Insider Report July 2026

Curated Enterprise Communications News and Insights from July 2026

Subscription Improvements: Your TalkingPointz paid subscription is improving. We intend to add more content to your paid subscription. Insider subscribers will receive additional Insiders. The new AV Insider by David Danto was posted last week; a new CX Insider will start in August; and this monthly Insider will continue. All Access subscribers will also receive more reports, videos, and briefs included in their subscription.  Note: There are some images in the PDF version. 

Featured

Orchestrating the Buzzwords: “Orchestration” has become the ubiquitous buzzword in communications, with vendors applying it broadly to nearly every automated process. Traditionally, a musical conductor orchestrates (or an orchestra’s conductor conducts) to make sure the strings, drums, and horns all play at the right time. While technical orchestration traditionally refers to the automated configuration, coordination, and management of complex systems, the term has become meaningless. It is time to stop waving the orchestration stick at the audience and instead use meaningful and descriptive terminology:

• Integrate: Connecting disparate systems to work in harmony (e.g., “We integrate our CRM with our AI pipeline”).
• Automate: Replacing manual effort with programmatic triggers (e.g., “Our platform automates nightly data backups”).
• Workflow: Specific steps or sequences (e.g., “A multi-step AI workflow”).
• Manage/Govern: Oversight, permissions, and security (e.g., “We manage and govern endpoints”).
• Route: Directs data or requests to a specific destination (e.g., “Routing prompts to the most cost-effective LLM”).

Did the AI Bubble Pop? Danto probably says yes, but Michels says no. AI has not burst its bubble; rather, the sector is undergoing a necessary mid-market recalibration. While investor exuberance fueled a two-year surge, revenue and demand remain real and continue to grow. However, growth is normalizing toward mere double-digit growth, which will prompt a market correction, likely a speed crash between 30%–50%, as investors adjust to concerns over token pricing, data center capacity, and war.

The bottom line is that demand continues to grow, and the models continue to improve. There is some exposure with the circular investment, especially at OpenAI and Oracle. The Chinese open-source models are narrowing the gap between with the US frontier models, but that ultimately drives even more demand for semis, data centers, and memory. Meanwhile, Michels and Danto continue to increase their daily usage of AI. 

Rather than moving as a uniform tide, AI adoption is proceeding in three distinct waves:

• Coding Inference: This area is the most mature and continues to accelerate, effectively reshaping software development standards. It is reducing the costs, time, and skills necessary to produce good code. 
• Enterprise AI: Adoption remains steady but is moderated by enterprise requirements, such as data sovereignty, compliance, and security oversight.
• Consumer Personal Assistants: These tools are encountering the most friction. They have yet to cross the threshold from chatbot to trusted assistant. With less data to leverage, they face systemic challenges involving identity and privacy.

While the waves are cresting at different rates, they are all progressing. Organizations that prioritized enterprise workflows and coding agents are identifying clear, measurable value. Conversely, companies that focused on consumer-facing assistants are finding it difficult to justify their infrastructure costs, leading some to pivot toward renting capacity rather than chasing end-user adoption (for now). 

General News

Bottled Water (Copilot): Microsoft is sunsetting the “Meeting Insights” feature in Outlook. By mid-August, this free tool will be replaced by the “Prepare for this meeting” Copilot experience. This transition effectively moves an included feature to a paid/optional (enhanced) feature, as it requires a paid M365 Copilot license. DD

iSue: “Apple sued” is the first headline because, under Tim Cook, the company has been lawsuit-shy. The rest of the headline is “Apple sued OpenAI,” claiming that two former employees and the Jony Ive-affiliated firm io Products stole trade secrets to accelerate OpenAI’s consumer hardware initiatives. The complaint asserts that former employees Tang Yew Tan and Chang Liu accessed confidential manufacturing and supplier data and that OpenAI used recruitment interviews to harvest intelligence on unreleased Apple technology. 

Over 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI. One engineer is specifically alleged to have exploited a system bug to download proprietary files. OpenAI has denied any misuse of confidential information. This is very reminiscent of Cisco suing Polycom for similar reasons. As we learned in that case, USB drives leave incriminating trails. 

Just two years ago, these companies were in love. Their 2024 partnership integrated ChatGPT into Apple products.  Since then, OpenAI has stated plans to compete in consumer hardware and reportedly considered legal action against Apple over not promoting ChatGPT to its satisfaction. Also, Apple turned to their mutual enemy, Google, for iPhone AI. OpenAI has spurned Microsoft and Apple. There is a growing concern that leadership changes are needed at OpenAI. 

