Insider Report March 2024

Curated Enterprise Communications News and Insights from March 2024

Feature

It’s AI’s Fault: What is going on with the economy? DJIA and S&P are doing great. Banks stopped collapsing. Crypto coins are near all-time highs. Yet the tech landscape is littered with distressed companies. There have been some big layoffs in enterprise comms and mixed signals in quarterly results. 

The big winners are peddling AI — either as chips or services. We are either at or just past peak hype. Enterprise Connect 2024 (EC24) was certainly all about AI, and Informa is even launching a new AI conference this fall, but the frenzy seems to be declining (or I am getting numb to it). Even Nvidia stock has started to dip. 

Generative AI was indeed a breakthrough, but there have been numerous milestones on the AI path over the past 50 years. There’s undoubtedly been some progress, and comms has benefited. Still, most things seem largely as they were pre-generative AI. 

In the near term, generative AI may be doing more damage than good. Customer and vendor investments are diverting to AI. Factor in the trend of rewarding executives for layoffs, and belts are simultaneously tightening and loosening. AI is supposedly about productivity, but from the current vantage, it’s about disappearing moats. With few exceptions, most of the comms sector is ignoring the competitive barriers that protect them and telling their customers, “All that matters is AI.” A tech most of them don’t own or control. 

There are a few other problems, too. For example, the current NY Times-OpenAI lawsuit could impact copyrights and training costs. There’s also a significant gap between vendors' AI promises and the capabilities their channel partners can deliver. I heard AI was not a big topic at the recent Channel Partners conference. 

Fortunately, not many companies can replicate Microsoft’s $13B investment in AI. Without question, we are in a hype cycle. Vendors are slapping “AI” on products like vegetable oil companies were adding “cholesterol-free” badges in the 1980s. 

Generative AI started a new era, and there’s no telling how long it will last, but likely longer than fear of missing out. We are going to see thousands of new models, LLMs that can do math, and maybe (?) some progress on hallucinations. 

General

Enterprise Connect: This biggest event of the year took place this month.
This insider report includes major EC announcements. More thorough coverage and analysis of the overall event will be included in a separate EC24 Research note (full subscribers) coming soon. 

Apple Sued: The US DOJ announced it’s suing Apple for “monopolizing” the “premium smartphone” market. It claims Apple is abusing its dominance “to extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses, and merchants.” More specifically, the DOJ claims Apple is blocking super apps, suppressing mobile cloud streaming services, excluding cross-platform messaging, diminishing the functionality of non-Apple smartwatches, and limiting third-party digital wallets. 

Does the DOJ have a case? It depends on how we define the market. I called the Volvo dealer about getting a replacement key fob. The price was about $500. That’s clearly a monopolistic abuse as there is no other source for replacements, yet that is not illegal because Volvo does not hold a key fob monopoly. Any company can abuse its customers as much as the market will tolerate … unless it’s a noncompetitive market. This is why the DOJ defined the market as “premium smartphones.” Personally, I would rather see Google sued for not closing the gap.  

Regarding the actual complaints, Apple has undoubtedly built a product that favors and protects the iPhone ecosystem. The only real question in this case is whether Apple should be allowed to continue building superior products that people love with such protections. The US loves the theory of competition but tends to favor big companies. The invisible hand in America is truly disappearing (airlines, banks, communications, healthcare, waste management, and so on). 

Perhaps the outcome of this suit will result in more competition. Apple is fighting similar complaints in Europe. Or, as we've seen before, the DOJ will settle in a way that allows Apple to continue stifling competition. Most of us will buy at least two smartphones while waiting for the outcome. 

Hardware Baby: A popular false assumption is that software is all that matters. The right answer isn’t hardware, either. It’s all about hardware and software. In the ’90s, it was all about software, and the DOJ was fighting Microsoft. Today, the DOJ is fighting Apple over iPhone (the epitome of hardware and software) abuses. I will also point to how Nvidia was last year’s star on Wall Street and how Cisco’s devices are leading growth at Webex. 

Twitter or X? Last July, when Elon Musk renamed Twitter to X, there was confusion about what to call the service during the transition. “Formerly known as Twitter ...” seemed silly, but X on its own was sillier. Nine months later, it’s still a mess. X URLs still redirect to twitter.com. One would think a domain change wouldn’t be too hard, but perhaps the developers assumed the name would never change. Or maybe no one at Twitter understands the older code. The transitional state appears to be a new normal, so I stick with “Twitter.” Technically incorrect, but there’s no confusion. 

