May Writing Roundup

My newsletter goes out later tdoay, and subscribers will see how busy May was, so my public writing output was limited. Unlike April, however, at least I got some pieces out, and here’s the digest.

Companies Must Rethink Video Conferencing Usage in 2021, May 24, TechTarget

How Could BYOD Support Touchless Meeting Rooms?, May 19, TechTarget

10 Essential Benefits of Unified Communications, May 12, TechTarget

Five9 Analyst Summit - My Quick Take, May 6, my blog

CCaaS: Rethinking Your CX and Customer Service Strategy, May 4, No Jitter

Will Video Fatigue Drive Users Back to Voice Calls?, May 4, TechTarget

Talkdesk CX Innovators Awards 2021 - Judging Again

Judging for various industry and vendor awards events is one of the hats analysts get to wear, and I’ve been doing a few of these lately. This is the most recent one, which I got to do last year with Talkdesk as well.

I’m just doing a heads-up here in advance of the winners, who will be announced on June 15 at their upcoming Opentalk event. I’ve completed my round of judging, which closes on June 1, and the winners will be notified on June 4. Stay tuned!

More From Onalytica - Profile Interview

Earlier this week, I posted about being included for the second time in a “Who’s Who?” guide produced by UK-based Onalytica. It’s always great to get industry recognition, and to keep that vibe going, they just published a profile interview of me, conducted by Joe Fields, their Head of Influencer Marketing.

You can read the interview here, and if interested, I think you’ll find both guides to be useful resources. Just check my blog posts for details on how to download them.

Who's Who in Unified Communications? - Latest from Onalytica

I’ve recently landed on the radar of Onalytica, a UK firm focused on influencer marketing. We didn’t have terms like that in my MBA days, but it’s defnitely a thing now, and better to be on their radar than not.

They produce a series of “Who’s Who” reports, and I was included in last month’s report covering “Telecoms”. That was nice to see, and there’s more of the same in their latest report, Who’s Who in Unified Communications? The reports are fairly similar, but different enough to be worth getting both. They also did a profile interview with me, and I’ll share that here shortly.

UCX: Now - May 19-20, Next Speaking Opp

Next week is the 2021 edition of UCX: Now, and am on the program again. This time, I’ll be speaking on a panel led by colleague Kevin Kieller, and we’ll be exploring how enterprises can manage all the data that’s now being captured in the workplace, thanks to AI and cloud. Big issues to explore, and we hope you can join us. Details for the session and registering for the event are here - if you can attend our session, it’s at 11am ET on Wednesday, May 19.

My Next Webinar with TelcoBridges - Contact Center as a Service: Challenges and Successes

Time for another webinar, covering the white-hot contact center as a service - CCaaS - space. This one is with TelcoBridges, a vendor I’ve known for ages, and it’s good to see them doing well.

The main focus of my talk will be on what’s driving CCaaS adoption, and what service providers need to do to be successful. As always, it’s harder to do than it looks, but things should get a bit easier after joining us, right? The webinar is on Tuesday, May 25 at 11am ET, and all the details to register are here.

Cloud Conventions 2021 - May 12-14 - Next Speaking Spot for Me

Cloud Conventions starts this Wednesday, and I’ll be speaking early in the program at 10:30 ET. Details are below, along with a 5 minute video interview that organizer Carolyn Bradfield did with me as a preview. Hope you can join us!

I’ll be providing the analyst perspective about how cloud is shaping the future of work, especially as we come out of the pandemic. If you’re attending, I’ll be speaking live as part of the Digital Transformation track at 10:30 ET on May 12. Then at 11:30, I’ll be joined by Mike Cromwell for an informal Meet The Experts scrum.

Details about my topic are here, along with all the other sessions - just scroll through a bit, and you’ll find me. If you haven’t made plans to attend, here’s where to register.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Five9 Analyst Summit - My Quick Take

Virtual events with analysts are tricky to plan, especially for pacing out the program. Over the last year, vendors have tried all kinds of formats, but it seems clear that the best approach is to do it in manageable chunks of time. Nobody is going to sit through a day-long marathon of video streaming - it’s just too intense, and too easy for folks to wander off.

Over the past threee days, I’ve been tracking the Five9 Analyst Summit, and they seem to have the right formula - three days and three hours each day - and starting at 10:30 ET, which works pretty well going across multiple global time zones. It’s still a lot of content to digest, and I managed to take in just about all of it - only had to drop out a couple of times.

I’m not going to write up a full research note now, but will share a few takeaways and screenshots here while it’s still fresh. Following a solid Q1 earnings report, the updates we got this week provided detail as to why the company is doing so well.

Much like Zoom has been the right technology at the right time to enable work from home, Five9 provides a pretty complete CCaaS solution as contact centers rush to the cloud. As we heard, 85% of this market is still premises-based, and it’s hard to see why so many players are jumping in with all types of cloud offerings. Being a fully cloud-native contact center pure play, Five 9 is in a great spot right now.