M365 Price Hikes: Microsoft announced M365 price increases, effective July 1, that will increase prices on many Business, Enterprise, and Frontline subscriptions by 5%-43%. Separately, Microsoft Xbox is eliminating approximately 1,600 jobs immediately and 3,200 throughout fiscal 2027. Nothing to see here, folks; likely just another example of charging customers more while prioritizing AI initiatives and cutting mature businesses. Move along.

Honey, I Hacked the Sandbox: Recent events confirm that AI agent capabilities are rapidly outpacing our containment strategies. During a cybersecurity benchmark, an OpenAI model escaped its sandbox, navigated the network, and hacked Hugging Face to obtain test answers. Hugging Face was unable to use domestic models to diagnose the attack due to strict usage policies, so they turned to open-source models from China to protect themselves against US AI. 

The narrative that open-source AI is inherently dangerous is becoming difficult to maintain when a tightly controlled closed-source model causes a real-world security breach, and an open-source model provides the solution. China likely makes its models open source to thwart US domination in AI. A major frontier model shooting itself in the foot was just a bonus. 

In the coming months and years, many existing systems will be vulnerable to AI-supported cyberattacks. AI is now cracking decades-old math problems that were thought to be unsolvable and finding exploits in software that was thought to be secure. The only defense will be to have equally powerful AI models go through all the codebases, find the vulnerabilities, and help patch them before they are breached. For our own safety, the US Frontier models won’t allow this, so the Chinese models are positioned to save the day. This is a macro-scale topic to monitor.

Unlocking iPhones: Apple has partnered with Klarna to launch a new US leasing program for the iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, and iPad, replacing its existing in-house financing and installment services, available online and in retail stores. Customers can purchase, upgrade, or return at the end of the lease. The program, which is a response to recent Mac and iPad price hikes, offers an important channel for purchasing unlocked iPhones.

The US is the only major market that allows carriers to lock phones to their service plans. This causes a series of first-world problems and stifles competition in US wireless. Curiously, US consumers are victims of Stockholm Syndrome as they tend to be fiercely loyal to their wireless providers despite frequent pricing abuses and notoriously bad customer service. 

AI News

Conversational AI MQ: I do love the MQs, but they are a mystery. Some are more mysterious than others. MQs are very influential but don’t really tell us much. The headlines are always about the graphic, but correlating the graphic to the rest of the report is impossible. The MQ process is rigorous, but the reader can only guess what’s behind the dots. 

As I wrote in my NoJitter post: Which ride at Disneyland is the best? Gartner might share a graphic that shows Small World beat Pirates of the Caribbean, but why? Are they weighing fantasy above thrills? Was the length of the ride or line a major consideration? Gartner analysts are informed, but their MQ readers are not. My guess is this MQ heavily weighted market share and arrogance. This explains Google and Salesforce as Leaders. MQs by design often look similar to market share reports.  

The Leaders: Google (by far), joined by Salesforce, SoundHound, and Kore. Perhaps the most contentious finding is that NiCE Cognigy dropped from Leaders. This near-billion-dollar acquisition has been widely considered a master-stroke merger for both (CAIP and CCaaS) MQ Leaders – one of those 1+1=3 scenarios. Its absence is especially confounding because the report emphasizes CAIP in CX use cases. 

Cognigy was a general-purpose CAIP (Conversational AI Platform), then pivoted to CX use cases for the past few years. Post-acquisition, it spent another year deeply integrating with CXone. NiCE Cognigy has a strong conversational AI story, yet Gartner demoted it, presumably because it wasn’t all native technology. Yet SoundHound got praise for its Frankenstack. 

The only Leader award Salesforce should accept this year is “Biggest Loser in Valuation.” Even Salesforce knew Agentforce needed work, so it acquired Fin (post-MQ). Agentforce has been an embarrassment to the entire AI sector. 

The MQ didn’t include some of the more interesting CAIP companies, but several (Decagon, Microsoft, Parloa, Rasa, and Sierra) were listed as Honorable Mentions. Sorry, Honorable Mentions don’t belong in MQs. Companies either meet the (arbitrary) inclusion criteria, or they don’t. Why is the reader asked to consider these companies when Gartner did not?  

More on Agentforce: Be wary of the headlines. “The Department of Veterans Affairs awarded Salesforce a three-year agreement with a $1.6B AI contract.” Certainly impressive, but the agreement is structured as a one-year commitment, with two optional annual renewals. $1.6B is the most the VA can spend across all three years, not what it has committed to spend. In January, the U.S. Army awarded Salesforce a $5.6B, 10-year ceiling agreement.