The EU AI Act: The EU has assumed the role of global regulator and passed its AI Act this month. The main challenge here was defining AI, particularly since they started this legislation before generative AI. On one level, this act is absurd. There’s no way a government body can keep up. On the other hand, it may be necessary for this very same reason. 

Despite its Brussels roots, the EU’s AI regulations will have global implications and elevate European priorities. For example, US developers will now need to prioritize the EU’s trend of protecting vulnerable populations and emphasizing privacy and transparency.

Accenture Bookings: In its Q324 earnings conference, Accenture shared its “Generative AI” bookings in the last four quarters: $100M, $200M, $450M, and $600M. 

Meetings and Messaging

Microsoft Teams Updates: Microsoft made a number of announcements this month. I will cover just some of the larger ones in this Insider Report. IntelliFrame with Auto Cam: Automatic camera switching for IntelliFrame selects from multiple cameras in a Teams Room. It can use other cameras in the room, including laptop cameras. When IntelliFrame is enabled in a meeting, it will use Cloud AI to check for a better angle. This feature will be available for Teams Rooms Pro licenses, coming “later” this year. I am not sold on the laptop camera angle (pun intended). Joining Meetings gets easier with new support for QR codes (scan on mobile), due 1H24. Teams is also supporting ultrasound pairing (finally). Copilot can respond to requests in meeting chats. During its keynote, Microsoft demonstrated that an MTR can be configured in 15 minutes (though an odd claim to feature in a keynote). Voice isolation was also demonstrated by removing background noise (requires speaker enrollment training).  

Zoom EC: Zoom announced that it’s renaming Zoom One to Zoom Workplace. It comes in many versions, including variants with Workvivo and Contact Center. This seems unnecessary and confusing but predictable: Zoom previously rebranded Spots to Huddles and Chat to Team Chat. However, Workplace is a surprisingly broad suite, arguably the broadest in enterprise comms. 

The common theme across Zoom Workplace is AI, or Zoom AI Companion (ZAIC). Zoom believes ZAIC is a key differentiator (free and federated). The keynote featured several demos of ZAIC, including automated camera switching. The company announced ZAIC’s expansion into Zoom Phone and Teams Chat. It also announced a new UI for ZAIC called “Ask AI Companion.” 

The Zoom app has also been updated with new tabs for improved organization and workflow, which should reduce app switching. It also has improved integration with Workvivo and Workspace Reservations. Meetings got new multisharing capabilities, a new speaker view, and smart names and speaker tags. 

Neat Pulse: Neat’s management and support offering, Pulse, got some new capabilities wrapped into the launch of Neat Pulse APIs. This broadens the potential number of solutions that can integrate with Neat devices. Pulse also extends to Neat Sense for environment and room data.

The Jam Ends: The Google Workspace Jamboard app will be no more by the end of 2024. I was pretty excited about this when it came out. It was way ahead of the sector, but then the sector caught on and passed it. The app transitions to view-only mode in early October 2024 and will likely be gone by the end of the year. 

Cisco Webex EC: Cisco shared how the pandemic has changed the workplace by requiring more flexible spaces. During the pandemic, Cisco launched desktop systems, and now it’s focused on making office space more versatile. Cisco’s workplace vision, “distance zero,” attempts to remove the limitations of distance for distributed teams. This is partially accomplished with AI and advanced features for automated camera switching in rooms, speaker tracking, noise removal, its new AI codec, and more — in other words, tightly integrated hardware and software. 

It’s actually been about a decade since Cisco launched an IP phone. These new ones are optimized for hotdesking and space reservations (more below in the UC section). Cisco also updated the Cisco Board Pro all-in-one systems. These new G2 (second-generation) boards are available in 55” and 75” models and feature significant camera updates (supporting simultaneous near and far video streams). Cisco is also the only vendor using AI in the codec. 

It’s a Control Thing: Now that we’ve run out of things to install in the meeting room, the vendors are going after room controls. This was Crestron’s purview, but Cisco and Zoom intend to turn the thermostat up. It does make a lot of sense. I believe curtains, lights, and other items should be easily controlled from the panel. It will also create a new level of interop challenges. For example, Cisco added Zoom Room controls to some of its systems last year, but they probably can’t control the Q-Sys Controls that Zoom can. Or can they?

