TalkingPointz Insider Report October 2023

Curated Enterprise Communications News and Insights from October 2023

Last month, things were looking up. This month, the markets generally dropped, and we have a new war. That said, the US is on track to pre-pandemic levels for GDP, Crypto is up, and inflation has cooled. 

General

AI Crash: GM’s Cruise has “paused” driverless taxi operations. Its driverless car didn’t stop after an accident and evidently dragged a person trapped underneath it. Actually, that’s just the most recent accident. There have been several. 

Many people, even Elon, believe self-driving cars are nearly upon us. They are right. Cruise and other self-driving cars are very good at driving. They are very good at most road conditions, lane control, reading traffic signs, and other things they have learned from big data. But these accidents aren’t about driving per se. The accidents are about general awareness of the broader situation.

Driving is a human social activity; it requires a general sense of knowing what is going on around you. Humans can be taught various things without lots of data, but AI can’t. Telling AI not to drive when someone is trapped underneath the vehicle requires many instances of people being trapped underneath vehicles for training data. As humans, we are able to treat identical road conditions differently based on “data” that has nothing to do with driving.

This is why so many of the broader AI initiatives coming at us, like Microsoft Copilot, will fail. Did I say fail? That’s not fair; they will do many things very well. But they won’t meet our expectations. This is only partially due to hyped expectations — it’s also because they have no general awareness of what’s occurring. 

Or are our demands and expectations too high for self-driving cars? When you consider that over 40k people were killed by human-driven cars in the US last year, perhaps so.  

Zoomtopia: Zoom is unapologetic. It has a clear vision and future that involves intuitive communications and collaboration — without a need for Microsoft (or Google). This vision makes many people uncomfortable. Many see Zoom’s attempts to create products like Email and Calendar as a fool’s errand. Microsoft (and Google) now offer decent video meetings, telephony, and chat/messaging services, so it’s arguably more foolhardy to build a business that sells products that customers already have. 

Imagine it’s 2010, and Eric Yuan is asking you to invest in his new startup. Eric thinks he can take on giants like Cisco, Tandberg, and Polycom. He has never run a company before and speaks broken English. His primary qualification is he used to work at Cisco. What we know in 2023 is Eric has a knack for creating intuitive software and consistently beating long odds. 

Email remains mission-critical yet devoid of any meaningful innovation. Sooner or later, someone is going to reinvent email. We also know that Microsoft’s grip on the enterprise isn’t what it was. macOS, iOS, Android, and ChromeOS have eaten into its desktop monopoly. GDocs and other suites have eaten into Office. Linux has eaten into Windows Server, and Azure has viable competition from AWS, GCP, and more. There are a lot of companies out there that don’t need Microsoft 365 — at least not for every employee. 

That’s a longer-term strategy, but until then, Zoom plays nicely within the Microsoft ecosystem and sees AI as its immediate opportunity to differentiate. Zoom’s AI companion looks a lot like Copilot, with multiple large language models (LLMs). The fact that Zoom is offering its AI companion at no additional cost (for now, anyway), unlike what we see from competitors, is sure to be attractive to Zoom customers. The general message is that Zoom is great for collaboration and communication, especially for businesses in a hybrid work setup. The key difference is that Zoom isn’t building a strategy dependent on Microsoft or Teams. 

Zoom Docs uses AI to help with document collaboration. It also includes project tracking and wiki-building features, and users can work on documents together, add comments, and customize layouts. Zoom’s AI Companion is another tool that can assist in editing documents, brainstorming, and summarizing content, with the ability to pull in information from Zoom Meetings and Team Chat for better information sharing. 

Workvivo helps people stay connected and informed. You can launch meetings and chat with colleagues directly from Workvivo. They’ve also added tools like Visitor Management for the office, Workspace Dashboard for space planning, and Workspace Reservation improvements. There are new single-use booking links, asynchronous video messaging (Zoom Clips), and an enhanced Meetings tab for centralizing meeting information. Zoom improved its meetings, too, adding features like name tags for Zoom Room users, new layouts for Zoom Rooms, options to reduce bandwidth, and improved tools for managing audio and video streams. 