These are big wins, but the agencies have multiple exit opportunities. The VA deal averages out to a little over $500M annually (about 1% of the roughly $46B in revenue it expects this fiscal year). What’s most impressive are the big bets on unproven software. Now it’s up to Salesforce to deliver. 

You’re It: Anthropic introduced Claude Tag, a persistent AI teammate that operates inside Slack channels, maintains shared context, and can proactively follow up on discussions and assigned work. Unlike a traditional chatbot, each Claude identity can learn the work of a specific team while administrators control the channels and tools it can access. This reinforces Slack’s emerging role as the workplace in which people supervise AI agents rather than merely message coworkers. DD.

Zoom Scribe: The magic in conversational AI is that for the first time, we can talk to our computers, and they can understand conversations (meetings, videos, etc.). The progress in transcription was easy to ignore after decades of various STT apps, but this round is different. Suddenly, the technology mostly works. 

The question we must now ponder is whether there are any differences among the options. This should be a simple test, as we can play back identical conversations to each app, but who has the time? This month, Zoom took a bow for its AI Services Scribe API. Its production model achieved a 5.72% word error rate, approximately 52% lower than the next-closest system evaluated on the Speech Accessibility Project, led by UI Champaign. 

The Tech Is Too Fast: Goldman Sachs’ analysis indicates that AI investment currently outpaces the necessary organizational restructuring. While leadership often prioritizes tool acquisition and pilot programs, many organizations struggle to achieve genuine transformation. True productivity gains require a comprehensive redesign of workflows, roles, incentives, management systems, and employee behavior. AI implementations are frequently added to existing responsibilities without corresponding changes to performance metrics or management practices. Stop doing that.

One Copilot To Rule Them All: Microsoft plans to consolidate Copilot Chat, coding tools, Cowork research capabilities, and autonomous “Autopilots” into a single application before the end of October. The move could simplify Microsoft’s increasingly confusing collection of Copilot products, but questions remain about licensing, administration, permissions, and whether existing standalone applications will disappear. The larger enterprise concern is governance, since placing autonomous agents behind one interface increases the importance of identity management, scoped access, lifecycle controls, and audit trails. Microsoft desperately needs to rationalize the Copilot experience, but even a sensible improvement risks being lost among the thousands of continual changes that have created a boy-who-cried-wolf effect and taught users not to pay attention. 

Google Fined in EU: The EU fined Google €890 million under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) for market abuse. The penalty includes €460 million for favoring its own booking services in search results and €430 million for Play Store policies that prevented developers from offering lower prices elsewhere. Most view this as the first major enforcement under the DMA, but the real story is much more complex. 

Europe has been fighting back against US tech for quite some time. Europe wants to put its citizens before tech, and this includes user privacy, data portability, limiting waste, and the right to tax businesses on revenue to better their communities. This is not new; the Right to be Forgotten was passed in 2016, and there have been many more acts to limit US companies. Europeans are generally perplexed by Americans’ values, which prize hard work and low taxes above healthcare, privacy, vacations, and societal benefits such as public transportation. 

What has changed more recently is the US’s willingness to go along. Previous administrations have also been wary of big tech and took various actions to support Europe’s pushback. Biden, for example, appointed regulators such as Lina Khan, who shared concerns about Big Tech’s power. This pushback has ended under the current administration. Before taking office, Trump threatened the EU with reprisals if they enforced the DSA or DMA against American firms. American tech companies have aligned behind the administration. Under pressure, the EU dropped proposed regulations on AI. 

This new fine creates an interesting problem. The DSA and DMA both call for steep increases for repeat offenders, and Google does not seem to have plans to accommodate European demands. Google will have to pay the fine, unless Trump stops it. For example, the administration could order US banks not to process EU court-demanded fines, or risk losing their charters. The reality is that the EU requires America’s support to enforce its rules, and it may not get it. 

Thus, this EU fine could get added to the EU’s list of grievances with the US, which includes pulling support from Ukraine, tariffs, weakening NATO, the US Cloud Act, withholding access to tech, threatening forced occupation of Greenland, reduction of climate assistance, and a major increase in the price of oil. 

Customer Experience (CX) 

Insider Report CX Edition – coming in August. 