The new Crestron Control App for Zoom Rooms Software provides room control for Zoom Rooms. It gives one-touch control for compatible third-party devices. The platform supports up to 500 rooms and 2,000 devices. A new app from Q-Sys also works with Zoom Rooms. It allows attendees to access the Q-SYS user control interface to control displays, lighting, shades, and HVAC. 

Yamaha UC: Yamaha UC will soon close its doors. Yamaha cites changes in the market. Changes indeed. While the percentage of video-enabled rooms will increase, offices will get smaller. However, the bigger issue is the MS-Cisco alliance. The partnership is over a year old, but Cisco will see significant growth as it expands into the Microsoft base. That’s going to put a lot of pressure on other vendors. It would not surprise me to see Logi exit the room space completely. Yamaha UC was created after the company acquired Revolabs in 2014. It appeared in a few Insider Reports but never seemed particularly innovative. 

It’s a dumb business as the intelligence moves to the cloud. Video bars went from innovative category-busters to commodities in less than five years. Many “OEMs” today use the same outsourced manufacturers to build them. 

HP|Poly BT Direct for Zoom: HP Poly announced the first Zoom-certified headset with Zoom Call Controls. This is also available on select HP notebooks via the Poly Lens Desktop app. Due to be available in July 2024.

Zoom Rooms at AMC: Zoom Rooms are launching at AMC theaters in eight major US markets to allow people to “gather” for Zoom meetings, events, webinars, and sessions. It’s a great use for those theaters and a potential facilities play for Zoom Events. Theaters are great for viewing but will need to be outfitted with cams and mics for Zoom’s use cases. The main downside is that theaters are not optimized for social interaction. 

Logitech’s MX Brio: This Master Series webcam offers Ultra HD 4K resolution (and is certified carbon neutral). It also offers AI-based image enhancement. Audio is improved with two beamforming mics that reduce background noise. 

Customer Engagement

Innovation Showcase: The theme this year was CX. Five young companies were featured in the Innovation Showcase at EC24 (links go to the short interviews that took place after their EC presentations): HumanFirst, NLX, Operata, Quiq, and Verbal Transactions. More in this NoJitter post. 

NICE Enlighten: NICE announced some updates to its Enlighten suite. The new Experience Management (XM) solution uses generative AI to personalize customer journeys. NICE giveth what the LLM creators tooketh away: memory. XM can access customer history and provide a more customized and personalized experience. An additional benefit: It reduces the need for customers to repeat themselves. NICE also announced Enlighten Copilot for Supervisors. It can generate real-time, conversational responses and identify and recommend compliance matters and opportunities for upselling. 

NICE CXone: CXone added a new Cloud Region in Japan. NICE will provide a business continuity service for CXone in Osaka. The second CXone Cloud Region in the country, it will support CXone customers that operate resilient contact center services within the country.

NICE also announced that its CX AI reached the milestone of augmenting and automating over 100M customer interactions per month. That’s a big number, even to Dr. Evil. A milestone certainly worth celebrating, but what exactly this milestone means is anyone’s guess. It could include transcriptions, agent assistance, analytics, sentiment, and more AI-fueled activities. Even without knowing what it means, it’s a lot higher than the 1.2M summaries Genesys recently celebrated. 

Zoom Contact Center EC: Zoom Contact Center AI solutions include AI Companion for Contact Center, AI Expert Assist for Agents, and now AI Companion for Supervisors. Zoom emphasized its fast pace of development, claiming to have released 650 CCaaS features in the last six quarters. 

Webex CC EC: This was quite possibly the first time Cisco opened its keynote with contact center, announcing that it is now including connectors for both QM and CRM (Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Dynamics) in its base pricing. Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center is currently in beta trials and offers call summaries (live calls, dropped calls, and virtual agents), agent burnout detection, auto CSAT scores, and topic analytics. The previously announced and previewed Webex Customer Experience Essentials (for nontraditional agents) is now generally available.

Talkdesk Autopilot: Talkdesk released Talkdesk Autopilot, which builds on Talkdesk Virtual Agent’s capabilities and includes GenAI features and prebuilt flows tailored for retail and financial services. Td says it can autonomously resolve complex cases and understand customer journeys. It can also learn and understand the customer’s journey and create appropriate conversational responses. Autopilot for Retail and Autopilot for Banking launched first; Talkdesk Autopilot for Healthcare is planned. 

