. 

Additionally, Vodafone Business will extend its RingCentral-powered services into 30 markets over this and next year. Vodafone Business UC will be extended into regions such as South America, the Middle East, and Africa and will cover additional EU and Asia Pacific countries during the first half of next year.

Intermedia Agent Evaluator: Intermedia Cloud Communications updated its AI Agent Evaluator Contact Center solution, providing supervisors with detailed insights and automated workflows for recorded calls. This enables more efficient and impactful feedback to contact center agents. The solution offers sentiment analysis, automated call tagging, topic identification, and detailed agent behavior metrics. AI Agent Evaluator joins other AI-powered features in the Intermedia SPARK-AI suite found within Intermedia Contact Center.

Journey and Sharpen: Journey and Sharpen announced a GTM partnership. For Sharpen, it brings the unique ability to rapidly deploy new transactional capabilities across voice and digital engagements, interoperably utilizing cutting-edge technologies for identity and sensitive interactions involving PII, PFI, PHI, and more. Journey put another notch on its belt (alongside Cisco, Five9, Genesys, NICE, and Zoom), not to mention its quiet partnerships with Twilio and AWS. These are on top of its original partnership with Avaya. That’s both validation of a significant solution and an indication of how privacy concerns are elevating in CX.

Salesforce Bot for CRM, Slack, and Workday AI: Salesforce announced a strategic partnership with Workday to develop an AI-powered employee service agent. This new AI assistant will streamline tasks such as onboarding, health benefits management, and career development by integrating Salesforce’s CRM data with Workday’s HR and financial data. The collaboration will enhance productivity, reduce costs, and improve employee experiences by enabling seamless data-driven support across Salesforce and Workday platforms, including Slack. The AI agent will facilitate natural language communication and automate resolutions, with human intervention for complex issues.

Td and Pantagonia: This month, we learned that Pantagonia uses Talkdesk to power its customer service. We also learned they are using Td Copilot, Td’s agent-assist solution. We learned this because a lawsuit was filed against Pantagonia for using Copilot, or more specifically, using generative AI without customer consent. This suit has the potential to establish a precedent that could be a big problem for generative AI in CX. 

A lawsuit against Patagonia raises concerns about the unpredictable nature of GenAI. In California, customers need to consent to how their data is used. Talkdesk, not Patagonia, captures and analyzes customer conversations without specific consent, which is illegal in California. Regardless of guilt, this kind of suit is going to have a lot of CIOs on edge. The larger concern is that GenAI’s analysis of emotions and sentiments could potentially follow the customer, like a credit history, to other businesses that use Td. 

The plaintiff’s lawyers accuse Patagonia of wiretapping its calls for Talkdesk’s use without consent. That seems like a stretch. Talkdesk seeks to use the data for customer intent recognition, sentiment detection, and quality monitoring. Td’s use does not seem to constitute unlawful access of data by a third party for its own purposes.

The real issue here is customer consent. Current communication methods make audio prompts at the beginning of phone calls insufficient for transparency. Regulators and legislators want to be more transparent regarding data collection, protection, and use. Meanwhile, Dialpad transcribes every UCaaS call and believes that’s OK without consent because it doesn’t record the calls. 

This type of suit will have CIOs very concerned about the use of generative AI in CX. It’s exactly why the UCaaS industry has made the use of generative AI in meetings very clear to all participants and why it can only be provided by the host. Consent laws were written well before generative AI, and it might take a while for the legal system to catch up. This will not be the only lawsuit. 

Dynamical CCaaS: As promised, Microsoft released Dynamics 365 Contact Center in July. This Copilot-first CC solution delivers generative AI across all customer engagement channels. Michels suggests waiting on serious evaluations until Microsoft changes the name, likely early next year. It’s currently a viable option for small implementations, but Microsoft emphasizes that this product will scale. SMB is more about its limited maturity and features. The key value props will undoubtedly be AI and single-vendor. The problem is that Microsoft’s UCaaS base is small (limiting its single-vendor appeal), and CoPilot AI is mostly about internal data rather than customer data.

UC and Messaging

RingCentral and Mitel: During RingCentral’s Q2 financial review, we learned that Mitel and RingCentral have ended their exclusive partnership. “In Q2, we acquired certain additional assets and customer relationships related to Mitel’s MiCloud Connect and Sky UCaaS platform,” said Vlad Shmunis. It’s hard to believe that Sky UCaaS is still around — this is the UCaaS that ShoreTel created before MItel acquired it.  