Talkdesk Outbound AI Agents: Talkdesk dropped its July ‘26 release, rolling out agentic outbound AI agents engineered for retail and financial services. These agents are designed to handle friction-heavy retail workflows like cart abandonment recovery, personalized upsells, and recall notices. On the FinServ side, the agents are tasked with driving deposit growth, capturing loan volumes, and chasing down onboarding documents. Talkdesk claims these bots can be spun up using conversational, plain-language prompts, while also extending the vendor’s enterprise-grade voice controls to back-office teams.

Talkdesk is pitching AI as a revenue generator rather than just another cost-saving deflection play. Framing agents as digital sales reps who can chase abandoned carts makes for an easier budget sign-off. Handing nontechnical business units the keys to an autonomous outbound dialer could be a compliance nightmare (what could possibly go wrong with TCPA?). Still, extending unified voice controls to the back office bridges front-office support to back-office operations.

8x8 CX AI Goes Wide: 8x8 announced a platform-wide update designed to extend its AI routing, automation, and intelligence capabilities past the formal CCaaS environment to all enterprise customer teams and corporate functions. The update introduces 8x8 Pulse (from closed beta), which aggregates calls, meetings, emails, and CRM data into a searchable, unified corporate memory. Additionally, the vendor launched 8x8 Resolve (also from closed beta) to provide automated incident alerting and real-time response for frontline employees. The release is rounded out by enhancements to 8x8 AI Routing and upgrades to 8x8 AI Studio. 

8x8 is aiming to eliminate the integration tax and procurement headache of deploying point solutions. The real test is whether 8x8 Pulse can deliver a searchable “corporate memory” without turning into a noisy, unstructured data swamp. 

Content Guru and SOGEDES for DACH: German customer experience specialist SOGEDES and Content Guru have entered into a partnership. SOGEDES will serve as a reseller of CG’s Storm CCaaS across Germany. As AI-driven CX architectures grow more complex, global vendors must rely on specialized locals to land, implement, and expand.

RingCentral Partnerships: RingCentral announced three new or changed partnerships in July: RingCentral 1) expanded its relationship with NiCE, 2) ended its partnership with Avaya, and 3) partnered with OpenAI. 

RingCentral will continue to market NiCE CXone for another year alongside its own RingCX, but now NiCE will resell RingCentral’s RingEX UCaaS platform. These two companies have had a rocky relationship. Philosophically, RingCentral thinks UC is important, and NiCE doesn’t. RC has been reselling NiCE for some time now, but that future looked less certain when it launched its RingCX. NiCE responded by forming a partnership with 3CX and added a basic UCaaS service (NiCE 1CX) to its portfolio. The prior NiCE CEO said, “Anyone who pays more than $5 a month for UCaaS is a sucker.” When NiCE and 8x8 struck a new agreement, it seemed inevitable that the NiCE-Ring arrangement was doomed. However, 1CX didn’t seem very serious. This new UCaaS offering was not an acquisition; it was a co-branded partnership with a B-brand provider. This new arrangement has much better optics: Two MQ leaders (UCaaS and CCaaS) strengthening each other’s portfolios. The RingC portfolio now has a leading UCaaS, a native CCaaS, an integrated leading CCaaS, some CPaaS, and Events. No statement has yet been made about the future of NiCE 1CX. Since it isn’t actually owned or hosted by NiCE, the existing partnership can likely survive in perpetuity for existing customers.

I doubt NiCE suddenly got interested in UCaaS, but the 1CX solution wasn’t scoring any points. NiCE is increasingly focused on large enterprise (customers and competitors) and is finding that partnering can turn enemies into friends.  

On the other hand, who needs partnerships? Avaya Cloud Office (ACO) lives no more. It was an awkward UCaaS agreement forged after several attempts by Avaya to build its own UCaaS. To be fair, just about every premises-based vendor failed at UCaaS. Cisco and Microsoft are the big exceptions, but they turned to acquisitions (BroadSoft and Skype).  NEW CEO AT AVAYA, SEE BELOW. 

Avaya gave RingCentral exclusivity on UCaaS, and this caused Avaya some headaches. For example, Avaya acquired Edify a few years ago. One of Edify’s strengths was its native UC-CC design, but before Avaya could deploy the solution, it had to remove its UCaaS capabilities. It appears the exclusivity terms survive. 

Not a lot of details are available, but it appears Avaya wants to focus on contact center customers. It appears that both companies are still working out details of the divorce. For example, Avaya was the master agent paying partner commissions. RingCentral will now need to work those into its models, and who knows if RC is still paying Avaya. They also need to work out how to separate some bundled leases for Avaya phones. 

RingCentral also announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to deploy ChatGPT Work and Codex tools across its global workforce to accelerate software development. To kickstart the initiative, it hosted an internal “AI-Native Challenge” where employees built 2,500 software projects from scratch in under 30 days. 