Microsoft Teams Queues App: The new Queues app provides call handling for customer calls on Teams and for supervisors to manage call queues. Users can make calls on behalf of the call queues or auto attendants that they are assigned to. They can also check their call queue performance. Authorized users can monitor call queues and auto attendants in real-time. The Queues app requires a Teams Premium license and will be available 1H24.

GoTo CC Pro: GoTo is no longer satisfied with its small business contact centers. This month, it introduced Contact Center Pro, an omnichannel solution aimed at mid-market and larger enterprises that need to integrate with preexisting CRM, WFM, and productivity apps. Pro includes advanced analytics, campaign management tools, agent analytics, and real-time reporting. 

GoTo also announced Admin GoPilot (which finds answers to setup queries, support resources, and demo videos), an AI optimization add-on (yep, AI-created interaction summaries and insights), and post-meeting summaries (with next steps). There are also new integrations with CRM solutions such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho, as well as an improved integration with Microsoft Teams. 

Avaya Branding: Avaya introduced some new branding this month. The new Avaya Communication and Collaboration Suite is a single solution across premises-based and cloud (private and public) for most UC workloads (meet, call, chat, share files, manage tasks, and more). Additionally, Avaya further committed to the Avaya Experience Platform (AXP), which also extends across its premises-based and cloud (private and public) CX solutions. 

Sprinklr in KSA: Sprinklr is continuing its expansion into Middle Eastern markets and has launched a local data-hosting solution for its platform in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), hosted on Google Cloud. Sprinklr has been increasing its international efforts across the Middle East, Africa, and APAC. 

Vonage Conversational Commerce: Vonage added generative AI to its Conversational Commerce solution, which is now in beta. It now has an assisted live chat capability, where agents receive tailored assistance. 

Verint TimeFlex Bot: The bot shop has a new model designed to assist shift swaps and scheduling. Verint claims its TimeFlex Bot can be implemented in 30 days. TimeFlex is a clever take on shift management that uses gamification with “FlexCoins” to enable self-service agent schedule changes. FlexCoins are not a crypto asset but a reward currency agents earn and spend. Agents can buy shift changes, but premium shifts cost more. 

CallTower Operator Connect: CallTower expanded its Operator Connect services into the EMEA region. Operator Connect is rapidly becoming preferred over Direct Routing. 

AudioCodes Voca: Several small business contact center solutions for MS Teams have popped up recently. AudioCodes is going all in. This month, it upgraded its Voca Conversational Interaction Center with email and webchat channels. AudioCodes is already deep into Teams with SBCs, phones, and cameras. Now, it has a scalable, omnichannel, Azure-native contact center. 

Cognigy Promoted: Genesys promoted Cognigy to the Elite partnership level in its AppFoundry marketplace. Cognigy has native integrations and resale agreements with Avaya and 8x8. 

Five9 GenAI Studio: Five9 announced call summaries. Just kidding, that was last year. Instead, they announced what it claims to be the first enterprise-ready generative AI model and prompt management hub for the contact center. GenAI Studio gives customers the ability to customize, deploy, and test Generative AI prompts based on contextual data. Prompt testing (and education) is an area most skip. The solution allows companies to use off-the-shelf GenAI models and make them more specific to their contact center. GenAI Studio helps its customers control and monitor GenAI outputs (as well as keeping tabs on the data that GenAI can access) using their own models. It will be available 2H24. 

Google CCAIP: Google is expanding its multi-region capability globally to reduce downtime by offering a cross-region failover that supports business continuity — active-active-active. This was launched regionally last year. Google also announced CCAI Quality AI, a new quality scoring and performance management offering under public preview. Using LLM, it provides quality scoring and insights to support coaching and agent performance trends.

Intermedia Healthcare Solutions: Intermedia launched a (rebrandable) healthcare-specific solution to support patient experience and healthcare operations. It’s the usual robust UCaaS suite with new healthcare-optimized integrations. Intermedia’s Healthcare Solutions works with the most frequently used electronic health record (EHR) solutions. One edge Intermedia has here is its archiving solution, which can help with specialized healthcare compliance requirements. 

Journey.ai and Zoom: Journey bagged another CC partnership, Zoom this month (Cisco last month). These partnerships focus on protecting customer PID. The goal is a better, seamless, and protected user experiences. With Avaya, Journey now has three big CC partnerships. 