Mitel appears to have traded its legacy UCaaS business for the right to offer other UCaaS solutions. The impetus was Mitel’s acquisition of Unify, which significantly changed the demographics of its UC base. Many of these larger, more complex customers will be better served with a hybrid play. Mitel intends to broker some new GTM partnerships with other UCaaS providers. Michels believes this is RingCentral’s first foray into hosted UC. It’s not clear yet if RingCentral views this as a base it will migrate or an expansion of its offerings. Shmunis said, “We expect that this will allow us to provide a better customer experience for the remaining cloud base in their customer's digital transformation journey.”  

Zoom Workflows: Zoom's new Workflow Automation aims to boost efficiency and reduce routine tasks by enabling no-code creation of complex workflows across Zoom Workplace and third-party applications. Initially, it integrates with Zoom Team Chat, offering capabilities like sending welcome messages, setting reminders, streamlining time-off requests, and collecting feedback within chat channels.

Slack Sad: When your product no longer has momentum or attraction, you can always recruit new subscribers through a credit card tie-in. Slack is now targeting new customers through Mastercard. Supposedly, “more than 50 million cardholders” could be eligible to unlock a quarter off of Slack’s premium membership plans.

Vonage SIP: Vonage launched intelligent SIP capabilities for SIP Trunking customers, allowing them to deploy elastic SIP trunks without developers. The release includes access to Vonage AI Studio, a low-code/no-code platform for creating natural language understanding and generative AI-powered virtual agents, the Vonage Code Hub with prebuilt solutions for voice and messaging notifications, and the Vonage Voice API for creating programmable voice interactions.

Teams Private Line: Back in the early days of MS telephony, products like Lync were very weak in telephony. The modern PBX it replaced often had thousands of features. Microsoft’s response was that no one needs thousands of features. That was true, but it does seem that lots of people need different features, and that can add up to thousands of features. Over the past few years, Teams has been filling those gaps. Michels finds himself surprised often by features they are adding — features that he assumed they already had. 

This month, Microsoft Teams got support for a private line. When provisioned, callers can now bypass the delegates, administrators, and assistants to get right to a user’s Teams desktop app or device. Setting up this ordinary feature only requires an admin to do some PowerShell edits. 

WhatsApp 100M: Meta announced that WhatsApp now has 100M MAU in the US and about 2B users worldwide. In addition, WhatsApp is the dominant communications platform (C2C and C2B) in several countries. Also this month, WhatsApp started rolling out a new Events feature aimed at simplifying the process of organizing meetings, gatherings, and other events directly within group chats. With this new feature, users can create Events within group chats by providing details such as the event name, description, date, location, and specifics about voice or video calls. Group members can then accept or decline the invitation, and creators can update the event details as necessary. Earlier this year, WhatsApp expanded its video calling service to support up to 32 participants. 

WhatsApp is implementing the plan Skype had before it was acquired. It’s worked its way into contact centers, replacing POTs lines, and offers secure E2EE messaging across organizational boundaries. Michels avoided WhatsApp in the US but can’t live without it in Europe. Even at a recent hotel stay, he was instructed that the best way to reach the front desk is WhatsApp. It’s really all a small business needs in some countries. 

RCS Cometh: Perhaps as soon as September, the iPhone will support RCS. It’s coming in iOS 18 this fall. Most of the hullabaloo is about seamless messaging between iPhones and Android phones (actually iPhones and all other mobile phones). While that’s interesting, there’s much more to this story, including read receipts and typing indicators — but most importantly, there’s going to be a revolution in CX. 

For the first time, businesses can send richly formatted messages to their customers. The big breakout will be ticketing (concerts, plane tickets, etc.), because a ticket barcode — instead of a link to an image — can be sent directly to the customer. This is a CCaaS moment for digital channels. Cisco Webex CC (Webex Connect), for example, has already successfully tested A2P RCS Business messages to iPhones running iOS18 beta 2. 

There’s also another narrative: return of the SP. The service providers have lost control of messaging to OTT apps, such as iMessage, Meta’s Messenger and WhatsApp, Skype, Telegram, etc. Countries like Brazil and India are all in WhatsApp. Many service providers believe RCS is just what the doctor ordered. Practically overnight (excluding the decade-plus buildup), RCS has the potential to become the largest, most global digital channel. 