X-Tel: My usage and coverage of X, formerly Twitter, has been declining. Musk wants me to reverse that, so he is now bringing real-time services to X. For X to succeed in Musk’s eyes, the platform needs to compete with YouTube, LinkedIn, FaceTime, dating apps, and the entire banking industry.

It seems Musk will keep throwing ideas at the wall to see what stops it from sinking. Real-time services work best with presence, so that’s likely coming next. The central problem is that Musk has shifted from tech visionary to ringmaster (really more of a freak show), and admission costs $8/mo. That might be reasonable if it weren’t free before — or if alternative apps weren’t free. 

WebexOne 2023: WebexOne 2023 will come to represent a turning point for Cisco’s cloud communications suite. Cisco didn’t benefit from the pandemic like Microsoft and Zoom, and Webex became stale, but that narrative likely just ended. WebexOne had a lot of energy and even more announcements. Those announcements were sprinkled with endorsements from Microsoft, an expanded partnership with B&O, and customer testimonials. Webex has made progress across its entire portfolio, including devices, events, meetings, cellular, and contact center. In a nutshell: Webex got its groove back. 

Webex has found a suite-spot (pun intended) with Microsoft Teams. It is the only competitive app that Microsoft tolerates and even welcomes into its ecosystem. Cisco devices and Webex Contact Center are complementary to Teams (and Contact Center got 21 minutes on the keynote stage). 

Having Microsoft in your corner is a powerful thing, and something that none of Microsoft’s other room vendors have. As a result, Cisco had some swagger at WebexOne, and it was taking potshots at competitors such as Zoom (especially Zoom), HP, and several Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) providers. Cisco also shared some strong growth metrics. 

Among the announcements:  

• Real-Time Media Model (RMM): While LLMs are revolutionizing textual-based conversations, RMM is designed to pick up nonverbal cues in audio and video, including presence, gestures, tonality, and inflection. 
• AI Assistant: This AI layer works across all Webex apps and modalities. 
• AI Audio Codec: AI is creating an opportunity for reinvention, and that includes the audio codec. This new AI-infused codec is more efficient, more tolerant of poor networks (with reduced packet loss), and can generate lost packets.
• Super Resolution for video 
• Webex hybrid events now supports up to 10K remote participants
• In addition to meeting summarization, Webex can now generate a highlight reel
• Change tone functionality in Webex Messaging
• Webex Go now available on AT&T (in US) 
• Cisco 950 earbuds, co-branded with Bang & Olufsen
• GA of the Room Kit EQX
• GA of Cinematic Meetings
• Meraki integration in Control Hub
• Vidcast will soon move into the Webex client  
• Contact Center agent burnout detection
• Webex on Apple TV 4K and Apple Watch
• Webex Customer Experience Essentials (CC lite)
• CC coaching highlights
• Personalized outgoing video bots 
• CC customer sentiment insight
• Auto-generate customer satisfaction scores
• CC suggested responses for agent chats
• Agent Answers with highlights
• CC real-time transcription
• Webex Connect Integrations Studio for Partners
• Enhanced Webex Calling for Microsoft Teams (w/o need for Teams Phone license)
• HD Voice for Webex Calling (noise removal)
• Webex Attendant Console 
• New Webex App for Android
• In-app recording, sharing and summarization
• Webcast closed captioning and transcripts
• Webex Campfire room design
• Meeting Zone provides audio and video virtual boundaries 
• Multistream on Webex meetings
• Sovereign Controls (EU data residency)

A recurring theme across the sector is reinvention with AI. Cisco’s new audio codec is intriguing. Improved efficiency and reliability. I like that it uses generative AI to replace lost packets. RMM is an interesting complement to LLM. I presented two sessions on Webex Go, UCaaS Mobility 3.0 is the biggest new trend occurring in UCaaS.