RingCX: RingCentral provided an update on RingCX, launched last fall. It presented RingCX as a highly competitive “AI-First CCaaS” solution. The provider reported it has 160 customers on RingCX and cites simple deployment as a differentiator. It has (beta) integrations to five popular CRMs and offers 20 digital channels. RingSense, included in the low, disruptive pricing, provides automated transcriptions, call summaries, conversation analytics, QM, agent assist, virtual agent, and scorecards.

Talkdesk + Verint: Td announced an expanded partnership with Verint to provide automated workforce management (WFM) to contact centers with a new Verint Workforce Management for Talkdesk offering. The services are integrated so that Td customers can simplify agent forecasting and scheduling. This is an expansion of a long-standing partnership.

Unified Communications

Avaya and Zoom: This was a big one, and many were surprised by this agreement. I wrote about it in this No Jitter article. Here’s what you need to know. Avaya intends to focus on CC, which makes sense for numerous reasons. For SMB, it partnered exclusively with RingCentral. It’s more complicated with large enterprises. First, Avaya often provides both UC and CC. In other words, it has to maintain and support Aura (premises-based or private cloud offers). It could just do that, but modern UC also involves chat and meetings. Avaya Spaces offers chat and meetings, but most enterprises have turned to other providers for enterprise-wide chat and meeting services. Google, Cisco, Teams, and Zoom are the big four serving enterprises. 

Avaya turned to Zoom to complement its solutions. Zoom will create a new client — let’s call it a dialer for now — that will provide a native integration with Aura. MS Teams can integrate with Aura, but it’s a basic (on/off hook, call, xfer, etc.) integration. Avaya will also resell Zoom Workplace — a version without Zoom Phone. 

It’s a simple deal with significant impacts and implications. It puts Zoom in the UC business and in large enterprises. I imagine some enterprises will look to Zoom Phone for hybrid solutions. Zoom Phone and Aura have different back ends, but a single client creates an exciting option. It also puts Avaya in the Zoom business. What becomes of Avaya Spaces is unclear, but it’s not looking good. Zoom Phone already supported Avaya phones. 

The new agreement does not affect the RingCentral agreement or Avaya Cloud Office. It should also be noted that, unlike the RingCentral agreement, the Avaya Zoom partnership is nonexclusive. This means Avaya could cozy up with Google, Cisco, or even Microsoft (with a native integration), and Zoom could position its dialer for other premises-based solutions such as Mitel or Cisco. 

RingEX: RingCentral rebranded its MVP offer as RingEX. I liked MVP (Meetings, Video, and Phone), but some thought it stood for Minimum Viable Product. The new name stands for Employee Experience and better complements RingCX (Customer Experience, also designed for employees). RingCentral also announced it achieved five nines over 22 quarters and recently accomplished six nines (though it isn’t changing its SLAs). 

The real story from RingCentral is what’s behind (or under) RingEX, RingCX, and its other products: RingSense AI. RingSense UC capabilities include real-time note-taking, conversational intelligence with AI-generated distilled summaries, notes, action items, unread message recap, translation services, and more. 

RingCentral’s keynote and presence at EC was impressive and competitive — a significant achievement given that it’s a much smaller company than the other keynoters. RingCentral was also the only keynote to include the emerging Events category. 

Webex Calling EC: The main announcement was the launch of the 9800 series (four models) IP phones. The death of the IP phone has been slightly exaggerated. Certainly, sales are declining, but it’s still a big business. It’s been about 10 years since Cisco launched a new phone. While we often talk about the maturity of voice, the new endpoints have quite a few compelling features. 

The 9800 series are the first universal Cisco IP phones. The new PhoneOS will work with all Cisco and Webex calling solutions. Beyond calling features, these are all space-reservation devices. Several vendors have created green/red devices that indicate if a shared space is vacant; these are similar (in price and function) but also happen to make calls. When activated, they also become personalized. They are optimized for Cisco Spaces, but third-party space management systems could integrate with them. The phones also feature background noise removal on both the near and far ends. The phones themselves are also produced with more sustainable materials. 

RingCentral & Optus: RingCentral has partnered with mobile provider Optus in Australia to offer Optus Loop with RingCentral. RingCentral’s other wireless partnerships include AT&T and Vodafone. 

DialPad T-Mobile: A new twist on UCaaS mobility. I’ve been writing about making the UCaaS number the native cell phone number, which gives voice calls (and chat and meetings) a higher-quality experience. Partners DialPad and T-Mobile have not done that integration but are testing a new 5G network slicing beta. It provides Dialpad, T-Mobile, and T-Mobile for Business customers with a direct connection to the Dialpad platform when on the mobile network, with improved quality over OTT apps. Dialpad and T-Mobile extended their partnership for another three years. 