Teams Phone Mobile Update: Teams Phone Mobile, Microsoft Team’s implementation of UCaaS Mobility 3.0, got a minor update that allows users to move a live call from the Teams app to the native dialer on the mobile device. Not much information was provided, but Webex Go seems to have this feature. Presumably, Teams Phone Mobile has not been a hit with users yet, but Microsoft continues to expand the program (as do Cisco and RingCentral). Michels considers UCaaS Mobility 3.0 to be one of the most important developments in UCaaS. The feature is largely misunderstood and confused with OTT apps. Michels expects adoption will continue to grow slowly, then suddenly. The advantages are too compelling to be ignored, and why would any organization want/desire/maintain two separate calling solutions (UCaaS and mobile) when only one is necessary?

X Blue Misleading? The European Union alerted X that its blue checkmark verification system violates rules under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The EU has determined that the system is deceptive for users and goes against established industry practices, and that X is not fulfilling transparency obligations regarding advertising and providing public data to researchers. The issue is that the blue checkmark signifies only that it’s a paid user, not a verified user. Failure by X to address these three grievances could result in formal action and fines of up to 6% of its global revenue. This crackdown on X is part of the EU’s increased enforcement of strict rules for big tech companies.

The Business Section

Ericsson Write-Down: There’s going to be a lot of schadenfreude with this one. Ericsson announced it will book a $1.1B write-down following a weak outlook for its Vonage business. Ericsson acquired Vonage in July 2022 for $6.2B, and reported it would record a noncash impairment charge of $1.1B (SEK 11.4B) in Q2 of 2024 due to “lower anticipated market growth rates in Vonage’s current portfolio.” Vonage CEO Niklas Heuveldop confirmed the net income impact after tax will be SEK 11.4B and reported in its Enterprise segment. This represents the second write-down on its Vonage acquisition: Ericsson booked a $3B impairment last October.

The basic problem is that Ericsson really only wanted the CPaaS business, but needed the whole business to justify the cost. It then promptly ignored the whole business. CCaaS is exploding, and Vonage had a competitive offer at one time. Perhaps they will recruit Alan Masarek to return. 

Persistent and Starfish: Persistent Systems acquired Starfish Associates. Michels has long felt that Starfish was a jewel in the rough. Its customers include some of the biggest contact centers and often know about big migrations before the contact center vendors do. “Persistent provides digital engineering and enterprise modernization, with over 23,800 employees located in 20 countries.” 

Gamma BrightCloud: Gamma Communications plc expanded its CX portfolio with the acquisition of BrightCloud Group Ltd, a privately owned company. BrightCloud claims to be Cisco’s leading European Enterprise partner for CCaaS. Gamma’s stated strategy is to become a leading European managed service provider, and BrightCloud brings numerous Cisco Contact Center and Webex CCaaS accounts. Perhaps more importantly, it also brings experience in implementations, support, and expert services. 

Everything else in comms is merging, so of course, the worlds of service providers and channels are merging, too. The CX space also needs to consolidate, and early movers have the best menu. Gamma makes strategic acquisitions related to European enterprise and public sector markets. 

Informa Growing Again: Informa PLC has agreed to acquire Ascential, the owner of Cannes Lions and Money20/20, for approximately £1.2B to expand its events business. The deal, which must still be approved by shareholders, is expected to close in the fourth quarter. Informa also runs other major conferences, including Enterprise Connect.

New Endpoint Strategy? FT reported Meta is considering taking a “strategic” stake in EssilorLuxottica, its partner on the Ray-Ban smart glasses. EssilorLuxottica is the dominant provider of designer and prescription glasses and has an €87B market cap. Will glasses become the new endpoint? Clearly, Meta sees something in its Ray-Ban partnership. Video: Danto demonstrates the Luxottica Nuance prototype frames for the hearing impaired.

IntelePeer Raises $140M: IntelePeer raised $140M in equity and debt financing to support its development of generative AI services for improved customer service experiences in contact centers. IntelePeer automates customer service interactions across voice, messaging, and social media, and claims to have automated over 600M. One of its customers fully automates over 60M inbound interactions annually, achieving a self-serve rate of over 70% for calls.

Vodex and Krisp: Krisp, an AI-powered voice productivity software, has partnered with Vodex, a provider of AI-powered voicebots, to deliver advanced AI Noise Cancellation as part of Vodex's voicebot solution. This integration ensures that leads are clearly heard and understood by Vodex’s voicebot, even in challenging background noise conditions. Vodex leverages Generative AI to automate outbound calls, offering a human-like voice and improved understanding with the inclusion of Krisp’s technology. The partnership aims to enhance communication experiences for B2C businesses in North America, enabling them to connect exclusively with premium prospects.