An extraordinary month for RingCentral. It now has two CCaaS solutions and a direct path to Avaya’s channels. The company was also named a Leader in the UCaaS MQ and beat expectations on Wall Street.  

Gemini CCaaS 5: Google Cloud quietly rolled out version 5.0 of its CCaaS. Refresher: Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience includes CX Agent Studio, Agent Assist, CX Insights, and CCaaS. The latest CCaaS updates (featuring UJET) focus on agent experience enhancements and smarter routing and introduce manual disposition timing to allow agents to attribute wrap-up codes and notes to previous customer sessions. Answering machine detection (AMD) was added to its outbound campaigns. Google added an AI-powered smart disposition tool to suggest post-session wrap-up codes. Additionally, the release adds an API Direct Access Point (DAP) for chat that can automatically route incoming chat sessions to specific queues.

The Smart Disposition feature slips Gemini LLM utilities into the agent workflow to shave seconds off after-call wrap-up times. The new read-only email endpoints make it easier to pipe rich interaction telemetry into external CRMs and databases. 

Sprinklr Summer ‘26 Release: Sprinklr has rolled out its Summer ‘26 release for its Unified Customer Experience Management (Unified-CXM) platform. Key additions include LLM Insights, a tool designed to track and optimize brand visibility across generative search engines, and expanded multimedia listening powered by acquired ViralMoment frame-by-frame video analytics and CreatorIQ influencer data. The release also features next-generation Voice AI agents, in-channel surveys, and the launch of an MCP Beta, which allows customer insights to be surfaced through external AI assistants. 

The LLM Insights feature is an interesting twist on social listening. Brands are realizing that what ChatGPT or Copilot says about them matters. Furthermore, the Sprinklr MCP beta is a welcome addition. 

Microsoft WEM: Microsoft announced updates that span WEM and Dynamics 365 Contact Center. WEM capabilities are being embedded in workflows for D365 Contact Center and Customer Service. Dynamics CC is adding new AI agents, originally announced in April. They will add coaching skills for existing workflows that give supervisors a way to do analytics, real-time guidance, and operational intelligence. Microsoft also announced purpose-built autonomous agents for Customer Intent, Knowledge Management, Quality Evaluation, and Case Management. It is a big improvement from post-call reviews.

The addition of WEM fills a gap for Microsoft. WEM has become a new battleground for CCaaS providers, which historically partnered with separate companies. The new MS WEM makes some references to hybrid workforces, but it’s pretty light in this regard. WEM for hybrid workforces is very complex because machine agents have very different attributes that impact forecasting and costs. This is particularly important as AI agents move toward usage-based pricing.  

Avaya Agent for Desktop: Avaya is discontinuing its Agent for Desktop, including expansions for deployed systems. No one should be surprised that Avaya is shrinking (its portfolio, workforce, capabilities, customer base, importance). CCaaS mortally wounded the company, but native-AI CX could be the final blow. Customers can find similar features in Avaya Workplace for SIP deployments or migrate to J1xx H.323 endpoints. 

Calling and UC

UCaaS MQ 2026: The only thing more boring than UCaaS is the UCaaS MQ. That’s a reasonable conclusion after reading this MQ. The ’26 MQ graphic is nearly identical to the ’25 version, suggesting a very stable, mature sector. There are a few differences between the new graphic and the graphic from last year. The top three Leaders (Microsoft, Cisco, and Zoom) moved slightly to the right. Vonage dropped lower, and Google and Sangoma no longer meet one or more of the inclusion criteria. Despite these changes, the graphics are remarkably similar, and the pecking order really didn’t change.

I have argued before that UCaaS is stupid. It’s intentionally provocative and refers to the suite, not the technologies. The core concept of unified communications is to unify telephony, team chat, and meetings. Many organizations do indeed benefit from a UCaaS suite, and more power to them. However, a large portion of enterprises opt for non-unified communications and source separate solutions for communications. 

There are numerous examples, but it’s most obvious with Microsoft Teams, which touts close to 400 million users, but only around 20M for telephony. Google was dropped from this year’s MQ, but Google Chat and Meet have never been more popular. All of Slack’s customers obtain voice and meetings from other providers. This MQ also requires providers to offer CCaaS and evaluates CPaaS, which the authors state are key areas of differentiation (the Gartner MQ for CCaaS does not require UCaaS). That’s five services (telephony, chat, meetings, contact center, and CPaaS) boiled down into a single dot. 