The CCaaS market sure is messy right now - as is the broader customer service/CX space - and for that tangent, I’ll steer you to my latest No Jitter post which came out earlier this week. Coming back to Five9, here are some notable takeaways around the many things they’re doing right.

• Lots of strong growth metrics, but their upmarket success with large enterprise customers catches my eye the most, with 45% YoY revenue growth. and 83% of Q1 business revenue. All cloud vendors will book their share of smaller customers, but I think it’s the ability to sell into this end of the market that will create the most sustainable value and growth for Five9.

• We heard lots about their culture, and it’s a strong selling point for them as an organization. They’ve built out a solid managment team along with proven industry leaders on the sales side, and as CEO Rowan Trollope noted, it’s a place now “where nobody leaves” - in a good way, of course!

• Plenty of updates around innovation - I’m not that technical, but their Inference acquisition is a good example with IVA - intelligent virtual agent - to help automate customer service - as is Whendu, which helps contact centers with complex legacy integrations migrate to the cloud. Aside from acquistions, they’ve added over 150 developers, and are maintaining R&D spend at a solid 12% of revenues. This is just a taste of what they’re doing, and the main idea here is that they’re holding their own, and then some, in a very competitive space that is evolving quickly.

• So much more to talk about, and before I close off with some screenshots that can be shared, the intangibles of leadership have a lot to do with their success. You might be surprised to know that Five9 started in 2001, so this isn’t exactly a startup with wheels or a unicorn with hardly any revenues. They’ve been at this a long time, and both President Dan Burkland and CEO Rowan Trollope shared a clear vision for where they’re going and why they’ve been so successful, especially in this big moment of CCaaS adoption. Rowan kicked this event off talking about re-imagining CX and taking a clean slate approach with cloud and AI, and to build around the emerging “multi-modal” workforce, where both human agents and chatbots play key roles in transforming customer service into a highly personalized experience. Easier said than done, but they’re definitely on the right track - leading and not following.

Newsletter Time Again - May Issue - Podcast Too

Subscribers got the May edition of JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review around this time yesterday, and with that comes the latest Season 4 episode of our Watch This Space podcast.

There are several ways to access and/or subscribe to our podcast, but the newsletter is primarily available via subscription, which is free. Links to that can be found on my website, and to make it easy, here you go.

Whether you subscribe or not, I hope you give our latest podcast a listen. As the title below suggests, we took on a big topic, which of course can’t be covered in one episode. We picked out some core themes, which Chris Fine and I will explore further during our upcoming PulveREDU course on May 13, and you can register for that here. Hope you’ll join us!

CCaaS - Rethinking Your CX Strategy - My Latest on No Jitter

If you’re a fan of Buffalo Springfield, you’ll like my latest article on No Jitter.

If you want know why and how the contact center space has become so messy - but really interesting - you’ll like it even better. There are many flavors of CCaaS now, and new visions are emerging for what constitutes “customer service”, and what CX really means.

That’s my pitch, and to read the article, here’s the link. I hope you like it, and as always, comments and sharing are welcome.

Cloud Conventions 2021 - May 12-14 - Next Speaking Spot for Me

I really enjoyed being involved with last year’s inaugural Cloud Conventions, especially with Carolyn Bradfield. We’re back at it for the 2021 edition, which runs virtually from May 12-14. This is a channel-centric event, with a wide range of topics to help end customers migrate to the cloud.

I’ll be presenting again, providing the analyst perspective about how cloud is shaping the future of work, especially as we come out of the pandemic. If you’re attending, I’ll be speaking live as part of the Digital Transformation track at 10:30 ET on May 12. Then at 11:30, I’ll be joined by Mike Cromwell for an informal Meet The Experts scrum.

Details about my topic are here, along with all the other sessions - just scroll through a bit, and you’ll find me. If you haven’t made plans to attend, here’s where to register.

Also, any day now, I’ll be posting a short video chat I did with Carolyn about the event and the themes I plan to talk about - stay tuned.

Back to School - Our First PulveREDU Course: The New Voice

Jeff Pulver is a long-time visionary, entrepreneur and community-builder in the communications technology space; especially around VoIP, which he had a direct hand in establishing as the successor to TDM. He keeps moving with the times, and PulveREDU is his latest venture. In short, he’s developed an accessible, affordable platform for learning and knowledge-sharing - think along the lines of The Learning Annex, but online.

PulveREDU’s model is to offer one-hour courses/programs, led by established experts, and at a $20 price point, it’s an affordable way to get up to speed on a topic and engage directly with the educators. This isn’t about earning credits or completing a curriculum, but it provides richer learning than just consuming content from the Web. Plus it’s live and interactive, so there’s lots of room for dialog.

The programming calendar is a work in progress, as this is still pretty new, but as the track record builds, enrollment for courses will grow, as will the roster of educators. That’s the leadup, and here’s the pitch.

Our inaugural PulveREDU course is coming soon - it runs live, on Thursday, May 13 from 11:30-12:30pm, EST. I’ll be co-presenting the course with long-time colleague and Watch This Space podcast partner, Chris Fine. Our topic is close to home for us, titled: The New Voice - Exploring New Worlds Beyond the Phone Call, and registration details are here. We really hope you’ll join us, and if you think others will be interested as well, please pass this along.