Microsoft Postpones the Gen AI Revolution: Microsoft wants patience from investors, emphasizing that the company’s significant investment in building and leasing data centers to bolster AI will yield returns — starting in about 15 years. During the recently concluded fiscal year, Microsoft reported that expenditures on new buildings and data center enhancements had surged from $13.5B to $35.4B. Meanwhile, in the March quarter, Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing growth rate declined from 31% to 30%. Microsoft further expects Azure growth to slow to 28%-29% in the current quarter.

There’s an entire domino effect here (or perhaps “House of Cards”?). Lumen announced its largest cable purchase to acquire 10% of Corning’s next-generation optical cable over the next two years. Generative AI requires (at least) 10 times more fiber connections within data centers. This agreement will more than double Lumen’s intercity network miles.

dvLED Strategic Alliance: Neoti and Germany’s True Performance have announced a strategic alliance to combine their strengths in dvLED technology. This collaboration aims to enhance their market position and expand the reach of their advanced display technologies. The partnership will leverage True Performance’s engineering expertise and Neoti’s market presence to set new benchmarks in the LED display industry.

Williams Acquired TeachLogic: TeachLogic is a company known for its sound reinforcement solutions in K-12 classrooms. This acquisition enhances Williams AV’s assistive communication product portfolio and expands its presence in the education market. 

Leadership Changes

Alan Masarek, President and Chief Executive Officer, will leave Avaya to retire at the end of the calendar year. Avaya’s current Chair of the Board, Patrick Dennis, will become the new CEO, effective Sept. 1, 2024. This will be the second time Masarek retires, and probably not the last. Masarek agreed to join Avaya as the firm was plummeting into a situation likely far worse than he expected. Mr. Dennis has 30 years of experience, including a term as CEO of Aspect Communications (now known as Alvaria). He has been closely working with Masarek and directly involved in the creation of the strategy and selection of senior executives, so no major disruption is expected. More in this NoJitter post. Separately, Nidal Abou-Ltaif, SVP Global Sales at Avaya and President Avaya International, has left Avaya after a nearly 22 years (he has seen a lot of change). 

Intrado named Liz Nguyen as its new CTO. Phonism announced a new CEO, President, and CTO in a major C-suite shakeup. Steve Lazaridis, its Founder and longstanding CEO, will now serve as the company’s President and CTO, while former Chief Revenue Officer Greg DiFraia will step up as the new CEO.

UJET appointed Geoff Works as VP of Global Channel Sales and Keith Dennis as SVP of Sales. Works, a Cisco alum, will focus on strengthening UJET’s relationships with its TSD partners. Dennis will lead UJET’s direct sales efforts. He previously worked at 8x8, RingCentral, and Talkdesk. 

Vonage appointed Kristy Thomas as its new SVP of Global Channels and Alliances to implement the company’s “high-growth strategy” for indirect routes to market. She will also be responsible for overseeing global channels, such as Technology Services Distributors (TSDs), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Software as a Service (SaaS), System Integrators (SIs), Resellers, and hyper-scaler partnerships. Thomas previously served as Vonage’s SVP for contact center and sales teams.

Jedd Williams is the new Global Head of B2B Sales at Logitech Collaboration. This follows Logitech’s hire of Natalia Herrera a couple of months ago into its Global head of Alliance & Channel Marketing role. As HP sheds quality Poly people, Logitech is apparently picking some of them up.

Michael Brandenburg left Frost and Sullivan after 13 years to join RingCentral, a company he covered. Brandenburg is now a Sr. Product Marketing Manager working in verticals and programmable communications. 