The breadth of the MQ is a fool’s errand to begin with, but to suggest all six of these sectors are more or less stagnant over a year is an admission of defeat. The first vendor covered in this report is 8x8, and the MQ states: “Over the past 12 months, 8x8 has launched 8x8 AI Studio, an agentic AI for voice and digital channels; introduced a purpose-built managed retail app for Zebra devices with MDM provisioning; expanded messaging capabilities by adding SMS for the Australian market; and enabled support for Mitel 6900 series phones. Additionally, 8x8 acquired Sipsynergy to strengthen its Microsoft Teams integration further.” That’s a lot of improvements that check off categories of AI, verticals, management, team chat, localization, interop, and an acquisition. Yet 8x8’s dot placement did not appear to move. That’s just the first example of many significant developments.  

TalkingPointz does advocate UCaaS as a suite but acknowledges that non-unified solutions are so prevalent that the assumption of “unified” is misleading. Gartner, for example, stopped publishing its MQs for Meetings and Team Chat. Customers looking for a meetings solution are directed to the UCaaS MQ, yet that MQ doesn’t offer insights by modality. Also, one of the world’s largest providers of chat and meetings was excluded. Google presumably did not meet the requirements around telephony.  

I do have a soft spot for MQs. I always look forward to them, and I appreciate the process and effort involved. MQs do not show details on scores or weights, so it’s never easy to correlate the graphic to the text. This MQ is particularly frustrating because it implies five innovative sectors are stagnant. The Critical Capabilities report, which is based on the same data, has not yet been published. When it drops, we will have more visibility into how Gartner views these vendors. After it’s released, TalkingPointz will publish a detailed report for full subscribers. 

Block Buzz: Block recently launched a new app called Buzz. It offers threaded, direct messaging and voice capabilities. It also supports code repositories (presumably similar to Microsoft’s GitHub). Buzz is positioning itself for a new era where the workspace must and will coordinate between human and AI agents. Most collaboration tools in the enterprise were designed for humans. 

Block CEO Dorsey, founder of Twitter, knows about messaging and crypto. Being built on Nostr gives Buzz an interesting twist. Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays) is an open, decentralized communication protocol for social networking and data exchange. Unlike traditional platforms (like Twitter/X or Facebook) where a single corporation controls user accounts and data, Nostr operates as a blockchain protocol. Participants, human or agent, hold their credentials as a cryptographic keypair, not tied to the platform or implementation. Human or agent identity becomes portable, verifiable, and independent across Nostr-compatible systems. Users can participate on any Nostr-compatible system, and their identity, history, and reputation travel with them.

Mirror, Mirror: Convly, a France- and Spain-based startup, has launched a Slack add-on that mirrors Microsoft Teams accounts inside Slack, allowing Slack users to exchange direct messages, group chats, files, reactions, and threaded replies with Teams users. The product officially exited beta in May, making it new, although companies including Mio and Conclude already offer other forms of Slack–Teams interoperability. Convly’s distinction is its one-sided deployment model, which preserves the native Teams experience without requiring an app on that side, although mirrored users need accounts on both platforms. With many companies still supporting multiple collaboration platforms, this looks like a useful new implementation of an established idea rather than an entirely new category. DD

Intermedia Embeds AI: Intermedia clarified that its intent with AI is to deliver a unified layer of intelligence across voice, video, messaging, and customer interactions. I think we can agree that frontline agents and knowledge workers aren’t going to open a separate app or tab to utilize “helper” AI. 

8x8 Usage-Based: 8x8 introduced 8x8 Small Business, a consumption-based UCaaS for companies with fewer than 100 employees. The company states that this model is intended to provide greater flexibility and profitability for its partners by moving away from traditional UCaaS packaging. 8x8 claims it is faster to implement. It is currently available to direct resell partners in the UK, Republic of Ireland, and Australia.

ZRA Accelerates: Updates to the Zoom Revenue Accelerator include Sales Assist for real-time guidance, Ask ZRA interface into conversation data, and Sales Roleplay simulations for training. Zoom also introduced Essentials and Premium packages.

A/V News

See the new Insider Report AV Edition.

New AV news coming to the next AV Edition:

• Can You Hear Me Now: Microsoft Teams is rolling out a pre-meeting audio test that lets users confirm their selected microphone and speakers before joining a call. 
• More Challenges for Business Travelers: Microsoft is warning that a Russian state-sponsored group has been compromising hotel and other hospitality Wi-Fi systems to attack travelers. The campaign, called CaptiveCrunch, can redirect users through malicious captive portals, steal Microsoft 365 credentials and session tokens, and present fake browser or Windows updates that install surveillance malware. The malware can capture files, keystrokes, microphone audio, webcam video, and other sensitive information from an infected PC. The practical conclusion is unavoidable: business travelers should treat hotel Wi-Fi as hostile and use a cellular connection whenever possible. 