Dialpad also released Ai Recaps, powered by Dialpad's proprietary DialpadGPT that uses conversational data to churn out insights. Ai Recaps works with Dialpad Talk for calls and Dialpad Meetings, as well as its CCaaS offer.  

Enreach Contact: While most UCaaS providers seem preoccupied with the contact center, Enreach launched a new UC app called Contact. It’s a single unified workspace for chat, video, and telephony. The Contact App clients are available for desktops, mobile devices, and an embedded Teams App. Contact is available to partners and customers in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Latvia.

Microsoft Teams: Microsoft announced its financially backed SLAs on Teams Calling will increase to 99.999% availability. This is a significant improvement. AT&T will offer Teams Phone Mobile later this year. Verizon has had this exclusively in NA for just over a year. Microsoft said adding AT&T was in response to popular demand (from AT&T or enterprises?). Microsoft also announced that Odido, Virgin Media O2, and Vodafone UK will support Teams Phone Mobile later this year. Microsoft has not released adoption numbers on Teams Phone Mobile, but TalkingPointz believes the convergence of UCaaS and Mobility is the most significant trend in UCaaS. Teams Intelligent Call Recap: Copilot meets calls. It will work with VoIP and PSTN calls. It can summarize calls if transcription is enabled. The feature is supported on Teams Mobile app (OTT) but not on Teams Phone Mobile (wireless). Coming 1H24 for Premium and Copilot for Microsoft 365 users. 

Carriers and CPaaS

Twilio-Segment: Twilio decided to keep Segment (the bids came in low). The plan now is to push Segment (and Twilio) towards break-even. Twilio intends to introduce three products this year that will embed Segment into Communications. 

Vonage & Telkomsel: Vonage will work with Indonesian telecom Telkomsel to exploit the potential of their respective APIs. 

SIPPIO Teams Expands: SIPPIO added new capabilities to its Microsoft Teams Phone service. The solution now offers analytics and reporting capabilities as well as call recording and AI to extract insights from call recordings. SMS/MMS is enabled via SIPPIO Messaging, which integrates with WhatsApp for Business and Apple Messages for Business.

Tango Extend: Tango Extend is aimed at business users who need a global, one-rate mobile plan that can be integrated with corporate UC. Tango’s eSim works with BYOD or company-owned mobile phones. It’s an interesting twist on the gradual convergence of UCaaS and mobility (UCaaS Mobility 3.0). Will enterprise MVNOs take off? I can see it. 

The Business Section

Microsoft & Inflection: While Microsoft hasn’t technically purchased GenAI startup Inflection, it did license its technology for $650M and then hired executives and a large part of the Inflection staff. 

Amazon/Anthropic/Accenture: Amazon completed its $4B investment in AI startup Anthropic. The companies have a strategic collaboration agreement under which Anthropic uses AWS as its primary cloud provider. Anthropic recently introduced Claude 3, accessible now via Amazon Bedrock. 

Zendesk Acquisition: Zendesk made yet another acquisition. You might be surprised, but it’s an AI deal. Zendesk grabbed Ultimate, a provider of AI agents for service automation, which supposedly helps move companies towards higher levels of self-service. Ultimate claims its platform can integrate with backend systems and also has analytics and reporting capabilities. Zendesk has been on an acquisition spree, purchasing Klaus, Tymeshift, and Zopim chat over the past few quarters.  

Leadership Changes

Meghan Keough at C1 was promoted to CMO, and Tamara Shaw moved into the CTO role. Twilio named Thomas Wyatt its new President of Segment. Wyatt was formerly the Chief Product and Strategy Officer at People.AI. Inbal Shani was also named as Chief Product Officer of Twilio Communications. Leslie Blanke was named Chief Strategy Officer at ujet.cx. He previously served as SVP, Strategy and Operations. Dialpad appointed Jim Palmer as its new Chief AI Officer. Palmer has been in charge of Dialpad’s AI tech team since the 2018 acquisition of TalkIQ. Board member Dan O’Connell left the role to become CEO of Front.