This was the third WebexOne conference. The prior two were online-only, while this was a hybrid event hosted on Webex. (Events and hybrid events are now part of the Webex Suite.) Zoom has also expanded into events, as has RingCentral with its recent acquisition of Hopin Events. 

Shutter the Office! I expect to see a lot more of this. Meta paid £149M to end its lease on a London office (I’ve been there), and the company is going in on smaller, hybrid offices. Too bad they didn’t build a metaverse yet. Meta’s decision arrived two years after its commitment to the 310,000 square feet of office space near Regent’s Park. 

Notion Thinks Bigger: Countless employees rely on Notion for daily planning and collaboration. Notion is used for connecting, organizing, and accumulating knowledge. Just recently, Notion introduced a Notion for Enterprise, which offers enhanced administrative, security, and compliance features. Notion acts as a central repository of vital information. As more organizations and bigger enterprises adopt Notion, it was only a matter of time before the grassroots company introduced enterprise-grade security.

The newly introduced dashboard enables administrators to manage various aspects, including employee details, external workspace access, session duration, passwords, and the ability to suspend or delete accounts. Notion has also formed partnerships with leading Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions to bolster data security and boost user confidence.

Notion clearly intends to be the modern productivity platform within large organizations.

New Teams: Microsoft announced that its new Teams client will be available in March 2024. The new client, along with Copilot, was featured in Microsoft’s Enterprise Connect 2023 keynote. That’s convenient as they can reuse it for EC 2024.

Meetings and Messaging

Lots of video news between Zoomtopia and WebexOne this month. Both conferences were covered above. The main video story here is multi-camera room systems, or the end of the bowling alley effect. 

This feature is extraordinarily complex. Cisco and Zoom delivered it this month, and Microsoft Ignite is coming. It can be accomplished by the cloud provider or locally (from Logi, Crestron, or Neat). It combines several technologies: speaker tracking (because people move), either acoustically or visually; multi-stream cameras (more streams are needed and accomplished with more cameras and more streams per camera); and AI (to ensure we don’t get multiple streams of the same person).   

HP Poly Studio Bundle: Bundling HP Poly cameras and an HP processor, this is a new solution specifically designed to leverage the Zoom Rooms Intelligent Director feature. Intelligent Director uses two or three cameras in medium-to-large rooms to show optimal views of in-room participants. A single-vendor solution for new AI software offerings like Zoom’s Intelligent Director is a massive benefit for Zoom customers and potentially for MS Teams customers as well. 

Crestron announced at Zoomtopia the general availability of its Videobar 70 for Zoom Rooms. Also, the two new 1 Beyond cameras are now certified for Zoom, and its Automate VX solution, which supports up to 12 cameras in a room, is now certified on Teams.  

Customer Engagement

Peru AI: NICE hosted a premier analyst event in Machu Picchu, Peru. The location was an insane undertaking of logistics and coordination but appeared to be a great success. Why Peru? For several reasons. It was a statement in itself that screamed 1) we are the leader, 2) we value our community, 3) it’s about more than content; it’s about experiences, and 4) because both NICE and the Incas are/were cloud and AI leaders. I may have that last point confused. It’s been a busy month, but bear with me and let me sort out what I learned. 

NICE and the Incas valued and prioritized clouds. NICE built a cloud-native solution. The Incas built a fortress as close to the clouds as they could. The Incas had no written language, so they built a voice-centric solution. Historians believe the lack of digital channels and a knowledge system are why the Incas are gone today. However, there is still so much to learn from them. 

Machu Picchu was clearly built with a systematic approach, vision, and execution (the keys to CX). Unfortunately, it was also highly compartmentalized, which stifled knowledge and communication. Customers often had to repeat themselves. To remedy this, the Incas used alpacas to carry information. These Incan alpacas had in-depth knowledge of the Incan culture. Alpaca intelligence (AI) made interactions more efficient. Many people are scared of AI, but alpacas are quite friendly. One may have spit at me, but that might have been a hallucination. The Spaniards tried to use AI, too, but their alpacas were untrained. This is a common problem, as it is very hard to train alpacas. 