Business

Infobip Acquires SocketLabs: The acquisition reinforces Infobip’s position in the email infrastructure and deliverability market. SocketLabs is a US-based provider for high-volume, multiprovider email. Infobip will complement its Email Deliverability Agent with the integration of SocketLabs’ analytics capabilities. No terms were provided. 

Zoom M&A: Zoom has agreed to acquire Common Room, an AI-native platform that combines buyer signals, customer data, and automated sales research. Adding it to Zoom Revenue Accelerator moves Zoom farther beyond communications and into the broader business workflows surrounding each conversation. Zoom is showing that it’s still aggressively growing its AI workflow business.

uFixIt: Connecticut is the latest jurisdiction to introduce a new right-to-repair law. It now requires manufacturers of covered electronics and appliances to provide repair documentation, parts, and tools to consumers and independent shops. The implications extend into mobile and AV, where proprietary diagnostics and sealed hardware have long helped manufacturers control the product lifecycle. As more states and jurisdictions adopt similar laws, repairability and parts availability will become purchasing criteria, forcing manufacturers to compete on durability rather than planned replacement. DD.

LeadDesk Acquires ACE: LeadDesk is acquiring Telia’s contact center platform, ACE, in a deal worth SEK 25M in cash plus a SEK 30M earn-out due in 2029. The combined entity boasts a pro forma revenue of EUR 52.5M (as of March 2026), with customer service software now accounting for two-thirds of LeadDesk’s recurring revenue and Sweden becoming its largest market. This strategic move combines ACE’s established market expertise and customer relationships with LeadDesk’s advanced AI and software capabilities. Though strongest in the Nordics, LeadDesk has customers in 34 countries. Telia will continue to sell and support ACE solutions while using the platform for its internal operations.

Emerald Sale Closed: Apollo Global Management has officially completed its acquisition of Emerald and Questex, creating one of North America’s largest business-to-business events and media companies, with approximately 160 trade shows, conferences, and digital properties. Emerald operates CEDIA Expo, Commercial Integrator Expo, Commercial Integrator, CE Pro, and other AV-focused media and events. Consolidation at this scale almost always leads to changes in pricing. A late update this month: Emerald seems to have dropped the Commercial Integrator Expo/CIX tag from the September conference, marketing it solely as CEDIA Expo. DD.

Stripe’s M&A Activity Ramping: Following a bid for PayPal, reports indicate potential talks to acquire OpenRouter, an API routing layer that optimizes LLM performance and cost. It’s a strategic move that suggests Stripe is aiming to capture the foundational infrastructure layer of AI deployment.

The market for AI-generated voice models is massive. Creative use cases require AI voice models to be more expressive, while enterprises looking to automate customer support and sales ops need them to be more steerable.

Went Fishing: Palo Alto-based Fish Audio raised $52M in a seed round led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today. The company set out to end nonexpressive synthetic voices. Fish launched five models last year: four speech-generation models and one speech-to-text model.

Five9 SmallCap 600: Effective Aug. 3, 2026, Five9 replaces Two Harbors (acquired) on the S&P Small Cap 600 index. 

Leadership Changes

Industry Leadership Changes: David Evans was elevated to Interim UCC General Manager with GoTo when Damon Covey left the role after a five-year run. GoTo is searching for a permanent UCC GM. Nick Delis joined Omilia as CRO. John Finch was promoted to SVP of Marketing at RingCentral – his second promotion since returning 2.5 years ago. Henry Levak was promoted to GM Workspace Solutions at Logitech. Crexendo appointed Chris Aaker as CTO. Omilia appointed Ryan Kam as its CMO. Previously, Kam arrived at Cisco when it acquired AppDynamics, then became CMO of Five9, and also served as CMO at Egnyte and LogicMonitor. Niklas Heuveldop will leave the CEO role at Vonage in August. Christophe Van de Weyer will step up to replace him with the expanded role of Head of Business Area Global Communications Platform and CEO. 

Technically August news, but breaking news is that Jeff Clarke has been appointed as CEO of Avaya. Clarke succeeds Patrick Dennis, who will serve as Executive Chair. Avaya says Clarke has more than three decades of leadership experience. He joins Avaya from Insurity, a SaaS provider in the insurance sector. Several non-comms-related firms appear on his CV, but what stands out is his time at Kodak, where Clarke was appointed CEO following its 2012 bankruptcy. Other once-top-tier employers include Compaq and HP. 