Roundup of Recent Industry Events - Our Latest BCStrategies Podcast

We may not be travelling these days, but there are plenty of virtual events, along with news of note in the collaboration space. That’s the focus of our latest podcast at BCStrategies, so it makes for a good roundup of current events.

Led by Blair Pleasant, we weighed in on recent events, namely Fuze, Cisco, Avaya and Genesys, along with thoughts on the Zoom/RingCentral spat, and Dialpad’s big partnership with T-Mobile.

Never a dull moment, and we hope you check out our podcast. As always, sharing and comments are welcome.

My Next Webinar with Lumen - Security Considerations for UCaaS

Got another webinar coming up, this one sponsored by Lumen Technologies, and hosted by Spiceworks Ziff Davis. I’ll be presenting on UCaaS trends and drivers, along with reviewing the associated security risks. After that, I’ll be joined by two speakers from Lumen for a more in-depth discussion about security. Details are here if you’d like to join us - next Wednesday, Apri 14 at noon ET.

March Writing Roundup

I’m continuing to stay busy, with March being one of my strongest months ever for new business. That aside, I managed to get some writing done, and here are the highlights.

What are the Challenges of Using Multiple Team Collaboration Apps?, TechTarget, March 31

Hybrid Work - It’s Complicated, No Jitter, March 30

High Availability Direct Routing for Teams, BCStrategies, March 16

4 Ways AI in UC Boosts Collaboration, TechTarget, March 11

Microsoft Ignite - Their Vision for a Post-PC World and Teams Updates, BCStrategies, March 5

Hybrid Work - It's Complicated - My Latest on No Jitter

I’ve been quiet lately - didn’t realize just for how long until now - but busy as can be with new projects.

Hybrid work has become the trend du jour, and there’s lots to explore, for sure. My last two No Jitter posts looked at flip sides of hybrid work - work from home and return to office - and balancing the two isn’t easy. Well, in fact, it’s complicated, and that’s what my latest No Jitter post is about.

I’ve got some interesting data sets from two new studies to share, and it’s nice have that kind of validation for things I’ve been seening in my own work. So, to get my take and see some telling numbers, I hope you give my article a read - it was posted earlier today on No Jitter.

Impressions from Microsoft Ignite - Our BCStrategies Podcast

Been pretty busy lately with BCStrategies, where I’ve been a BC Expert for a long time. This is my third post this week regarding new content that I’ve been part of there, and if you haven’t visited the site lately, there’s lots of great content to explore.

This time around, it’s our latest podcast, where Kevin Kieller led a discussion to take in our thoughts about the recent Microsoft Ignite event. If you attended or read about it, you’ll know that Mesh was the big story, and in my mind this is a strong signal from Microsoft that the post-PC world is coming, and they’re going to be setting the pace.

Aside from contributing to the conversation here, I wrote up my own review with photos about Microsoft Ignite in an earlier BCStrategies post, and you can read that here. First, though, you should check out our podcast - here’s the link - and if you want to weigh in with your own takeaways, we’d love to hear from you.

High Availability Direct Routing for Teams - BCStrategies Post

This is my latest guest post, running now on BCStrategies. Direct routing for Microsoft Teams has been a hot topic lately, and I’ve had a few opportunities to research and write about it. This one was sponsored by AudioCodes, and if you read it, you’ll see that the focus is primarily on the challenge of providing high availability telephony with Teams. When hosting in the cloud, this is harder to do than it looks, and if you’re wondering about how to address this, you may find this post a good read - here’s the link.

What Was Supposed to be Here by Now? Our Latest BCStrategies Podcast

Interesting topic for interesting times. Led by Joseph Williams, our team of BC Experts weighed in on technologies and changes we thought would have happened by now in the collaboration space. Pretty wide range of perspectives, and several that I think you’ll find surprising.

So, like the guy in the Farmers Insurance ad says, “we’ve seen a few things” - that’s us at BCStrategies, folks. Our group has seen lots of tech waves come and go, so we’ve got perspectives that Millennials will have to wait their turn for. That time will come, but instead of waiting 25 years, why not just listen to us talk about a few things for about 30 minutes?Bump, bu-bump bump bump!

My Microsoft Ignite Takeaways on BCStrategies - Their Vision for a Post-PC World

I managed to take in some sessions during last week’s Microsoft Ignite, including the main event - their annnouncement about Mesh, a mixed reality platform that brings the physical and virtual worlds together in ways that most of us have never seen or imagined before. Gamers may rule in this world, but yes, there will be applications in the collaboration space, and Teams is part of the story.

Longer-term, this could well be Microsoft’s big play for a post-PC world, so it’s a good strategy to establish themselves before that time comes. Lots to discuss, and I’m just scatching the surface in this post I put together last week for BCStrategies. It’s running now on their portal, and if you give it a read, I’d love to hear your thoughts.