On this hike, the ability to seamlessly shift between exploring Machu Picchu on my own (self-service) and joining a tour (assisted) was key to the experience. It is difficult to predict which will be better, so the option to dynamically adjust was critical to my satisfaction. It is common to commit to one path or the other in advance, and that can cause poor sentiment. I also switched between modalities such as watching, listening, reading, and recording (photos) without losing context. 

The choice of channels and the never-ending stairs could be described as an “Experience Continuum.” Some stairs go up, some go down, none are easy. I pondered this later in the journey, over wine, and concluded that experiences and brands are formed through a continuum of stairs and interactions.  

The experience was phenomenal. Machu Picchu was abandoned, but its revitalized brand today attracts thousands of daily visitors. This doesn’t just happen; the clouds, AI, and channels all contributed. The entire experience was well orchestrated. 

While I may have some of that confused, I will say that NICE practices what it preaches: experiences, not transactions. Another point is that while this was an extreme event, analyst events are inherently inclusive and democratic. The content is presented to everyone at the same time, and the leadership team is accessible throughout the event. No wonder Gartner no longer attends them. Emphasis on inclusive. The invitation list was long. Genesys is hosting its analyst event in Budapest, but its very short guest list is causing concern about its health (and story).  

The final point is, don’t let the name NICE fool you. It’s a friendly name, and the company generally enjoys the wordplay it invites. A more accurate word might be FIERCE, as it’s abundantly clear that NICE intends to win. The leadership team has proven itself (a decade? ago) — they are committed, calculating, effective, and exact. 

GITEX GLOBAL 2023: I attended the GITEX conference — dubbed the world’s largest tech conference — in Dubai. I did manage to walk the show a bit, but I was primarily there as Avaya’s guest. GITEX is one of Avaya’s biggest events. That might strike readers as odd, so let me explain. 

GITEX caters to the EMEA and APAC markets. Although Avaya’s size and influence abroad have been reduced, it’s still huge, powering many of the biggest contact centers on the planet. The US assumes CCaaS is all that matters, but private instance/private cloud remains huge. According to Gartner, more than half of the world’s agents are private implementations. Remember that a thousand small contact centers can still represent fewer agents than a single large implementation. Cloud adoption is slower and lower in most international markets. 

As a result, Avaya International walks tall at events like GITEX. They are powering many of the largest global brands, especially overseas. There were no other contact center vendors with a comparable-sized booth (Cisco had a larger booth, but the contact center was small within it). 

Several of Avaya’s new leaders were also in attendance. Note that this is the first time in at least a decade that Avaya has experienced, cloud-savvy executives. In addition to the actual conference, there was also the TahawulTech Future Enterprise Awards dinner (Avaya won Best CX Solutions) and a large Avaya customer dinner.  

Avaya has generally stood by its large customers (certainly better than Genesys has). The priority now is portfolio enhancements partially being addressed by internal development and partners. 

#Zoomtopia WEM: Zoom announced the GA of its WEM solution for Zoom Contact Center customers. It does what one might expect from WEM, but more importantly, it does it from a native, integrated approach. Of course, AI is a big part of it, and that means Zoom AI Companion. In addition to creating schedules, Zoom WFM also monitors adherence in real time. 

I’ve seen this movie before: Zoom announces what others expect will take a long time to create. Zoom creates it, sells it, and small businesses embrace it first, followed by larger firms. Do not dismiss or underestimate Zoom — no vendor in our space innovates or iterates faster. Zoom is publicly building perhaps the broadest comms-centric single platform and single client suite in the industry. 

Enegel.AI, Out of Stealth: Enegel, where Genesys leaders go to innovate, announced its first product: Conversational Intelligence (catchy name). Enegel promises to bring back the feel of human interactions in a fully automated way, offering quality and performance management services with human-like evaluation of agent performance (flow and logic, personalization, language and tone, etc.).  