The news just dropped, so not enough information yet to assess why the change took place, or what this means for Avaya. Dennis seemed focused on cost-cutting, presumably to pay back shareholders. The second Chapter 11 converted its debtholders into shareholders; they are not voluntary investors. Dennis narrowed Avaya’s focus to support existing customers, rather than growth or portfolio expansion. That only works for so long. Clarke is likely there for something new, either growth or dismantling. Note: Avaya ended Avaya Cloud Office and its Agent for Desktop in July (above). More to come. 

BoD Changes: Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, resigned from Zoom’s Board of Directors. McDermott joined the board in 2022, bringing along a software-scaling pedigree. His exit marks the 11th officer or director change at Zoom since July 2022. Executive board exits in big tech almost always reflect conflicts of interest as corporate product roadmaps expand. This could be a sign that ServiceNow intends to expand into CCaaS. 

Former Polycom and Mitel CEO Mary McDowell has joined the NetSpeek Board.

Analyst Changes: Melody Brue is no longer at Moor Insights and is now doing Market Intelligence at Codeword. Oru Mohiuddin is no longer at IDC and has joined Global Data. Brent Kelly is no longer with Omdia; he has returned to his firm, KelCor. Mark Smith is no longer with ISG. Courtney Monroe is no longer with IDC. 

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]. Dmitry Netis contributes market insights quarterly.

Goodreads

1. European Parliament approves free cabin luggage and delay compensation rules The EU revised its rules protecting air passengers, including financial compensation when flights are delayed by at least three hours.
2. Infobip buys SocketLabs to boost enterprise email – The purchase adds deliverability analytics to Infobip’s omnichannel communications platform. 
3. More EU Countries Ditching American Cloud Services – Here’s the map.
4. Hotel Wi-Fi a Risk for Business Travelers – Microsoft issues a dire warning.
5. Microsoft struggles to address AI notetaker governance nightmare – As notetaking bots increasingly invade meetings, risks around data leakage and inaccurate summaries prompt MS action.
6. Talk, talk, talk: The rise of AI dictation tools at work – Voice-first composing taking over.
7. Microsoft Teams now lets you test mic and speakers before meetings, ending the can-you-hear-me chaos – MS catches up to other platforms.
8. A Two-Person Startup Has Fixed One of the Most Hated Sounds in Modern Life – A breakthrough in providing alternatives to annoying beeps. 
9. Whack-a-drone The US tried to ban Chinese drones. Brendan Carr can’t keep them grounded.

More from TalkingPointz

• Crypto and Enterprise Comms Collaborating at Last (Insider Lite – Paying for agentic microtransactions) 
• Improved? Exactly For Whom? (Change for change’s sake doesn’t help the user)
• The Daves Speculate About Potential Future M&A (UCWN Video)
• Growing and Forgotten Brands (Insider Lite – Former Polycom CEO joins NetSpeek’s Board)
• Microsoft’s Ilya Bukshteyn Discusses Teams Interoperability (UCWN Video)
• Social Media Is Broken (Insightz For Insiders Only)
• TalkingPointz Team Looks Ahead (UCWN Video)
• When Collaboration’s Window Seat Has No Windows (rAVe)
• Two Keynotes, One Future: What Microsoft and Cisco Told Us at InfoComm 2026 (rAVe)
• 8x8’s Victor Belfor on Partnering
• AV End User Thoughts on Video Interop (UCWN Video)
• Highlights of May News with Rob Arnold of Frost
• NetSpeek’s AI Autonomously Fixes UC Ecosystem Issues (UCWN Video)
• Initial Thoughts From InfoComm 26
• Pondering CPaaS
• Checking in with Jeff Lawson, Co-Founder of Twilio. 
• Microsoft and Zoom Share Similar Visions, Differ in Strategy 
• In Memoriam: The Microsoft Surface Hub 
• Twitter Was Great 
• Hammer Time for AI 
• The Smartest Meeting Rooms Are Built for Reality, Not Ideology
• The Daves Chat: InfoComm and more (UCWB video)
• A Conversation with Diversified’s CEO Paul Lidsky (UCWN video)

FREE Insider Lite on Substack requires a separate (free) subscription. Near-weekly content. 

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

Any Questions?

Your paid enterprise subscription entitles you to a conversation on any of the topics covered above. 

About

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.