CallTower appointed Paul Holden as its new VP of EMEA Sales. Charles “Chuck” Boynton is no longer the Chief Financial Officer at Logitech International. Boynton will stay on until mid-May. Sangoma promoted Joel Kappes to the newly created role of Chief Customer Officer. Kappes had been a Senior VP at Sangoma and a former Senior Director at 8x8. Sprinklr named Amitabh Misra as CTO. Misra was formerly VP, Engineering at Adobe. Q-SYS promoted Jason Moss to VP of Marketing & Ecosystem. 

Five9 appointed former Gartner CC analyst Steve Blood as VP of Market Intelligence and Evangelism. Blood is no stranger to the customer experience and contact center space, as he was an author of the CCaaS Magic Quadrant. Steve’s departure from Gartner has delayed the CCaaS MQ this year. Gartner will likely kick off the MQ as soon as they backfill Steve’s position — probably with Simon Harrison.  

Microsoft named Mahendra Sekaran as CVP, M365 - Intelligent Communications. Sekaran was formerly a VP of Intelligent Communications at Microsoft. Another big change is Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan joining the newly formed Microsoft AI organization. Mustafa will report directly to CEO Nadella and as EVP and CEO of Microsoft AI. Mustafa was formerly the co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection. Simonyan, the other co-founder of Inflection, joins Microsoft as Chief Scientist and will report to Mustafa.

Twilio added a 10th Director to its board. Andy Stafman is a partner at Sachem Head Capital Management. 

Goodreads

1. 'Office culture' as we know it is dead. Workers have other ideas Companies are clawing to bring back pre-pandemic perks and that “family” feeling — but employees want something more tangible.
2. Europe Is Breaking Open the Empires of Big Tech Tech giants have to comply with a new EU law that is set to change the internet. It aims to force open the biggest platforms to encourage competition and give users more choice in their digital lives.
3. Wikipedia Wisely Downgrades CNET Reliability Score After Lazy AI Screw Ups Incompetent executives at many large media companies use AI to automate clickbait.
4. Slack’s new CEO looks to bring stability after a turbulent period Denise Dresser is the third CEO in a year. The once disruptive and innovative company now seeks simple stability.
5. Vision Pro is an over-engineered “devkit” Hugo Barra, who used to run Oculus, wrote a long and thoughtful piece about the Vision Pro.
6. An Interview with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan About Surviving COVID and Building Moats With Lawson gone, Eric remains the only founder in the enterprise comms majors. So insightful. 
7. Telegram hits 900mn users and nears profitability as founder considers IPO An interview with Pavel Durov about Telegram. 
8. Meta just showed off Threads’ fediverse integration for the very first time Meta demonstrated how users will eventually be able to connect their accounts and posts across different platforms through Threads, letting them reach multiple audiences at once.
9. General Motors Quits Sharing Driving Behavior With Data Brokers And Congress is concerned about TikTok. The issue is American privacy. 
10. 7 new AI case studies from 7 top brands I attended the Cognigy Experience Summit, and these conversational AI presentations by customers were eye-opening.   
11. New AI Claude 3 shows signs of Metacognition — A New Era for Humanity & The Science of Consciousness? The subject is aware that it’s being tested! 
12. NYC AI Chatbot Tells Businesses to Break the Law Oops. LLMs are not databases. They need careful productization before you can use them for self-service answers. They sound convincing, but this one often gets the law wrong.

Other Recent Stuff

• Why Does the World Need a New IP Phone? #Cisco 9800 Series
• 100 million customer interactions per month #NICE #EC24 #CXone
• CEO Chat: Mike Burkland, Five9 
• Avaya and Zoom Strike GTM UC Alliance 
• Reinventing Service Provider Voice 
• How the Digital Markets Act Could Impact Enterprise Communications 
• Dave and Zeus Discuss Earnings
• Dave and Dan Update from Cabo #Five9
• Janine Pelosi, CEO of Neat @ ISE2024
• UC Weekly News with David Danto video (13 min mark)
• Beeper: the Killer Tech of 2023?

2023 Insider Reports (only new Insider Reports are behind the paywall) 

1. Insider August 2023
2. Insider September 2023
3. Insider October 2023
4. Insider November 2023
5. Insider December 2023
6. Insider Lite Jan 2024 (Twilio)
7. Insider Lite Jan 2024 (Key Trends)
8. Insider Jan 2024
9. Insider Lite Feb 2024
10. Insider Feb 2024
11. Insider Lite Mar 2024

 

Upcoming Research Notes: 

• UCaaS is extending into physical events. 
• EC24

 

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