Amazon Connects Third Parties: AWS launched a preview of Amazon Connect supporting third-party apps in the Connect agent workspace. Customers can use their agent workspace to access homegrown and/or third-party apps in a unified space. I am not convinced this counts as eliminating app switching. Initial partners building integrations include Joulica, TechSee, Verint, SequenceShift, Glia, and Qualtrics. 

Talkdesk Generative AI: Talkdesk introduced substantial product updates to further integrate generative AI (GenAI) into its Talkdesk CX Cloud platform and Industry Experience Clouds. Talkdesk has integrated GenAI features throughout its platform. Example use cases include automatic interaction summaries and automatic identification of topic and sentiment trends in customer conversation. Talkdesk started with AI technologies in 2018. Earlier this year, Talkdesk introduced Automatic Summary to reduce agent work after calls, and it also offers Virtual Agent and AI Trainer for AI model training.

8×8 CCaaS: Several updates from 8×8, including a deeper Salesforce integration enabling customers to send and receive SMS and WhatsApp messages. 8×8 scripting functions allow admins to build out questions and quick customer replies via web chat. Enhancements to 8×8 Supervisor Workspace include interaction retrieval pages and access to Barge, Monitor, and Whisper within the Agent Table Widget.

8×8 now allows customer service agents to use video with customer interactions. This means customers can show agents their problems using video on their mobile devices, making it easier to solve issues. The benefits of this video feature include ease of use and mobile-friendliness. The Omni Shield solution provides automated fraud alerts, real-time notifications, live traffic monitoring, and instant phone number assessments. 

Crexendo's CX: At its annual user group conference, Crexendo shared that its cloud communication platform now serves over 3.5 million users worldwide. Its growth strategy includes partnering with licensees and agents, targeting enterprise and mid-sized accounts, expanding into new markets, and improving its platform and offerings. 

For example, Crexendo launched new ChatGPT-powered services within its CCaaS solution to improve customer support and sales interactions. This offering can be used on its platform as well as by selected partners to support webchat on customer websites. Crexendo also announced an upgrade to SnapHD with a new iotum partnership that offers brandable video services for video calling or specialized applications via the iotum SDK. 

Unified Communications

RingCentral/Vodafone: Vodafone Business and RingCentral unveiled One Net Unite con RingCentral, now available in Spain. This is RingCentral UCaaS as a native number cell phone number; no app is required. These UCaaS 3.0 solutions provide business customers greater flexibility and simplicity. One Net Unite con RingCentral combines RingCentral collaboration (messaging, video meetings, file sharing, and task management) with Vodafone’s communications services, which include call queueing and holding, call transfer, time frame setting, and customized voicemail. It is conceptually similar to the AT&T Office@Hand solution in the US. UCaaS Mobility 3.0 solutions eliminate OTT or best effort. These solutions are currently only available on Microsoft Teams, RingCentral, and Cisco Webex. 

Crestron Phones: At Zoomtopia, Crestron announced two new phone models with 8” and 10” touchscreens. The larger one is video-ready. I am really happy to see a new video phone for Zoom Phone. Crestron stated there was a very strong interest in the phones. 

Intermedia Flat World Locals: Intermedia Cloud Communications announced the expansion of free international calling to up to 33 countries for its North America-based Unite users. 

Rainbow Cloud Global: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) is making its Rainbow Hub available to businesses worldwide through its global partner network. Rainbow Hub is a cloud platform that helps teams communicate and work together from anywhere using any device. It’s different from other options because it can connect with telecom operators and offers reliable and flexible communication services. It also provides various collaboration tools like video calls, chat, and file sharing. It’s secure and suitable for both partners and customers. ALE recently launched Rainbow Hub in the UK and also introduced a connector to work with Microsoft Teams for better telephony integration.

GoTo Updates: In its quarterly announcement, GoTo unveiled nearly 60 new features and integrations designed to assist IT teams in adapting to the hybrid work environment. These additions prioritize security, usability, and continuous collaboration.