Goodreads

1. Goldman’s CIO on deploying generative AI Twenty-minute video interview with insights on how enterprises can approach generative AI. 
2. 77% Of Employees Report AI Has Increased Workloads And Hampered Productivity, Study Finds Despite 96% of C-suite executives expecting AI to boost productivity, the study reveals that 77% of employees using AI say it has added to their workload and created challenges in achieving the expected productivity gains.
3. The Workers Have Spoken - they’re staying home The WFO RTO debate is finally subsiding. 
4. Microsoft has nine months to stop another antitrust battle from escalating Microsoft reached a settlement with European cloud infrastructure providers, quelling a potentially long antitrust battle — for now. 
5. Intuit plans to cut 10% of its global workforce, or ~1,800 employees, and rehire the same number, primarily in its engineering, product, and sales divisions The 2024 Maneuver.
6. It’s never been easier for the cops to break into your phone The FBI said it “gained access” to the Trump rally shooter’s phone just two days after the attempted assassination.
7. T-Mobile 5G is “more available” than “bad” AT&T and Verizon 5G Story based on an Opensignal report.
8. The AI summer Reality hits: Every big company and comms provider has done a pilot, but generative AI is not the magical cure-all that many expected. 
9. Gen AI: too much spend, too little benefit? Wall Street is finally questioning whether the current wave of capex into generative AI (at least $200bn this year alone) will be supported by equivalent returns.
10. Meta and Vodafone optimise video to boost network efficiency Instagram worked with Vodafone to free network capacity by optimising the delivery of video without noticeable compromise.
11. What caused the great CrowdStrike-Windows meltdown of 2024? How a trusted software provider delivers an update that causes those PCs to immediately stop working. 
12. Robots sacked, screenings shut down: a new movement of luddites is rising up against AI Company after company is swallowing the hype, only to be forced into embarrassing walkbacks by anti-AI backlash.
13. Why OpenAI Could Lose $5 Billion This Year We’ve based our analysis on our informed estimates of what OpenAI spends to run its ChatGPT chatbot and train future large language models, plus guesstimates of what OpenAI’s staffing would cost, based on its prior projections and what we know about its hiring. Our conclusion pinpoints why so many investors worry about the profit prospects of conversational artificial intelligence — including technology introduced by Google, Meta Platforms, and Anthropic.
14. America’s Post-Covid Factory Boom Is Running Out of Steam Companies are laying off employees and cutting production to counter falling orders and rising inventories.
15. The U.S. Wanted to Knock Down Huawei. It’s Only Getting Stronger The Chinese telecom giant struggled at first under U.S. sanctions — then Beijing stepped in.
16. Climate Cash Pivots to New Reality of a Hotter, Wetter Planet Hello? Comms solutions facilitate reducing emissions. 

Other Recent Stuff

• Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform: Make Android Great Again (No Jitter)
• What’s Good for the Goose: Delta Airlines, CrowdStrike, and the Double Standard
• CEO Chat: Is UC Dead? 8×8 CEO Says No!  (UC Today)
• Why Topic Modeling Is My Favorite Gen AI CX Feature (No Jitter)
• CX Doesn’t Matter (No Jitter)
• Microsoft’s Ilya Bukshteyn discusses MS’ new MDEP OS for MTR on Android with the TalkingPointz team
• RealTime Recorded - CCaaS June - Dave and Zeus Kerravala talk NICE Interactions and Five9 (video)
• Dave Gets the Lowdown on AI from Richard Bassett, NICE’s VP of Digital, AI & Analytics (video)
• Three AIs Walked into a Bar … (No Jitter)
• Generative AI: Not the Droids You Are Looking For (No Jitter) 
• Danto discusses his joining TalkingPointz and impressions of InfoComm (video)
• The UCaaS Market Share Leader is … (Telecom Reseller) 
• Dave’s Take on NICE Interactions (video)
• Dave Michels hosts CEO Chat with Dan Bodner, Verint (video, CX Today)
• Dave M Chats with Lee Essex from Tango Networks about UCaaS Mobility 3 (video)
• RingCentral’s Filipe Leitão discusses the company’s European strategy (video)
• Anand Buch (NetSapiens) and Dave chat about the service provider market (video) 
• AI’s Triple Evolution: Legacy, Generative, and the Future (video, UC Today)
• Navigating the Complex Landscape of Facial and Voice Recognition in the Workplace
• Discussing Insider Reports (video)

Recent Insider Reports (only new Insider Reports are behind the paywall) 

1. Insider Jan 2024
2. Insider Lite Feb 2024
3. Insider Feb 2024
4. Insider Lite Mar 2024
5. Insider March 2024
6. Insider April 20, 2024
7. Insider Lite May 2024
8. Insider May 2024
9. Insider June 2024 
10. Insider Lite July 2024

TalkingPointz Insider Reports are available through a subscription service at TalkingPointz.com.

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Meet Us

Dave Michels is a founder and Chief Protagonist at TalkingPointz, and the Editor and Chief of the Insider Report. [email protected]. David Danto is AV Aficionado at TalkingPointz. [email protected].