Notable features include enhanced security and compliance in GoTo Resolve, along with the introduction of GoTo Resolve Asset Management, which tracks and manages a company’s IT hardware assets. Additionally, the provider has integrated with Logitech for streamlined video conferencing. Customers can now access a new dashboard experience, providing real-time insights into device monitoring and helpdesk metrics.

8×8 Updates: 8×8 introduced several features new to its XCaaS platform, including integrations with Microsoft Teams and enhanced meeting capabilities. These offerings include the 8×8 Phone App for Microsoft Teams, video meeting solutions, usability improvements, and more.

Work usability and interface enhancements include new call recording filters, the capability to import personal or company contacts from Office 365 and Outlook into 8×8 Work for desktop, an improved microphone Automatic Gain Control (AGC), and embedded call quality alerts for the status of connections.

Smart Channel Routing identifies cost-effective telecom operators for routing SMS messages. 8×8 Connect allows agents to track the progress of their SMS Sender ID registration requests.

8×8 launched video enhancements in the form of a video meeting solution for up to 10,000 participants at events such as town halls, auctions, and other large audience events. 8×8 meetings will also have the option of turning off video hardware acceleration to improve shared content legibility and support for the modern AV1 video codec.

Extensible Comms

Comcast 10G: Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica: An advertising industry group urged Comcast to stop its “10G” ads or modify them to state that 10G is an “aspirational” technology rather than something the company actually provides on its cable network today. Comcast plans to appeal the decision, so it won’t make any changes to marketing immediately. If Comcast loses the appeal and agrees to change its practices, it would affect more than just a few ads because Comcast now calls its entire broadband network “10G.” John Gruber compares 10G to The Onion’s 5 Blade Razors. 

Sinch with Webex: Sinch, mostly known for its CPaaS capabilities, bolstered its UCaaS offering by hooking up with Cisco. “Sinch Calling with Webex” offers users an integrated calling and collaboration experience. The service provides a UCaaS solution by combining Sinch’s voice capabilities with Webex’s messaging and meeting features. This solution eliminates the challenges associated with separate apps for voice, messaging, and meetings.

InfobipApp: Infobip now enables businesses to design and implement end-to-end customer journeys within WhatsApp. This capability can enable customers to complete tasks and make purchases without WhatsApp. With WhatsApp Flows and Payments, businesses can create flexible, customized journeys within a WhatsApp chat thread. Use cases include lead generation, recommending products, booking appointments, managing orders, and in-thread payments. Now that I am spending more time in Europe, my appreciation for WhatsApp grows. Not only is it a versatile app/channel, but it’s essential for C2B interactions. 

The Business Section

Ooma and 2600Hz: Ooma UCaaS acquired 2600Hz for approximately $33M in cash. This acquisition is expected to contribute around $7M in annual recurring revenue to Ooma. The deal was finalized on October 20, 2023. To finance this acquisition, Ooma secured a new $30 million revolving line of credit. Furthermore, some former 2600Hz employees who join Ooma will receive equity awards under Ooma’s 2015 Equity Incentive Plan.

I knew 2600Hz was in play. I had a mental shortlist of potential buyers, and Ooma wasn’t on the list. 2600Hz is a jewel, and it’s probably one of the most powerful CPaaS stacks out there. 2600Hz Kazoo is an open-source communications platform with a set of proprietary applications and APIs. Kazoo is an application and a platform that service providers and enterprises use for its APIs, UCaaS, and CCaaS. 

Ooma was a surprise, but I get it. Ooma is building a decent business largely on 2600Hz technologies. It’s always best to own your stack, especially considering all of the customizations it has done. It’s less clear to me what Ooma does with all the businesses 2600Hz was in. 

Atlassian and Loom: Atlassian is buying a video-messaging startup called Loom for almost $1 billion. Loom, mostly associated with async video messaging, lets people record and share videos with coworkers. Atlassian will leverage Loom to facilitate more work and teaching online and will add to its product. Will they do so faster than Cisco? Cisco has yet to integrate its internally developed Vidcast into its Webex suite. This is Atlassian’s biggest purchase ever. The company will use $880 million in cash and some stock to pay for it, and the transaction is expected to close in early 2024. Loom started in 2016 and became more popular during the pandemic when people had to work from home. Loom was worth $1.53 billion in 2021, but it had to lay off some workers in 2022 because of economic problems. The company has 160 employees and didn’t share its revenue.

This acquisition is about more than just enabling asynchronous communication among project teams through video messaging; it also facilitates the exchange of historical knowledge and documentation. Loom videos serve as a valuable link between the current and future teams, offering insights through video transcripts, AI-powered summaries, and analytics. In essence, it enhances cross-team collaboration and knowledge sharing for organizations managing complex projects with Atlassian.

Nice and LiveVox: NICE Systems is set to acquire LiveVox, a San Francisco-based CCaaS platform known for its AI-powered outbound engagement capabilities. This acquisition aligns with the trend of combining inbound and outbound systems for a more comprehensive customer experience. LiveVox offers various intelligent tools, including customer relationship management (CRM), workforce optimization, omnichannel communications, and AI-powered assistants. The deal is expected to benefit NICE’s customer engagement platform, enhance its market presence, and help address slowing growth concerns. The acquisition, valued at around $350 million, is anticipated to close in early 2024.

Anthropic/Google: Anthropic is winning investments from tech giants. Google will invest up to $2B into Anthropic ($500M now and $1.5B later). If LLMs will rule the world, then it’s smart to own some of the winners. While Google and Microsoft battle over search, the real battle will be over LLM leadership. Amazon previously announced a $4B investment in Anthropic. In March, Anthropic closed on a $450 million round with participation from Google, Salesforce Ventures, and Zoom Ventures.

Mitel and Atos: Earlier this year, Mitel announced its intent to acquire Unify, a onetime far larger competitor. Now that the transaction is complete, Unify’s voice platforms, collaboration and contact center products, device and endpoint portfolio, and related intellectual property all reside at Mitel. 

Seems obvious today, but this combination was impossible a decade ago. It’s a decent but sad tale: Unify’s future was cut when it killed Project Ansible. A shadow of Ansible was later launched as Circuit and now resides in a left-hand bottom drawer at RingCentral. Atos bought Unify to facilitate its Unify PBX-to-Teams migration. Atos likely never had any interest in managing or building the comms product. Meanwhile, Atos just hired its third CEO in two years as its restructuring continues. 

The prem business continues to be a viable, important part of the sector. No premises-based vendor has made the transition to UCaaS without a significant acquisition. Mitel and Atos are “better together.” Mitel brings to Unify a commitment to communications. The new, bigger Mitel has more professional services, a stronger European base, and larger customers, and makes Mitel a Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) powerhouse. Premises-based solutions are sometimes referred to as legacy solutions, but they don’t have to be. The pressure is now on Mitel (and Avaya) to reinvent premises-based solutions with compelling benefits. 

Alianza Raises $61M: Alianza secured $61M in new funding, reflecting a 70% increase in valuation since March 2021. This round involves equity from undisclosed institutional investors and strategic partners, along with debt financing from Texas Capital Bank. Earlier this year, Alianza marked nine consecutive years of revenue growth. Alianza plans to use the funding to expand its sales team by 400% and increase R&D by $200M. Alianza sells cloud-delivered services to cloud providers. #Revolutionary. 

Servion was quietly acquired by a venture capital firm. It is nice to see that investors continue to be interested in CCaaS services. Private equity funds are buying assets in the space, and I expect some consolidation. 

Leadership Changes

Avaya continues to fill out its leadership suite. The company named Soren Abildgaard as CTO. He has software development leadership experience from Contentful, Zendesk, and Adobe. Marylou Maco (aka ML) was named CRO. Maco escaped from Genesys; she will retain her position on Avaya’s BoD. 

Neat named Janine Pelosi its new CEO. Pelosi, previously the CMO of Zoom, departed Zoom last May. Intrado appointed Matt Carter as its new CEO, replacing Jeff Robertson, who joins the Intrado board. Tod Famous started as the Chief Product Officer at Enegel.ai. Niki Hall triumphantly returns to Five9 as its new CMO. C1 announced Chandler Legarreta as EVP of Enterprise Sales. Content Guru named Matt McKernan (previously of NICE) as its SVP of Americas Sales. 

Mitel named Charles-Henry Duroyan as its new COO and Head of M&A. Duroyon will manage Mitel’s global business operations, supply chain, and data privacy office. Surprising to see M&A tacked on to his title; I guess more are coming (NEC?).  

Goodreads

1. Satya Nadella tells a court that Bing is worse than Google — and Apple could fix it Really interesting article. Microsoft, Google, and Apple live on different planets. Bing is “marginally profitable” but generates billions. 
2. Microsoft’s Activision Buy Extends Nadella’s Decade of Deals Microsoft has spent $170B+ on acquisitions under Satya Nadella, helping to nearly triple revenue and become central in sectors like AI and gaming.
3. Marc Andreessen just dropped a ‘Techno-Optimist Manifesto’ that sees a world of 50 billion people settling other planets: “We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.” 
4. Apple has an edge over its competitors in the fight against climate change Other big tech companies lag behind in pushing suppliers to adopt clean energy, a new report finds.
5. Was Loom’s $975M exit a fair price? Probably would have been cheaper if they had waited. 
6. Elon Musk: anti work-from-home rant People who work from home take advantage of the people who cannot work from home and are “detached from reality.”
7. Why you can’t trust X for news The company formerly known as Twitter is a shell of what it once was. 
8. What the Techno-Billionaire Missed About Techno-Optimism Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist manifesto is correct to say technology can make the world a better place — but misses the mark on so much else.
9. Microsoft has over a million paying Github Copilot users Microsoft has a million paying users for its LLM coding assistant.
10. Why this company says it’s a ‘failure’ to force people back to the office Autodesk shares its revised policy.
11. Every trick Microsoft pulled to make you browse Edge instead of Chrome This time, Microsoft intends to win the new browser war it has started. 
12. AI risk must be treated as seriously as climate crisis, says Google DeepMind chief The world must treat the risks from artificial intelligence as seriously as the climate crisis and cannot afford to delay its response.
13. The poster’s guide to the internet of the future Instead of a half-dozen platforms competing to own your entire life, a new generation of apps is building a more interconnected social ecosystem.
14. Nokia sues Amazon with video codec SEPs in US, UPC, Germany, and more Nokia claims infringement of AVC and HEVC essential patents. 

Other Recent Stuff#

• #WebexOne CCaaS with Jono (video)
• Assessing the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CPaaS (Video)
• UCX Show Floor Walk-about (video)
• GITEX Show Floor Walk-about (video)
• What is ALE doing in the Avaya Booth @ GITEX? 
• A conversation with Jeff Pulver (video)
• Real-Time Recorded, Dave and Zeus on Zoomtopia (video)
• Thoughts on Zoomtopia (video) 
• Generative AI Hasn’t Lived Up to Its Potential — Yet 
• Google, Mio Team up for Chat Interoperability 
• How to RTO and WFH at the same time
• TalkingPointz Research: Conversational AI 2023 and Does CCaaS Matter?
• CXToday Video: Gartner CCaaS MQ 2023 Related: NICE Misses Out of Becoming Gartner’s Outright Leader.

2023 Insider Reports

1. Insider Jan 2023
2. Jan Insider Lite 2023
3. Insider Feb 2023
4. Insider Feb Insider Lite 
5. Insider March 2023 
6. Insider April 2023
7. Insider Lite April
8. Insider May 2023
9. Insider June 2023
10. Insider July 2023
11. Insider Lite August 2023
12. Insider August 2023
13. Insider September 2023